Jurors in every court should be given the facts about eyewitness testimony.
The New Jersey court, which sets rules for all of the state’s courts, put in place new requirements that judges warn jurors of the well-documented fallibility of eyewitness testimony. Starting in September, in N.J. cases that feature eyewitness testimonies, juries will be told to weigh the evidence against the reliability of such testimony in general. Before jurors begin deliberations, judges will be required to tell them, in part:
“Human memory is not foolproof. Research has revealed that human memory is not like a video recording that a witness need only replay to remember what happened. Memory is far more complex.”
The mandatory warning, which also includes explanations of how complications such as stress or distance can affect memory, is a good idea that South Carolina should consider adopting. When the fate of a defendant’s future life is held by 12 men and women, it’s imperative that those individuals know just how much they can trust the evidence they’ve been handed. In the case of eyewitness testimony, it’s often not as reliable as many might assume.
Dr. Jason T. Eastman, a sociologist and professor at Coastal Carolina University, has conducted some research in death penalty cases that touched on eyewitness accounts. He agreed that there can be significant concerns about such evidence.
“The consensus is, in terms of evidence it’s pretty unreliable,” Eastman said, “because people are pretty sloppy observers about what we see when we’re not paying attention, particularly when it involves strangers.”
Tommy Brittain, a Myrtle Beach lawyer with considerable experience in criminal cases, also pointed out that while the evidence may not be reliable, that possibility is often not on the mind of jurors.
“I think the layman thinks that eyewitness testimony is powerful,” Brittain said, “but we’ve learned over the years that what the mind takes in and processes is highly suspect, and yet people think what they saw and they get real certain about it.”
Warning jurors to take some extra time with the evidence rather than trusting it implicitly is a worthy goal. Currently, while S.C. judges can and do offer some instructions to juries on state laws that affect cases, jurors will hear no similar instruction in Palmetto courtrooms. Jurors are on their own and whatever information they already happen to have about the reliability of evidence.
“It’s left up to the jury to judge the credibility of the eyewitness,” said Motte Talley, assistant director for S.C Court Administration.
With what we know about the failings of memory, that’s simply not good enough. New Jersey might be the first state to adopt consistent rules regarding jury instruction, but it shouldn’t be the last. And Brittain, for one, doesn’t think it will be.
“This is a revolutionary, but probably predictable change, as far as the unreliablity of eyewitness testimony. The psychology and the science have been moving that way for some time,” he said.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/07/27/2962515/give-jurors-facts-on-eyewitness.html
Judges, lawyers split on “CSI Effect” on jurors.
With research showing nearly two-third of jurors expect scientific evidence in every criminal case, judges and attorneys are worried that fictional television shows might be raising the bar for prosecutions, even changing what constitutes reasonable doubt.
Clark County Prosecutor Andy Wilson remembers the time a juror asked him why police didn’t dust a sex-crime victim’s body for fingerprints.
“We’re lucky to get fingerprints off a gun in a lot of cases,” Wilson said.
Prosecutors and judges call it the “CSI effect.” Across Ohio and beyond, judges and prosecutors worry about the effect, the idea that modern jurors expect more scientific evidence than is necessary — or even possible, leading attorneys to change how they approach both jury selection and evidence presentation.
Questions about “CSI” and other fictional shows are now standard in jury selection. Research shows that 58 percent of jurors expect to see scientific evidence in every criminal case, 42 percent expect to see DNA evidence in every criminal case and 57 percent expcent fingerprint evidence in every criminal case.
“I don’t despute those numbers,” said Wilson. “It’s a real, actual phenomenom that trial prosecutors have to deal with. It’s frustrating, the gap between fantasy, what people believe is possible and what’s actually possible.”
But Judge Donald E. Shelton of Washtenaw County Trial Court in Ann Arbor, Mich., said that there is an effect — but it goes beyond what people watch on television. Shelton, who also teaches at the criminology departemnt at Eastern Michigan University, helped do that pioneering research. But the researchers found that jurors do have higher expectations, but there is no difference between those who watch fictional crime shows and those who do not.
“So there is an effect, but it’s not a CSI effect,” Shelton said.
But Shelton said television is not the deciding factor. Instead, there are two. The first is news accounts of exonerations, often people who have spent decades in prison, even death row, for crimes they did not commit. The second is what he called the “Tech Effect.” People are more technologically proficient than ever before, he said, and the more they use technology in their personal and work lives, the higher their expectation that scientific evidence should play an important part in a criminal case.
But Ronald Dye, director of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s crime laboratory, said he still believes the crime shows have an effect on juror expectations.
“These shows leave people thinking that forensic evidence is always going to be present in a crime,” Dye said.”People watch TV and they believe what they see.”
There are also unrealistic expectations on the amount of time it takes to process evidence, he said.
“Every forensic lab across the country has a backlog,” Dye said. “In the forensic shows, every crime gets immediate attention.”
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/judges-lawyers-split-on-csi-effect-on-jurors/nPzNJ/