Improving Eyewitness Information

Last week, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported that Palm Beach County, Fla., law enforcement is working to develop a consistent set of rules for eyewitnesses, hoping it will help prevent false convictions. And a new Iowa State University study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology finds that there may be good reason to question the recall of some eyewitnesses.

The study summarizes two experiments conducted by Jason Chan, an ISU assistant professor of psychology; and Moses Langley, a former Iowa State graduate student who is now a psychology faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Both experiments found that subjects who witnessed a criminal event and were tested about it immediately afterward were more susceptible to having misinformation -- or false information -- instilled in their later recall of the event than non-tested subjects. The researchers call that effect "retrieval-enhanced suggestibility," or RES.

Applying to criminal cases, Chan theorizes that an eyewitness who is asked to make a police statement about a crime may have his or her memory clouded by misinformation -- possibly introduced unknowingly by law enforcement, or through erroneous online accounts or news reports -- by the time the witness is asked to provide testimony in court.…