When someone steps forward as an eyewitness to an alleged crime, they are usually doing it with good intentions. While there are some who knowingly lie in order to serve their own motives, most who come forward believe they are telling the truth.
So why are there so many cases of eyewitnesses getting it wrong, often with terrible consequences for those accused? Here are two reasons that can help explain these involuntary errors.
People misunderstand how memory works
Many people think of memory like an old filing system where you can retrieve what you put in days, weeks or even years later, and it will still be exactly the same. That is not how memory works, though. Every time you retrieve a memory, you create a new, altered version that you then store away till next time. Sometimes the alterations will be minor, but sometimes they can be major. However, even a series of minor alterations can lead to a significant overall difference between what an eyewitness actually saw and what they recall when asked to tell the police or a court.
Memories are easily influenced
One of the reasons that memories change is that the person sees or hears something that confirms or negates what they originally thought they saw.
For instance, imagine that an eyewitness saw someone they believed was around 5-foot-10 pulling out a knife in a store. They then see a report on the news about a person who has been robbing stores at knifepoint across the county. The suspect is described as wearing a black hoodie, just like the guy they saw, but the difference is that they’re described as being around 6-foot-2 in height.
The eyewitness starts to wonder whether their memory is wrong. They tell themselves that they have never been that good at judging height, anyway. Or, perhaps they didn’t realize the person was bent over, so they seemed shorter than they actually were. Eventually, when the police ask them about what they saw, they say that the person they saw was also around 6-foot-2 because they’ve made themself believe it must be the same person mentioned on the news.
That is just one of the reasons that could explain an eyewitness error. If you are facing wrongful charges where an eyewitness is involved, be sure to seek legal guidance to understand how to challenge their version of events.