The Historian As A Participant

In the criminal justice system, the testimony of eyewitnesses is heavily depended on by law enforcement officers, jurors, and attorneys. Eyewitness testimony is a statement taken from a bystander or a victim, which highlights what the witness observed during the time of the crime. They can perform a number of tasks: recall events, identify culprits, and provide character evidence. And usually, if a witness shows no signs of bias, the jury will usually put a large amount of trust into the testimony. In fact, Justice Brennan of Oklahoma stated that “There is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says ‘That’s the one!’” (Watkins v. Sowders). Having a witness at the scene
Human vision is the images that are captured by the eye and human perception is using the senses to understand what the witness observed. Human perception can influence memory by introducing the witness’s values and beliefs to their memory. The witness’s emotions and thoughts at the time of the scene can affect the retelling of the story. In “The Historian as a Participant”, Arthur Schlesinger explains how participants in historical events do not always make ideal historians because their experiences would not be told from an objective historical position (341). This relates to eyewitness testimony because many times, witnesses cannot recall an event from an objective viewpoint. Their beliefs and world views affect how they experienced the event and may affect their understanding of it, and therefore an eyewitness’s testimony has a high chance of being
In capital cases, there should be a corroboration rule in which two witness testimonies have to both agree so that a suspect can be rightfully charged. This limits the amount of bias each witness can have since they both have to be in agreement (Jain 2001). In addition, to trials in which the predominant form of evidence is in eyewitness testimonies, there should be a court-appointed psychologist who explains the shortcomings of eyewitness testimony to the jury. This can increase the accuracy of the jury’s verdict since they will consider the merits of an eyewitness’s testimony. However, many attorneys do not use psychologists in their case because they believe that it’s a waste of money and that it will “intrude too much on the traditional province of the jury to assess witness credibility" (United States vs. Lumpkin, 1999). However, the inclusion of expert testimony has proven to be successful in many studies and mock trials because it caused the jurors to be more attentive during the trial and it caused the jurors to not overestimate the validity of witness statements (Hosch, Beck & McIntyre,