From: The Washington Post
Experts: Conflicting eyewitness accounts aren’t surprising
The Washington Post:
National experts on eyewitness testimony said it’s not surprising that there would be so many conflicting accounts — particularly of a chaotic crime scene. Memory, they say, isn’t like a video recording. Our brains encode only fragmented images of events, which are instantly malleable.
A quick, violent event — particularly one involving a gun — can be one the most challenging scenarios for an eyewitness to fully and accurately recall. A phenomenon called “weapon focus” becomes one of the biggest obstacles to seeing details of an event and remembering them as a whole.
“People tend to focus on the weapon to the exclusion of other variables at the scene,” said John DeCarlo, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It doesn’t distort what really happens, but it takes attention away from other things.”
Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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