The First Shot

[Andrew Mason]

I know it is.
That requires common sense.
Because they did not accurately recall the event. Very common among eyewitnesses.

Defence counsel want you on their juries.

[John Corbett]

Defence counsel want you on their juries.

As it should be. The defendant gets the benefit of the doubt in criminal trials. A prosecutor who relies primarily on uncorroborated eyewitness testimony will leave me with lots of doubt.

The innocence Project has gotten hundreds of wrongfully convicted people exonerated through DNA and other hard evidence. The vast majority of these wrongful convictions were due to erroneous eyewitness accounts. Jurors have a tendency to place too much faith in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. That makes no sense to me because it is far less reliable than physical evidence and expert testimony.

You should read the following, not that I expect it will do you any good.

https://innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-misidentification/

[John Corbett]

Another article on the unreliability of eyewitness accounts:

https://lawshun.com/article/is-eyewitness-testimony-reliable-in-the-court-of-law

The last paragraph in this article pretty much sums up my skepticism of eyewitnesses. In fact this single sentence spells out my reasons for not placing blind trust in eyewitnesses:

"While eyewitness accounts can provide valuable insights, they must be treated with caution and corroborated with other evidence whenever possible."

That is exactly what I've been saying on this forum since I first began participating in it earlier this year.

[John Corbett]

Still another law journal article questioning the reliability of eyewitness memory:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13657127211031018

This sentence jumped out at me:

"However, research clearly shows that memory does not operate like a video recorder and that a witness's memory will often not be a full and accurate description of an event."

How many times have I said the human brain is not equipped with a DVR?