False Memory - Eyewitness Testimony Is Not Always Reliable

Memory is malleable, full of holes and can be easily changed. Therefore the eyewitness testimony is not always the most reliable method that can be used as evidence in court. We can see how unreliable the eyewitness memory can be on the case of Ronald Cotton. In 1984, a man broke into Jennifer Thompson’s house and raped her. She managed to remember his facial features and was intended to find this man and put him into the jail. After the assault she called the police and described the man. According to her description they put 6 men into the photo line-up. At that point she knew that it had to be one of the six men in the line-up so she picked the one that most resembled the man that raped her. She picked Ronald Cotton and then when police told her to pick one from the physical line-up she picked him up again. Unfortunately, Ronald Cotton actually wasn’t her rapist and he was totally innocent. However, she said that she is 100 percent sure that Cotton is the attacker.  Ronald Cotton then went to prison and met there a man that was very similar to him and might have been Thompson’s actual rapist. So he asked for a retrial where he and the other man called Poole would be presented to Thompson and she could again pick one of them whom she thought was her attacker. However, when Thompson saw them in the courtroom she again picked Cotton with an absolute certainty. Cotton remained in jail up until 1995 when DNA evidence got more popular and reliable way of evidence. So she asked his attorneys to make a DNA test on the one single sperm sample left from the case. Fortunately, there was enough DNA to prove Cotton was innocent and Poole was guilty. 

Now the question number one is why was Thompson so sure that she picked the right man from the line-up where the actual rapist was not even offered as an option and the question number two is why did she pick Cotton in the retrial even though she saw there her actual rapist too. The answer to the first question is that when she saw the line-up she unconsciously knew that one of the men should have been her attacker. Therefore, she picked the one that resembled the man from her memory the most. At that point, all of her previous memories about her actual rapist were changed and now she is thinking of Cotton as if he was her actual rapist. That is why she picked him in the physical line-up afterwards and that is also why she picked him in the retrial over her actual rapist (Poole) years later. Her memories of the actual rapist were changed and replaced with Ronald Cotton.

In conclusion, I think that the eyewitness testimony is not a reliable and useful type of evidence in court. I think this because there were many studies (Loftus study, French and Richard study) that proved that human memory can be very easily changed and influenced. Therefore, I am of an opinion that the eyewitness testimony should always be supported by another type of evidence such as DNA evidence.