As contributing editor Phil Locke noted in a post yesterday, eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. The reason, the experts and defense attorneys argue, is that memory is extremely fallible and malleable. Police and prosecutors insist otherwise. They argue that a witness to a crime, or a victim of one, is going to remember quite clearly what happened and who was involved.
Now, a new study of what someone involved in a stressful, potentially life-threatening situation, remembers backs up those who argue that witnesses are prone to mistakes. What sets this study apart, however, is that the participants in the study were cops.
As this article about the study reports, “After traumatic incidents, some officers remember things that didn’t happen. Some don’t remember things that did happen. Others confuse the sequence of events.”
This is exactly what researchers and defense attorneys have been saying about civilian crime witnesses and victims for decades. It’s nice to have a police study back them up.
