Eyewitness Testimony: Is it effective?

Crimes are committed every day around the world, and courts continually rely on eyewitness testimony for convictions. Is this method always effective? The answer to this question is most certainly no. There have been numerous false convictions on account of faulty eye witness identification. One example of this is in the Lilienfield text. Jennifer Thompson, a college student who was raped, incorrectly identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist. He consequently spent eleven years in prison as a result before he was released. This is upsetting because when an eyewitness identifies a perpetrator, the jury almost always believes them. Under stress, it is often hard for an eyewitness to establish an accurate depiction of the criminal. Once a witness identifies the one responsible for a crime, it is hard for them to sway from it, even if they are wrong. This is a real world example of belief perseverance, which is the human inability to accept anything other than their previously held beliefs. So what can the courts due to ensure eyewitness accounts are as accurate as possible? When questioning witnesses, lawyers press those individuals about the accuracy of their memories, and about any assistance they may have received in forming those memories. Police officers also question eyewitnesses as soon as possible after a crime has been committed. They do this because that is when a witness is most likely to recount the situation accurately. In our country's judicial system, there is a heavy reliance on eyewitness accounts for good reason: most of the time eyewitnesses are correct. Yet it is crucial to consider biases and flaws when a witness takes the stand.