Can We Trust The Testimony Of Witnesses And Victims Of A Crime?
In certain countries, such as the United States, the law dictates that the testimony of the victim or a witness is comparable to the crime weapon as evidence.to But, Are the memories of witnesses a key that is objective and reliable enough to solve a case?
The weapon is physical and tangible evidence from which very useful information can be obtained: who owned it or who had wielded it based on the fingerprints on it. But human memory is not something objective and immutable. It does not work like a camera, as various psychological research has shown. In fact, psychologist Elisabeth Loftus proved throughout the 20th century that it is even possible to create false autobiographical memories within people’s minds.
Almost all of our personal memories are modified, disturbed by experience and learning Our memory does not create a fixed and detailed memory of an event, on the contrary we only tend to remember something that we could call “the essence”. By remembering only the basics we are able to relate memories to new situations that have some resemblance to the original circumstances that sparked the memory.
In this way, the functioning of memory is one of the pillars that make learning possible, but also one of the causes of the vulnerability of our memories. Our memory is not perfect, and as we have seen many times without being surprised; It is fallible.
Long-term memory and memory retrieval
It should be noted that our memories are stored in what we call the long term memory. Every time we bring out a memory in our everyday life, what we are doing is building memories with pieces that we “bring” from there. The transfer of memories from long-term memory to the operating and conscious system is called retrieval, and it has a cost: every time we remember something and subsequently take it back to the long-term store, the memory is slightly altered when mixed with the present experience and all its conditions.
What’s more, people do not remember, we rework, we construct facts anew every time we verbalize them, always in different ways, always generating different versions of the same event. For example, recalling an anecdote among friends can spark a debate about what clothes one was wearing that day or what time exactly one got home, details that can end up being modified when we bring the memory back to the present. Details that we do not pay attention to because they are not usually significant, but that are key in a trial.
The effect of emotions on memory
Situations of emotional stress also have a very powerful effect on the memory of witnesses and especially on the memory of victims. In these situations, the impact produces more or less permanent damage to the memory. The consequences are in the tremendously vivid memory of small details and a deep void about actions and circumstances that may be more important.
Peripheral memories are more plausible than central memories when faced with an event with great emotional impact But, especially, emotions bathe and soak memories with subjectivity. Emotions cause what has hurt us to seem much more negative, perverse, ugly, obscene or macabre than it objectively is; and on the other hand, that which is associated with a positive feeling seems more beautiful and ideal to us. For example, curiously no one hates the first song they heard with their partner, even if it was played on the radio or in a nightclub, because it has been associated with the feeling of love. But we must not lose sight of the fact that for better or worse, objectivity in a trial is of primary necessity.
A shocking injury, such as a rape or terrorist attack, can create the condition of post-traumatic stress in a victim, causing intrusive memories in the victim and also blockages that make them unable to recover the memory. And pressure from a prosecutor or police officer can create memories or testimonies that are not true. Imagine that a police officer with a paternalistic tone tells you something like “I know it’s hard, but you can do it, if you don’t confirm it to us that man will go home free and satisfied.” An insidious police officer or prosecutor who pushes too hard for answers will surface a false memory. Only when the victim is able to emotionally distance himself from the event and downplay it, will he (perhaps) be able to recover the memory.
A technique to avoid post-traumatic stress and blockage is to elaborate or tell someone the events as soon as they have happened. Externalizing the memory in a narrative way helps to make sense of it
When it comes to witnesses, there are always more credible memories than others. It never hurts to have a forensic expert evaluate the value of the memory before allowing testimony in a trial. The optimal level at which we remember occurs when our physiological activation is average; nor so high that we are in a state of anxiety and stress as can occur in an exam; nor so low that we are in a state of relaxation that borders on sleep. In this case, a crime causes high physiological activation, emotional stress that is associated with the event and that therefore arises every time we try to remember, decreasing the quality of the memory.
Therefore, The memory of a witness will always be more useful than that of the victim as it is subject to less emotional activation It should be noted, as a curiosity, that the most plausible memory of a victim is the one that focuses on the object of the violence, that is, the weapon.
Bias in judicial processes
On the other hand, we must take into account that, sometimes, lineups and interrogations can be unintentionally biased It is due to the bias that exists towards injustice, or due to ignorance of the effect of asking a question in a certain way or ordering a set of photographs in a specific way. We cannot forget that police officers are human beings and feel an aversion to crime as great as that of the victim, so their objective is to put the culprit behind bars as soon as possible; They biasedly think that if the victim or witness says that one of the suspects looks like the culprit, it must be him and they cannot set him free.
There is also this bias in the population that dictates that “if someone is suspicious, they must have done something,” so There is a general tendency to believe that suspects and accused are blindly guilty For this reason, when faced with a series of photographs, witnesses often tend to think that if they are presented with these subjects it is because one of them must be the culprit, when sometimes they are random individuals and one or two people who coincide. slightly in certain characteristics with which they have been described (which in fact do not even have to be true). This mixture of biases from the police, prosecutor, judge, jury, witnesses and the public can result in a combination such that an innocent person is found guilty, a reality that occasionally happens.
Of course I do not want to say that any testimony should not be valued, but it must always be done by evaluating its veracity and reliability. We must keep in mind that the human mind frequently makes mistakes and that we must distance ourselves emotionally from suspects before judging them in order to do so objectively, taking into account not only reliable witnesses, but also rigorous evidence.
