Witness Memory and Perception in Criminal Cases

Witness testimony can play a key role in criminal cases and shape the outcome of the trial by providing a firsthand account of events. However, eyewitness testimony can be surprisingly unreliable. Even people who believe they have a good memory can misremember events, mistakenly combine memories of multiple events, or adopt someone else’s version of an event as their own.

In the hands of a skilled criminal defense attorney, highlighting the unreliability of witness perception and memories can be a determining factor in a criminal case. These inaccuracies can be used to challenge key witness testimony or shed doubt on a witness’s reliability, often with positive results.

Witness testimony may be an important factor in your case if you were charged with a crime. The defense team at Just Criminal Law can carefully review witness statements and explore the reliability of a witness’s perception and memory as part of a comprehensive defense strategy.

Contact our law office today to schedule your personalized case review and strategy session to discuss your case and how we can help.

What is the Role of Witness Testimony in a Criminal Case?

Eyewitness testimony can be a key factor in a criminal case. An eyewitness who identifies a suspect or describes the circumstances of a crime may present a seemingly incontrovertible truth.

• Witnesses help establish what happened, when, and who was involved. They provide critical information that can support or refute key details of the prosecutor’s theory of the case.
• Witness testimony provides important corroborating information to support physical evidence like fingerprints, DNA evidence, or surveillance footage.
• The prosecutor may call an eyewitness to identify a suspect.
• Expert witnesses may be called to offer their professional opinion on matters like cause of death, a defendant’s mental state, or forensic evidence.
• Witnesses can testify about a defendant’s character, credibility, or past behavior.
• Witness testimony can be used to establish or discredit an alibi by showing where a defendant was at the time a crime was committed.

Jurors frequently give significant weight to eyewitness testimony. But, highlighting the unreliability of witness perception and memory can be a key piece of a successful defense strategy. When you work with our experienced criminal defense team, we can investigate the circumstances of your case and work to discredit witness testimony by emphasizing its unreliability.

Is Witness Testimony Unreliable?

False or incorrect memories can significantly impact a criminal case by influencing witness testimony. In the most extreme cases, false testimony can lead to wrongful convictions.

At Just Criminal Law, our defense team understands the potential unreliability of witness testimony and actively works to discredit it. We understand police interrogation procedures and how they can be biased or influenced to introduce inaccuracies into witness testimony. We know how to identify false memories and regularly work with forensic experts to explain why a witness’s testimony may be inaccurate and why there is reasonable doubt as to whether a defendant committed the crime in question.

Misidentification

Eyewitness testimony is frequently used to identify the alleged perpetrator of the crime. However, eyewitness testimony is fraught with unreliability. The witness may have had a poor vantage point. Lighting conditions may have been inadequate. The suspect may have been far away. The witness may suffer from poor eyesight, or they may only have seen the perpetrator quickly. Glare, shadows, reflections, and visual obstructions can all affect a person’s ability to observe an event accurately. And eyewitness identification is particularly unreliable when the suspect is of a different race or ethnicity than the witness.

Faced with uncertainty, a person’s mind unconsciously fills in the gaps. Relying on previous experience and beliefs, people can honestly believe a particular thing occurred, even though it did not.

Witnesses are called upon to recount what they saw, often multiple times throughout a criminal investigation. Each time, the witness reinforces these false beliefs, making the witness more confident that their memory is correct.

The Influence of Suggestion

Law enforcement agents, attorneys, therapists, and others can introduce false memories through suggestive questioning. By introducing false, inaccurate, or misleading information, they alter the witness’s recollection of a particular event.

Coerced Confessions

Faced with intense questioning, a suspect may develop an inaccurate recollection of what occurred. This is especially common in vulnerable individuals, like juveniles or people with mental impairments.

Repressed Memories

Some criminal cases, particularly those that allege child abuse, rely on “repressed” or “recovered” memories. However, the reliability of these memories is hotly debated and research increasingly shows that these “memories” can be implanted by others rather than genuinely recalled.

Challenging Witness Memory and Perception in a Criminal Case

Challenging a witness’s memory and perception can be an important part of a comprehensive defense strategy. To challenge the reliability of a witness’s memory and perception, a skilled criminal defense lawyer will ask detailed questions about the circumstances under which the witness observed the alleged crime.

• What were the lighting conditions?
• What was the time of day?
• How far was the witness from the defendant when the alleged criminal activity occurred?
• What was the witness’s state of mind at the time of the alleged crime, and how did it affect their ability to focus on important details?
• Was anything obstructing the witness’s view?
• Does the witness regularly wear glasses? Were they wearing them at the time?

Our team will investigate and introduce independent evidence that might contradict the witness’s testimony, such as surveillance footage, testimony from other witnesses, and evidence of environmental factors that could affect the reliability of a witness’s testimony.

We will also explore the witness’s biases, whether the witness spoke with the police or investigators or was influenced by the media, and whether those influences may have affected their testimony.

Just Criminal Law Can Challenge Witness Bias and Unreliable Testimony

Sadly, too many people are convicted of crimes they did not commit based on false or inaccurate witness testimony that was tainted by bias and poor police procedures.

To defend yourself against false accusations based on inaccurate eyewitness testimony, you need a skilled and experienced defense team that will work to uncover witness bias and highlight the inaccuracy of a witness’s perception and memory.

Contact Just Criminal Law Today

Just Criminal Law is based in Gillette and represents people throughout eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota. Contact our law office today to schedule an appointment to discuss your situation and how we can help.

DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this article is offered for educational purposes only. This information is not offered as legal advice. A person accused of a crime should always consult with an attorney before making decisions that have legal consequences.