Eyewitness memory

Blagrove M, Akehurst L. Effects of sleep loss on confidence-accuracy relationships for reasoning and eyewitness memory. J Exp Psychol Appl, 2000 6 59-73. 

Eyewitness memory is one lai e area of study. Problems can occur in each phase of memory. Some forensic psychologists study this area because the single most important factor contributing to wrongful conviction is eyewitness misidentifica-tion [12], and therefore eyewitness misidentification has profound implications for many court cases. Research looks at memory and retrieval, interferences, and the impact of types of questions on those processes. 

In the USA and Canada, the situation is in some respect similar cf. the case of Institute for Historical Review v. Mel Mermelstein, as described in IHR Newsletter, No. 82, October 1991, andM. Weber, JHR 3(1) (1982), pp. 31-51 (online ihr.org/jhr/v03/v03p-3 l Weber.html) see also Michael Collins Piper, Best Witness. The Mel Mermelstein Affair and the Triumph of Historical Revisionism, Center for Historical Review, Washington, D.C., 1994 Theodore J. O Keefe, History and Memory Mel Mermelstein s Eyewitness Evidence , JHR 16(4) (1997), pp. 2-13 (online ... 

In academia as well as in the justice system of a state under the rule of law, there is a hierarchy of evidence reflecting the evidential value. In this hierarchy, material and documentary evidence is always superior to eyewitness testimony.4 Thus, academia as well as the justice system regard eyewitness testimony as the least reliable form of evidence, since human memory is imperfect and eas-... 

On the one hand, H. Lichtenstein is practically in raves about the marvellous memory of the witnesses for the prosecution op. cit. (note 157), p. 64f., 78, but on the other hand he considers contradictions in eyewitness testimony to be quite understandable, p. 75. 

Later eyewitnesses are so vague and contradictory that we can skip them for the present. It is highly revealing that the long-time director of the Majdanek Memorial, Jozef Marszalek, only mentions gassings in two lines in his official history of the camp. In fact, he could think of nothing better to say about the gassing procedures at Majdanek than to quote the eyewitness account of SS man Pery Broad at Auschwitz ... 

The disaster [28] is remembered because of extraordinary newsreel coverage (Fig. 2.6), photographs, and Herbert Morrison s recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field. Morrison s words were not broadcast until the next day. Parts of his report were later dubbed onto the newsreel footage (giving an incorrect impression to some modern eyes accustomed to live television that the words and film had always been together). Morrison s broadcast remains one of the most famous in history - his plaintive words oh the humanity resonate with the memory of the disaster. 

Groves (1962), p. 237, remembers these paper bags as fruit barrels and invents a two-week plant run in the midst of contending armies to manufacture them. Such is memory JL s is the eyewitness account, confirmed by his contemporary report JL to LRG, May 5, 1945. MED 7 (tab A-C). 

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