3 - Eyewitnesses: The Perpetrator and Interviewing

Summary

The most important reason why identification of familiar suspects is not reliable, is that it is very easy for witnesses to lie about this, whereas there is hardly any valid test for their claims. This is especially a problem in war crime trials, because … in people's perceptions those wars are not over yet.

(Wagenaar, 2008:3)

Vulnerable witnesses may be the victims of negative ideologies and unhelpful societal assumptions, so that an effective strategy involves challenging the culture as well as the law.

(Birch, 2000:224)

The main challenge for those of us who work with survivors of child sexual assault is to ensure that our practices do not compromise either the legal or therapeutic process. We must be aware of the problems inherent in working with memory and in particular, guard against contaminating the process of recall.

(Broughton, 1995:95)

INTRODUCTION

Psychologists have paid very little attention to the influence of individual differences in personality and their effects on identification (Hosch, 1994:328). Hosch attributes this lack of research to the facts that: (a) psycholegal researchers in the field have a background in social or cognitive psychology; and (b) the acceptance by many psychologists of Wells' (1978) argument and the focusing on system rather than on estimator variables in order to increase the practical usefulness of their work (p. 328). Let us, therefore, take a close look at the empirical literature on witness personality, demographic and other characteristics and their relationship with accuracy of eyewitness memory.