{"id":25405,"date":"2010-04-21T13:10:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T17:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=25405"},"modified":"2017-02-22T17:11:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:11:16","slug":"crime-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2010\/04\/21\/crime-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime Seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spring201-crime-seen-feature\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The testimony of criminal witnesses can be notoriously flawed. But is there more to the problem than meets the eye?<\/h3>\n

By Virginia Wright<\/em><\/p>\n

Gina Petracca \u201910 finds Graham Pearson \u201910 waiting when she enters a psychology laboratory in Pettengill Hall. Pearson has just watched a short video of a mock bank robbery, a key tool in Associate Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass\u2019 latest study into the reliability of eyewitness testimony.<\/p>\n

Petracca sits down across from Pearson \u2014 who knows only that he\u2019s going to be asked about what he\u2019s witnessed \u2014 and begins reading questions from a clipboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was the color of the hat worn by the robber?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite,\u201d Pearson responds.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow confident are you in the answer you gave?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m 95 percent sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petracca notes the responses and continues questioning Pearson about the robber\u2019s jacket, his eye and hair color, and where customers were standing, asking him to rate his confidence each time. Eight questions in, Petracca flips through her notes and casually remarks, \u201cCompared to most people, you seem to have a pretty good memory for crime scenes.\u201d Pearson smiles broadly. \u201cYes!\u201d he exclaims, giving a brief fist pump.<\/p>\n

The questioning resumes.<\/p>\n

What Pearson doesn\u2019t know is that Petracca\u2019s compliment was scripted and completely unrelated to his answers. In fact, had she picked up a different questionnaire from Amy Douglass, the sheet may have cued her to remark on Pearson\u2019s weak memory. Or she may have said nothing at all to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to understand how feedback changes what [eyewitnesses] choose to report.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the end of the winter semester, Douglass will begin to analyze data from 150 unwitting mock eyewitnesses like Pearson to determine how a crime investigator\u2019s feedback affects testimony. \u201cWhat happens to an eyewitness\u2019 recall when you say, \u2018You\u2019re doing a really good job\u2019?\u201d explains Douglass. \u201cThe witness may think, \u2018I have a good memory \u2014 they told me so \u2014 so I\u2019m going to tell them everything I can because it must be right.\u2019 We\u2019re trying to understand how feedback changes what they choose to report.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study is part of a three-year research project, supported by a $129,000 National Science Foundation Grant, that will delve into the investigator-eyewitness relationship. Future phases could find Bates students working as lab assistants in Australia with Douglass\u2019 colleagues, Neil Brewer, a professor of psychology at Flinders University, and Carolyn Semmler, a lecturer in psychology at University of Adelaide.<\/p>\n

Psychologists have long warned about the fallibility of eyewitness identification procedures, and anyone who\u2019s seen My Cousin Vinny,<\/em> a perennial favorite among criminal defense lawyers, understands the pitfalls of eyewitness testimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is little relationship between confidence and accuracy. You can have a confident, compelling witness who is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in recent years, DNA testing and memory research have brought renewed scrutiny. Particularly alarming is a study published last year by Gary Wells, perhaps the country\u2019s best-known figure in eyewitness research. Wells reported that faulty eyewitness testimony played a key role in the convictions of 230 men who were later exonerated by DNA testing. The most tragic of these cases was that of Timothy Cole, who died in prison 13 years after being falsely convicted of rape.<\/p>\n

The disconnect between truth and justice only widens when criminal cases go to trial. \u201cJurors give much weight to the testimony of eyewitnesses who seem confident,\u201d Douglass says. \u201cYet there is little relationship between confidence and accuracy. You can have a confident, compelling witness who is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglass\u2019 interest in the intersection of psychology and the law was sparked when she was a junior at Williams College. \u201cI had no idea the discipline existed,\u201d she says, \u201cuntil I took a class taught by Saul Kassin,\u201d an expert in false confessions in criminal cases. \u201cThe topics we covered were so fascinating and so important to how we convict people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She ditched her plan to pursue clinical psychology and instead did graduate research with Wells at Iowa State University. Their co-authored 1998 study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em> and highly publicized in the mainstream media, dramatically demonstrated the ease with which eyewitnesses are swayed by crime investigators\u2019 responses to their accounts.<\/p>\n

Among their findings: Mock eyewitnesses who were initially tentative about what they\u2019d seen on a security camera video became far more certain about all aspects of their testimony after they\u2019d been congratulated for identifying the suspect (when, unbeknownst to them, the suspect was not in the photo lineup at all).
\n\u201cOne simple comment from the investigator easily distorted their judgment,\u201d Douglass said. As Wells told The New York Times<\/em><\/a> in 2000, the \u201cconjunction\u201d of eyewitness unreliability and the persuasiveness of eyewitness testimony \u201cshould concern us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Douglass\u2019 current research is similar to her work with Wells in the 1990s, she\u2019s trying to delve more deeply into the eyewitness-investigator relationship and, ultimately, to help police collect better information from their eyewitnesses.<\/p>\n

During the Bates experiments, interviewers like Gina Petracca act as \u201cconfederates\u201d \u2014 trained to give certain kinds of feedback without the witnesses\u2019 knowledge. In another phase of the ongoing experiment, the eyewitnesses will be confederates who offer either highly detailed or very broad recollections. \u201cWe want to know if investigators\u2019 questions change\u201d \u2014 depending on what they hear \u2014 \u201cand what conclusions they draw about the witnesses\u2019 accuracy,\u201d Douglass explains.<\/p>\n

There will be no confederates in the third phase, but participants will be given goals that may conflict. An eyewitness told to report only broad strokes may be interviewed by an investigator told to seek much detail, for example. The researchers will analyze how the participants negotiate those differences and how it affects the results.<\/p>\n

Douglass\u2019 current collaboration with Australian researchers Neil Brewer and Carolyn Semmler reflects a growing professional relationship. In 2007, aware of Brewer\u2019s work since her Iowa days with Wells, she invited him to present at the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition\u2019s biennial conference, hosted by Bates. The next year she received a Bates Phillips Faculty Fellowship to work in Brewer\u2019s lab for three months.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearch is truly international,\u201d says Brewer. \u201cWithout funding from our institutions so she could come here in 2008, this particular project would never have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the psych lab, Graham Pearson, a history major from Irvington, N.Y., who rows for the varsity crew, merely grins when Douglass assistant Kate Reilly \u201910 reveals the charade. She and Douglass quiz him for a few minutes, asking if he had any suspicions about Petracca\u2019s comments (he didn\u2019t). Pearson leaves with a little extra cash in his pocket and self-esteem solidly intact.<\/p>\n

The result satisfies Douglass. \u201cIt\u2019s important that subjects understand why the deception was necessary and that they don\u2019t feel bad about being deceived,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want them to feel as good leaving as they did when they came in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virginia Wright profiled Lewiston filmmaker and activist Craig Saddlemire \u201905 i<\/a>n the Fall 2009 issue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The testimony of criminal witnesses can be notoriously flawed. But is there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,175],"tags":[10856,7227],"class_list":["post-25405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-justice-poverty","tag-bates-magazine","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88004,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25405\/revisions\/88004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}