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Eyewitness Identification: General Acceptance in the Scientific Community

This entry focuses on the degree to which experts and others are persuaded that each of a number of factors influences the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. Supreme Court cases, among them United States v. Amaral (1973) and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993), have opened avenues of research addressing how the influence of various factors on the judgments of eyewitnesses is perceived by different parties in the legal system. Reflecting their familiarity with the literature, experts substantially agree on the extent to which many variables influence identifications. Research indicates that jurors do not agree with the experts on many of these influencing factors. The use of legal processes that will help jurors make better decisions in cases that involve eyewitness identifications, such as having experts testify in these cases, is thus justifiable. Those who serve as law enforcement personnel show unexpected patterns of agreement with experts, though this tendency may change as a result of eyewitness reform at the state level.

The Rationale

The issue of whether or not to allow scientific findings into the courtroom continues to evolve in the United States. The Supreme Court established the admissibility of eyewitness research in United States v. Amaral(1973). The later Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993) ruling established criteria that had to be demonstrated for scientific testimony to be entered into a trial. One of these criteria was that the basis for the testimony should be generally accepted by the scientific community. The Daubert decision renewed interest in what eyewitness factors are in fact generally accepted by the scientific community. The first survey focusing on the acceptance of eyewitness factors was published in 1989. Research since then has greatly expanded psychologists' understanding of how members of the scientific, legal, and lay communities accept the findings reported in the eyewitness literature and how this acceptance has changed over time.

It is now common for members of the legal psychology community to distinguish between what are known as system variables and estimator variables. System variables are those that are under the control of the legal system and that can potentially bias an eyewitness during the course of a criminal identification procedure. For example, bias could enter into an identification procedure through the techniques used to construct the criminal lineup or by the use of leading identification instructions given to an eyewitness. In contrast to system variables, estimator variables are those that encompass eyewitness and crime scene characteristics that are not under the direct control of the legal system. Examples include the length of time afforded to the eyewitness to view the crime or the presence of multiple perpetrators at the crime scene. The provision of expert testimony in a trial in which variables such as these are relevant may serve to highlight potential biases in the identification procedure that otherwise may have escaped consideration by the judge or jurors.

The Opinions of Experts

Survey research demonstrates that many phenomena experts overwhelmingly reported as being sufficiently reliable to introduce under oath in 1989 continue to be viewed as reliable influences on the accuracy of eyewitness identifications more than a decade later. There appears to be considerable consensus among experts as to the reliability of the research evidence regarding the wording of questions, the construction of lineups, and the role of witnesses' attitudes and expectations in influencing their identifications, and on the relationship between witnesses' confidence in their identification and their identification accuracy. Furthermore, experts agree on the existence of other variables that reliably influence eyewitness identifications, such as the rate at which memories decay, the impact of exposure time on memory and subsequent identifications, and the unconscious transference of the memory of a familiar face from one situation to another. Appreciable increases were observed between 1989 and 2001 in the percentage of experts who agreed that human attention is likely to be focused on a weapon rather than on a perpetrator's face (a weapon focus effect) and the impact of hypnotic suggestibility. Both changes in consensus were attributed to the respective increases in interest and scholarship on both topics in the years following the publication of the first expert survey.

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