Lineups and Other Means of Pretrial Identification

    According to Barbara Tversky and George Fisher’s talk, it is clear that the simple form of narrating any story is never carried out neutrally. Hence any story is a matter to reformatting for its listeners and thus a person is most likely to omit so many details while one puts emphasis on other details so as to create the desired interest. An eyewitness of a crime is also inclined towards recounting and remembering of implicating information, especially when speaking to a police official with the intention of solving a crime. Afterward, if the eyewitness still remembers the information that throws doubts on the answerability of the suspect of the crime, such doubts holds greater weight than the implicating details (Engelhardt 1999). Hence the mere culpability of being human leads to distortion of the mind and the memory and hence inaccurate testimony. Therefore, these factors may make a person be biased thus causing wrong judgment due to their inaccurate testimonies.

    When the suspect is not in police custody, the Miranda warnings are not required since the person as anything that the person may say be used in the court against him/her in case he is later arrested. Thus, this may result in his/her arrest as it may be used as evidence in the court of law. Another situation is when a person is not under any interrogation and thus the Miranda warnings are not needed since the police officers can ask questions before issuing the Miranda warnings as one can convict him before even being issued with the warning which may cause his arrest, custody and later on interrogation.

 

 

 

References

    Engelhardt, L. (1999). The problem with eyewitness testimony: A talk by Barbara Tversky, Professor of Psychology, and George Fisher, Professor of Law. Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, 1(1), 25-29.