Recently in Situation Variables (affecting witness memory) Category

This website gives good "demonstrations that we live in a brain-constructed world."

You are given quite a few optical illusions and explanations as to why our brain tricks us into seeing or not seeing things.

Particularly important to this class are the light trick illusions.  The lighting of the crime is very important when determining the reliability of an eyewitness identification.  For example, if the crime happened in the middle of the night and there is very little light, an eyewitness may report that they saw every fine detail of the perpetrator when in fact this is likely untrue.  When sufficient light is not available and visibility is limited, the brain is given incomplete information.  Therefore, if the brain is given incomplete information, it is likely that the witness will fill in the gaps with previous experiences and information, making the identification less reliable.    

I'm not sure if the lighting is documented along with all of the other information that is initially document at the scene, but if it is not, it should be!

In class we have been talking a lot about the different procedures that law officials go through from the first 911 call to the end of the trial. Recently, we have talked about the importance of memory and eyewitness identification and all the implications these two forms of evidence can have. Below is a link to an article written by Gary Wells, Mark Small, Steven Penrod, Roy Malpass, Soloman Fulero and C. A. E. Brimacombe, (1998). This article is often times referred to as the "white paper". This article is meant to be an eye opener to people, and for them to realize the many implications in conducting lineups. Also, it goes into great detail explaining the many ways our legal system can avoid contaminating memory evidence and limit the amount of false witness identifications. (This is kind of long, but is worth your read if you are interested in this sort of topic).

http://www.law.northwestern.edu/academics/colloquium/Gary%20Wells/Gary%20Wells%202.pdf

Wells, G., Small, M., Penrod, S. Malpass, R., Fulero, S., & Brimacombe, C. (1998).       Eyewitness identification procedures: Recommendations for lineups and photospreads. Law and Human Behavior, 22