A defense attorney wants to do an experiment for use in court. The experiment is designed to show that eye witness identification of a person in a crowd is not reliable. What must the defense attorney do so that the judge will accept the results of this test at trial? Explain
What will be an ideal response?
The ideal experiment screens out all extraneous variables so that the experimenter can measure the impact of one variable. While courts recognize that this ideal is very difficult to achieve, the experiment should control as many variables as possible.
The conditions for the experiment should be similar to those that existed when the events in question occurred. For example, if the identification introduced by the prosecution that the defense wants challenge was made in a dimly lit bar, the experiment should be done with lighting as nearly the same as possible. If the prosecution's witness had only a few seconds to make the identification, the subjects in the experiment should also have only a few seconds to make the identification, etc.
The experiment should be based on sound scientific principles. Sample size and selection techniques (random, representative, etc.) are important. The individuals who will participate (both the ones making the identification and those in the crowd) should resemble the people in the situation that occurred in the court case. The subjects of the experiment (the people asked to make the identification) should be in the same age range as those who made the identification the prosecution is presenting. The research protocol should be set up so that in some of the experiments the suspect is in the crowd, in others a person with similar facial characteristics to the suspect is in the crowd, and in others neither the suspect nor anyone resembling the suspect is present. The person who talks with the individuals who will be asked to make the identification should use a prepared script and should not know which situation is being presented.
Even if the experiment meets the standards that are discussed above, the judge has the discretion to exclude relevant evidence if it might confuse the jury or take up an undue amount of time at trial. This needs to be kept in mind when designing the experiment.
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