Legal status of witnesses

[Mulder]

Can anyone tell me the legal status of eye witnesses? Can, for instance, someone without an alibi be convicted of something on the say-so of one eye witness without other evidence? Please say no!

I am concerned because my research into the paranormal has made me more and more convinced that eye witness evidence is no more than indicative at best and certainly never definitive. When you add in memory alteration with each retelling of a story, and the effects of confabulation, and the picture looks really dodgy. I'd hate to think anyone could be convicted in this way.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

I'm no expert in Scots criminal law, but you may find it interesting that up here corroboration is required for each " essential fact".
http://www.hingstons.co.uk/laws-Corroboration-no.html



One of the fundamental rules of Scots criminal law is that the essential elements of the charge require to be corroborated before anyone can be convicted on that charge. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between and usually involve only minor statutory charges. The same rule does not apply South of the border, where rules of evidence and procedure are very different.

Corroboration does not require two witnesses. What it does require is two or more separate sources of evidence. It is the different source that matters, not the type of evidence. These sources could be oral from witnesses who saw or heard something, admissions by the accused or “real” evidence such as fingerprints or blood.

[Imox]

If eye witnesses was always crucial you could get rid of your neighbour on that way for instance if you hate him. "I saw it exactly, he was the murderer."

[Mulder]

If eye witnesses was always crucial you could get rid of your neighbour on that way for instance if you hate him. "I saw it exactly, he was the murderer."

Are you speaking with legal knowledge or speculating?

[DrS]

I'm speculating myself here, but I cannot see how a single eye witness would be sufficient in a court of law in England. I suspect it's very similar to Lord Muck's Scottish example, where more than one type of evidence is required. Otherwise, you have an accused who denies a crime, and a witness who accuses it, and no other evidence. It's a simple word against word situation. I don't think the CPS would accept such a case for court anyway.

[Mulder]

I'm not particularly happy with eye witness testimony being admitted at all into evidence for courts.

I would want two OTHER independent forms of evidence in ADDITION to eyewitness testimony. Where viewing conditions are not good, I think eyewitness testimony should not be admitted into court at all. Even in excellent viewing conditions eyewitnesses can make amazing mistakes.

[DrS]

Absolutely. It's come up before on here, but do you remember that advert (again I forget the details! :-[) where one scene was shot from two different directions? Think it was a Guardian commercial. The difference in perspective made a situation look alternatively like an attack or a rescue.

I've heard of instances, too, where a group of witnesses cannot agree on what they've just seen.

[Imox]

Are you speaking with legal knowledge or speculating?
I'm not a lawyer. Just thinking.

But there are German websites like "Ask the lawyer" to get help for free. Maybe there are also such pages in Britain?

[Tony Williams]

I've heard of instances, too, where a group of witnesses cannot agree on what they've just seen.
I think that is far more common than if they entirely agree on every detail (if they did, I'd suspect collusion!).

There was an interesting experiment I once read of (I may have mentioned it before). There was a conference of magistrates which the police were involved in supporting. As the delegates all left the conference hall to go outside, the police staged a mock "incident" with some vehicles, then immediately asked all of the magistrates to write down what they had just seen happen in broad daylight right in front of their eyes.

The accounts different hugely in what had happened, the colour and type of the vehicles, even the number of vehicles. I hope that the magistrates got the point...

[Imox]

That's cause always only one information can pass your brain.

[Mulder]

I've been involved in similar experimenmts with the same results. That's why I'm so concerned that eyewitness evidence is taken seriously in courts.

I think there should be research (if there isn't already) to quantify the reliability of eyewitness reports in different conditions. Maybe the eyewitnesses in real cases should be tested to see just how good they are! Most forensic methods quote a reliability so why not for eyewitnesses?

[DrS]

The thread I was thinking about is here (http://www.skeptics.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=2330&highlight=guardian+witness). Don't know if there has been further research in the meantime.

[Imox]

I knew somebody who was involved in a brawl with the police. One of his friends wanted to attack a policeman, whilst my friend tried to withhold him.
But the policeman said he wanted to seize that attacker and my friend had tried to obstruct his work.

[ZERO]

I'm not particularly happy with eye witness testimony being admitted at all into evidence for courts.

I would want two OTHER independent forms of evidence in ADDITION to eyewitness testimony. Where viewing conditions are not good, I think eyewitness testimony should not be admitted into court at all. Even in excellent viewing conditions eyewitnesses can make amazing mistakes.
I agree with this.

The problem with eyewitness testimony is that it seems so compelling.
"That's him, I saw him with my own eyes!"
The effect of a person saying something like that is out of all proportion to it's actual worth as evidence.

[tolman]

Surely, reliability depends a lot on what people are claiming to have seen - whether they actually have particular skill in recognising what they were looking at.

People are often pretty bad at remembering/identifying people or things they don't know, but there does come a degree of familiarity where, if someone says: "I saw my next-door neighbour Fred Smith rob the bank", or "The getaway bike was a Honzuki ABC600 - definitely a 2003 model, but I noticed it had an aftermarket carbon fibre exhaust" then seems much more likely that they did really see that (or are lying) than that they are mistaken.

One person who at the time knew exactly what they were looking at could be worth countless people trying to piece vague memories back together.

There are many things I'm bad at categorising, and therefore useless at remembering. Even if I was given loads of time to look at someone knowing I had to remember what their face looked like, I'd do a bad job because I just don't have the mental vocabulary for describing faces well.
In contrast, my sister could do a much better job, since she's an artist, and has different ways of looking and consciously analysing what she sees.

That said, she wouldn't always make the best witness.
She was once visiting Paris, and was congratulated by a friend she was travelling with for the very composed way she had reacted to the flasher who had been sitting opposite them on the Metro, and who had spent some time with his mac open, exposing himself.
However, her response was "What flasher?".
Even thought she'd been looking around the carriage, and had actually looked at the guy in passing a few times, having just spent days going round art galleries, and the previous few terms painting nudes at art college, the fact that the guy was nude just hadn't struck her mind as worth directing any attention to.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Surely, reliability depends a lot on what people are claiming to have seen - whether they actually have particular skill in recognising what they were looking at.

Well, yes, that must be right. Suppose, for example, I ask Lady Muck whether she has seen her mother today and she replies that she met her mother at lunchtime. I have nothing to go on but eyewitness evidence, but it would be just perverse to suggest that the evidence has no value because witnesses may get things wrong.

Generally, lawyers would be wasting their time in finding one eyewitness to contradict another if no eyewitness could ever be relied on to get even the simplest things right.

[Mulder]

I think the variability of witnesses demonstrated anecdotally here (is eye witness evidence ever anything but anecdotal?) backs my suggestion that actual witnesses should be individually tested. If they claim to have seen details of clothing on someone 100m away in poor light, try it out and see if they can reproduce that performance!

[Tony Williams]

If they claim to have seen details of clothing on someone 100m away in poor light, try it out and see if they can reproduce that performance!
Especially if it's some time after the event, and they had no reason to take special note at the time...

I'm terribly unobservant and would make a hopeless witness, unless I had reason to pay careful attention to something and deliberately memorise what I was seeing. Even then, of course, my perceptions could be wrong.

[tolman]

There are at least two strands to evidence - what people say they've seen, and how confident they say they are about their recall.

As far as I understand, at least by the time they've been questioned and come to court, the apparent confidence of a witness isn't really a guide to their accuracy.

A great deal must come down to how someone is questioned - if people are not encouraged to be sure, (even if only by people who understandably want to be sure the witness is sure before acting on what they're saying) they may well end up being rather more accurate in their level of confidence about what they've seen.
Presumably there's also an element in that once someone has said something speculative which is visibly picked up as important, even if they were never really certain about it, they might be reluctant to point that out once they have seen that it might be significant, since that could look like backtracking.
Equally, depending on how they're questioned and cross-questioned, people might be reluctant to be uncertain in court, even when they should be.

Is it at all required that there's a clean trail of evidence about what witnesses have said (ie, if they start off not being sure about some aspects of what they've seen, but end up confident, is their initial uncertainty recorded anywhere?), or is it allowed for them to be initially questioned more informally, with what they say only being recorded once they get to making a statement?

[polomint38]

Surely, reliability depends a lot on what people are claiming to have seen - whether they actually have particular skill in recognising what they were looking at.

People are often pretty bad at remembering/identifying people or things they don't know, but there does come a degree of familiarity where, if someone says: "I saw my next-door neighbour Fred Smith rob the bank", or "The getaway bike was a Honzuki ABC600 - definitely a 2003 model, but I noticed it had an aftermarket carbon fibre exhaust" then seems much more likely that they did really see that (or are lying) than that they are mistaken.

One person who at the time knew exactly what they were looking at could be worth countless people trying to piece vague memories back together.

There are many things I'm bad at categorising, and therefore useless at remembering. Even if I was given loads of time to look at someone knowing I had to remember what their face looked like, I'd do a bad job because I just don't have the mental vocabulary for describing faces well.
In contrast, my sister could do a much better job, since she's an artist, and has different ways of looking and consciously analysing what she sees.

That said, she wouldn't always make the best witness.
She was once visiting Paris, and was congratulated by a friend she was travelling with for the very composed way she had reacted to the flasher who had been sitting opposite them on the Metro, and who had spent some time with his mac open, exposing himself.
However, her response was "What flasher?".
Even thought she'd been looking around the carriage, and had actually looked at the guy in passing a few times, having just spent days going round art galleries, and the previous few terms painting nudes at art college, the fact that the guy was nude just hadn't struck her mind as worth directing any attention to.

Is your sister unobservant or does the flasher need to read about Jelqing, as per other thread.

[Mulder]

There are at least two strands to evidence - what people say they've seen, and how confident they say they are about their recall.

Poor interviewing methods can alter memories permanently. A crude example: 'was the car red or green?' rather than 'what colour was the car?'

Asking questions the wrong way alters memories and encourages confabulation. After such an interview witnesses are often much more confident of what they remember despite the fact that some of what they 'remember' is confabulated.

[Imox]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_94wGm5Prdv0/SZE0u1ILKoI/AAAAAAAAAf8/uGQcCNZ5KUc/s400/Annex+-+Fonda,+Henry+%2812+Angry+Men%29_09.jpg

great film, isn't it?