Eyewitness Testimony Essay

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Eyewitness testimonies rely on our memory and cognitive ability as humans. These testimonies can be crucial during court cases, and could result in conviction. It is important that the testimony is accurate and reliable. For this reason, many people question whether or not a child should be able to testify as an eyewitness. There are multiple views with varying answers to this issue. One answer to this question is that children should not be able to testify as eye witnesses for any reason. Many people believe that children are not able to consistently and accurately retrieve information. In contrast, research has shown that even the youngest of children can accurately recall events from the past. I feel that children as young as 6 years old …show more content…
Research done by Jessica McDermott Sales found that children could recall highly stressful events. Children ranging from 3-4 years old were able to provide information about their experience during Hurricane Andrew (Sales,2005). This shows us that children could recall information even of events of extreme stress. The only questions asked in this study were free recall questions. If the interviewer were to ask specific questions I don’t believe the children that young could answer consistently or accurately. Children were asked questions in a more forensic manner during Sarah Krähenbühl’s study. The 4 year olds performed worse in this study than in Sales’ study. This was because the children were asked more specific questions about the details in an event, and the questions were repeated. The 4 year olds were less accurate and more likely to change their answer than the children 6 years and older. The children in this study were not affected by the repeated questions unless they did not know the answer the first time (Krähenbühl,2009). Another study shows how 3-5 year old children are less accurate and more likely answer questions based on suggestions from others. Mitchell Eisen measured children’s memory and suggestibility in maltreated children. The 6-10 year olds were more resistant to suggestions. The results were recorded based on an interview of free recall, open-ended, specific, and photo identification questions (Eisen,
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