WEBVTT - #408 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Eyewitness Testimony 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.160 Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.720 executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences. 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.560 We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.239 we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:21.680 just as relevant as ever. This week we'll hear about 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.680 eyewitness testimony. Of all the types of forensic evidence we've 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.680 heard about in this series, this one is the most 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:32.559 personal and mind bending, because each of us hold memories 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.480 we believe are one hundred percent true, even when they aren't. 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.640 Imagine what you did last weekend, where you were, who 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.239 you saw, what you did. It feels like you can 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.840 playback specific events in your mind like a movie. 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:47.159 Right. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.920 But science and psychology have shown us over and over 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:57.400 again that our minds are not tape recorders and that 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:02.520 our memories aren't easily changed. It can be uncomfortable to 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.800 admit our own fallibility, but when it comes to a 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.880 decision that will decide someone's life, it's worth keeping that 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:15.520 fallibility in mind. 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.520 It's a warm summer evening in Virginia where a nine 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:23.840 to one to one operator answers a call. There's a 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.920 woman on the other end of the line. She says 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:33.640 she's been attacked. Police arrive at the victim's home and 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:38.120 they take a statement. The victim, a white woman, says 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:40.840 that as she was walking to her apartment, she came 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.640 across a man laying on the ground. He was clutching 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.440 his leg. She thought he must have fallen off the 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.280 bike that was toppled over next to him, so she 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.480 bent down to help him, and that's when he grabbed her, 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:58.640 beat her, and raped her. The victim told the police 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.200 everything she could remember about her attacker. She said the 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.480 man was black with a light complexion. He had a mustache, 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:11.160 a beard, and some scratches on his face. Before the 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.920 attacker left the scene of the crime, he told the 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:17.600 victims some vague details about his life. He told her 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.600 that he had quote had other white women. The police 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.720 escort the victims of the hospital, where a rape kit 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:35.760 is taken and sent off to a crime lab. You're 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.280 eighteen years old, just graduated from high school. Since you 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.320 were thirteen, you knew that you wanted to be a firefighter, 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.600 and now you're doing it. You're attending the fire academy 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.959 this summer. You're also working at a theme park collecting tickets, 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.120 running the rides. It's not the most glamorous job, but 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:59.680 hey pays the rent. A few months ago, you moved 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:01.840 out of her parents' house and into an apartment with 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.760 your girlfriend. Everyone says you're too young, but you don't 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:10.520 care what they think. You're planning your future together. One evening, 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:12.840 you finish up your shift at the theme park and 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.960 you head to the office to clock out. You see 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.280 a cop there chatting with your boss. You don't think 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.360 much of it. There's always some security or police at 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.200 the park, but then you see your boss sort of 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.440 flick his head in your direction, and when you try 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:33.720 to leave the office, the cop stops you. He says, hey, 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.280 let me talk to you for a minute. Have you 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.240 heard about the rape that took place a few days 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:42.040 ago not too far from here. It's like he knew 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.760 that this crime had been on your mind. You've been 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.520 making your girlfriend lock the door behind you every time 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:51.520 you leave the house. You say, yes, sir, I did 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.080 hear about it? Do you know who did it? The 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:57.880 officer says he has some questions and asks you if 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.240 you'll come to the police station with him. When you 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.240 get there, the officer takes you into a small room 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:08.520 with a table and a few chairs. He says, Wait here, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.720 you'll stand in as part of a police lineup, and 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:13.800 I'll come back and get you in a few minutes. 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.719 It dawns on you you're not just here to answer questions. 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:22.680 You're a suspect in this crime. You call out to 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:27.039 the officer, Wait what am I doing here? He says, 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.400 The rapists said that he had been with other white women. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.960 Don't you live with your white girlfriend? He closes and 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:41.080 locks the door behind him. You lean over in your 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.760 seat and cover your face with your hands. Who would 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:49.159 have known information about your personal life and try to 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.839 use it against you? Was it one of those cops 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:55.200 that used to stop by the fire station when you 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.960 were at the training academy. Maybe they saw your girlfriend 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.760 dropping off dinner at the fire station one night. You 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.600 stop and take a deep breath, reminding yourself that being 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.080 a black man living with your white girlfriend isn't a crime. 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:15.320 At least it's not supposed to be, not anymore. And 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.120 yet none of this seems to matter someone. Some cop 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.840 already had their eye on you for this very reason. 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:26.440 But you didn't do anything wrong, and you're hopeful that 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.520 the victim's memory of her attacker will set things straight. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.760 What you don't know is that just down the hall 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.000 from where you're sitting, the woman who called nine to 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.239 one one a few days ago is sitting in front 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:44.200 of six pictures. An officer tells her to pick out 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.560 the face of the man who attacked her. All of 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.560 the photos set out in front of her are black 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:56.160 and white mugshots except for one, yours. You've never been 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:58.680 in trouble with the law, and so you don't have 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:03.160 a mugshot. Instead, the cop that showed up at your 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.560 job took a picture of your ID card from the 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:11.160 theme park and slipped it into the photo lineup. Yours 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.960 is not just the only one that's not a mugshot, 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:18.240 it's also the only one that's printed in color, so 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:23.560 it immediately grabs the woman's attention. She chooses your photo 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:30.520 and says, I think that's him. The officer comes back 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.320 in to get you. He brings you into a room 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:35.640 with a window in it and asks you to stand 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.840 in a line with some men. These other men are 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.720 known as fillers. None of these fillers are potential suspects. 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.960 The point of them is to see if the victim 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.560 can identify your face. Amongst others who are supposed to 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.800 resemble the suspect. None of these other people's faces were 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.679 in any of the photos the victim saw except for yours, 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:02.919 your color photo ID. That's the only photo that matches 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.279 the face of anyone in this lineup. There's an officer 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:09.880 at the front of the room and he starts barking 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.360 out orders to you and the fillers. Stand there and 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:21.800 look straight ahead. Now turn to your right, Now turn 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:25.200 to your left. You follow the directions that are being 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:29.480 shouted out. You can't see her because she's on the 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.640 other side of a one way mirror, but the victim 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:38.400 points you out. She says it's him. I'm sure of it, 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.840 And that's all the information the cops need to hear, 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:49.280 and you are arrested on the spot. You sit in 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:53.680 jail wondering what in the world you're supposed to make of. 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.160 How this woman mistook you for someone else. You look 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:02.840 nothing like the witnesses of description of her attacker. She'd 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.520 reported that he had light skin, a mustache, a beard, 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:10.800 and scratches on his face. You have dark skin, you're 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.960 almost always clean shaven. There are no scratches or marks 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:18.239 on your eighteen year old face. How could that picture 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:22.360 in her head, the memory of her attacker changed so 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.720 much in such a short amount of time. What is 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:34.280 it about that lineup that made her choose you? You 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.880 eventually stand trial in front of an all white jury 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.480 of eight women and four men. You were taught your 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.440 entire life to trust law enforcement, to believe in this 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:52.280 system of justice. The police, officers, judges, lawyers, jurors. They 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.319 were all there to figure out the truth, to do 0:08:55.400 --> 0:09:00.920 the right thing. But that image comes shattering down when 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:08.080 the jury comes back and finds you guilty of rape, abduction, robbery, 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:14.760 and for sodomy. The judge sentences you to two hundred 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:19.760 and ten years in prison. After the sentence is read, 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.720 you slowly look behind you. You try to find your mom, 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:29.400 your family. You know they're sitting just behind you, but 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:35.560 you can't see a foot ahead of you. Everything goes black. 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.280 The story you just heard is based on the true 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:46.680 events of Marvin Andersen's wrongful conviction. Six years after he 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.080 was sentenced to life in prison, another man confessed to 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:54.200 attacking the woman who had misidentified Marvin. The man that 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.280 confessed presented new details to a judge that seemed to 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:03.160 prove his guilt in Marvin's innocence. Still, the judge did 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:07.280 not vacate marvin sentence. Marvin wrote a letter to the 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:12.640 Innocence Project and they took up his case. After years 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.240 of work, lawyers of the Innocence Project were finally able 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:19.760 to convince the judge to compare Marvin's DNA with the 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.040 DNA from seamen recovered from the victim. When the rape 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.640 kit was performed, Marvin was not a match, but another 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.360 man was a match, the man who had confessed to 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:37.520 the crime. After fifteen long years in prison, Marvin walked 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.400 free and became the ninety ninth person to be exonerated 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:46.079 based on DNA evidence. He's since become chief of the Hanover, 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.480 Virginia Fire Department and serves on the board of the 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:56.160 Innocence Project. I'm Josh Dubin, civil rights and criminal defense attorney, 0:10:56.520 --> 0:11:00.720 an innocent ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today. 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:07.079 On wrongful conviction junk science, we examine eyewitness testimony. When 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.120 a witness points to a suspect and says that's the 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:13.840 person who committed this crime, there is nothing more convincing 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:19.040 to a jury, but it is dangerously inaccurate. Over two 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.400 thirds of people who are later exonerated based on DNA 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:28.120 evidence or convicted based on eyewitness testimony. It may sound 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:32.080 like a simple premise, but in order for eyewitness testimony 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:35.679 to work and be reliable, we need to rely on 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:40.400 our own memories and those of others. But it turns out, 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:46.320 just as physical evidence can be manipulated, contaminated, or even planted, 0:11:47.200 --> 0:12:00.480 so too can memories. In the early eighteen eh eighties, 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:05.120 Professor Wilhelm Want, the father of modern psychology, was giving 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.880 a lecture at the University of Leipzig in Germany. One 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.120 of his students attending the lecture was Hugo Munsterberg and 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.600 Hugo when he heard this lecture, he was hooked. He 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:21.200 was so fascinated by psychology and it began to study 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:26.640 under the father of psychology himself. After completing his studies, 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.400 Hugo started working at Harvard University, where he led the 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:36.559 Experimental Psychology Lab. Hugo was especially interested in the concrete, 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:41.680 everyday applications of psychology. He wanted to study if in 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:46.920 how psychology impacted juries and trial outcomes, and so he 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:52.040 began to run experiments on the memory of eyewitnesses. In 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:56.080 one of his famous experiments, Hugo tested the memories of 0:12:56.120 --> 0:13:00.360 both adults and children. He showed them a photo. In 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:04.360 it there was a farmer sitting at a table eating 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:08.480 some soup. Hugo had his test subjects looked closely at 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:12.600 the photo, then he took the photo away. Hugo then 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.880 asked him opened ended questions about it, like what did 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:20.080 you see in the photo? To these questions, the witnesses responded, 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:23.040 there was a man in the photo eating his soup. 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:29.000 Their memories were accurate, But then Hugo started asking what 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:33.640 he called suggestive questions. He asked, for example, did you 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.439 see the stove in the room. Many of the eyewitnesses 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.440 answered yes, they saw the stove, but there was no 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:46.320 stove in the photo. Hugo found that through asking suggestive 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.400 questions like these, he was able to get his test 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.760 subjects to remember dozens of objects in the photo that 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:58.400 never existed. In another experiment, Hugo sat at a desk 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.239 at the front of a room and told his students, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:06.800 remember every detail of what I'm about to do. Starting now. 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.960 With his right hand, Hugo took out a colorful disc 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.400 and began to spin it While staring at the disc 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.120 that he was spinning with his right hand. He used 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.840 his left hand to take out a pencil and write 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.280 something down on a piece of paper, Keeping that disk 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.240 spinning in his right hand, he used his left hand 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.360 again to take out a cigarette case, open it, take 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.480 out a cigarette, shut the case with a loud click, 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:38.280 and put it back into his pocket. At one hundred 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.880 students who saw this demonstration, only eighteen of them were 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.800 able to report what Hugo had done with his left hand, 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.200 and so Hugo was not only able to show that 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.119 witnesses might fabricate details of a memory that never existed, 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.640 but they are also likely to not remember many details 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:02.040 of events that happened right in front of their These 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:06.240 experiments also demonstrated that the memories of two different people 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.360 observing the same event or photo could be wildly different, 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.560 despite the fact that they had no stake in line 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.080 or making the outcome of the events appear to have 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:20.600 happened one way or another. Hugo also concluded that the 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.640 witness's own claim of certainty didn't necessarily mean that their 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.520 memories were more accurate. A witness might say, for example, 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.040 that they were absolutely certain that there was a stove 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.080 in the photo, or that he or she was certain 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:37.520 that all Hugo did was spin a disk in his 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.800 right hand. But even as they claimed certainty, there was 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:46.360 proof that their memories were incorrect. When his book on 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.680 these experiments was published in nineteen oh eight, The New 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.160 York Times wrote that his studies had the potential to 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:57.040 revolutionize courtroom procedure and to quote bring light and order 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:02.000 in domains where all or almost all, is darkness and confusion. 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.560 But that's not what happened, because Hugo also had many 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.160 critics who scoffed at his attempt to apply psychology to 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:15.440 the courtroom, and so courtroom procedure around eyewitness testimony was 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:21.200 not completely revolutionized. To this day, countless innocent men and 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.920 women are sent to prison based on faulty eyewitness testimony. 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.360 Over a half a century after Hugo's research was mocked, 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:35.960 psychologist Elizabeth Loftis took another look at eyewitness testimony with 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.800 a more modern take on Hugo's experiments. She was able 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.440 to prove just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is and why 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.800 it shouldn't be trusted as the gold standard of evidence. 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.520 In a courtroom or in a police lineup. 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:59.400 Many people, unfortunately, believe that memory works like a recording device. 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:02.760 You take in the information, you record it, you just 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.800 play it back the way some kind of video recorder 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.879 would work, and that is not really the way memory works. 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.879 What happens when we're remembering something is we tend to 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.520 take bits and pieces of experience, sometimes from different times 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:22.480 and places. We bring it together and we construct a memory. 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.720 So I like to think of memory a little bit more, 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:30.120 not like a recording device, but more like a Wikipedia page. 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:32.800 You can go in there and edit it, but so 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:33.879 can other people. 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:39.840 Today on our show, we're speaking with renowned psychologist Elizabeth Loftis. 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.960 Elizabeth is currently a professor at the University of California, Irvine. 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:50.880 She studies human memory, specifically the malleability of memory, which 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.439 of course is a huge factor in cases where eyewitness 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:59.680 testimony is used as evidence. So, Elizabeth, can you tell 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.760 us about some of the experiments that you've worked on 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.160 to study memories of eyewitnesses. 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.159 You know, one of the ways that I and my 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:14.119 collaborators have studied memory, and hundreds of studies, you know, 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:19.359 probably now forty fifty thousand participants over the course of 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:22.800 my career. One of the ways that we study memory 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:28.800 is we'll show people a simulated crime. For example, we 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:34.440 will then expose people to some new information about that crime. 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.159 So they might have seen a bad guy take a 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.000 wallet out of somebody's purse and he's wearing a green jacket, 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:47.040 but they then get misinformation from another witness or from 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:51.840 a leading question that the jacket was brown. And finally 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.240 we will ask our witnesses, tell me exactly what you saw, 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.880 give me as much detail as you can remember, and 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.119 many of them will and remember that the jacket was 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:06.040 brown and not green, or we can make them believe 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.000 the bad guy had curly hair instead of straight hair. 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:15.719 All by exposing people to new information, misleading information, it 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:19.160 impairs their own memory, and this is now referred to 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:24.199 in the psychological literature as the misinformation effect. 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:28.400 So give me another example. What are some other experiments 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:32.800 you did where misinformation just kind of gets slipped into 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.400 the person's memory without them even knowing it. 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:41.240 We've shown people a simulated accident. A car goes through 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:44.239 an intersection with a yield sign and then ends up 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:49.640 hitting a pedestrian, and pedestrian falls over a police officer 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.040 comes to tend to the pedestrian who's lying down on 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:59.760 the ground. Afterwards, our witnesses are asked a series of questions, 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.560 and one of those questions might be did another car 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.320 pass the red dots and when it was at the 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.600 intersection with the stop sign. Now, that is a very 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.960 clever question. Just so you can appreciate the cleverness you, 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.600 as the witness, think I'm asking you about whether another 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:25.240 car passed while the dotson was stopped. You revisualize the scene, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.080 and in your visualization you might put in a stop 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:32.280 sign that I've mentioned as part of the question. You 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:36.080 think you're answering about whether another car stop, But this 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:40.119 stop sign kind of invades your consciousness, almost like a 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:44.840 trojan horse. You don't even detect that it's coming. And 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:49.560 after that, many people will then claim I saw a 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:54.000 stop sign at that intersection. And you can show them 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:56.439 two scenes, the scene with a stop sign or the 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.159 scene with a yield sign. They'll pick the one with 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:03.800 a stop sign. They have succumbed to the question and 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.360 fallen sway to its suggestion, and now it appears as 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:18.760 if this is their memory. 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:22.840 Now I want to get back to the way cops 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:27.320 influence a witness. I've dealt with cases where the cops 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:33.120 know who the suspect is and do things either consciously 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:38.080 or even unconsciously, I guess, to encourage the witness to 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.760 choose the person that they believe is their suspect. Have 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:44.200 you dealt with anything like that in your research. 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.639 One of my favorite examples a case I testified in 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:54.119 in California. There's a crime, the eyewitness has shown a 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:58.960 six pack six photographs. The eyewitness says, I really don't 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:04.439 reckonise anybody, and the officer says, wait a minute, I 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.720 see your eyes drifting down to number six. What's going 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:12.360 on there? Eventually number six it gets seized upon identified, 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:16.480 and that's the person who gets prosecuted. So there's a 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:22.000 highly suggestive thing going on here. I'm willing to give, 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.640 certainly to give these officers the benefit of the doubt 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.520 and say they they're not even aware in a way 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:33.840 of their own influence, and that a lot of what's 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:35.840 happening is is kind of unwitting. 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:40.960 So look, I'm an alleged expert in jury selection, and 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:43.119 people are always saying to me, like, how does this 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:46.920 affect you? Are you always trying to psychoanalyze me. So 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.239 tell me a little bit about how this, you know, 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:54.080 deep knowledge of memory impacts you. Do you find yourself 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:56.479 like not trusting your own memory at times? 0:22:57.640 --> 0:22:59.959 Well, the one experience that I do have from all 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:03.000 all these decades of doing this kind of work is 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:08.520 I understand that along with those sort of bits of 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:14.200 truth are bits of fiction intermingled in there. And I'm 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.920 not bothered by that. I understand that's part of the 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:24.920 malleable nature of memory. I think what this acceptance has 0:23:25.040 --> 0:23:28.360 done for me is it makes me a little bit 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:33.760 more tolerant of the mistakes that friends make, or family 0:23:33.800 --> 0:23:37.640 members make, or even I myself might make. I don't 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:41.240 immediately assume somebody is a big fat liar. They could 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:43.679 honestly have a false memory, and I think it's a 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:46.760 kind of kinder way to feel about people. 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:50.639 Okay, so that's pretty interesting. Do you think this same 0:23:50.840 --> 0:23:54.040 kindness as you refer to it, that you offer, let's say, 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:57.359 your friends, your family, even yourself. Do you think we 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:01.680 should offer witnesses the same kind of kindness in court cases? 0:24:02.880 --> 0:24:05.840 Do you want to call these people a liar or 0:24:05.880 --> 0:24:08.040 do you want to accept the fact that maybe some 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:13.040 kind of process has led them to develop a set 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:16.679 of beliefs and things that feel to them like memories, 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:20.199 and it is kinder even in a court case. I 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:25.640 think sometimes for lawyers who are challenging these memories to 0:24:25.720 --> 0:24:29.200 talk about them as potentially false memories rather than talk 0:24:29.240 --> 0:24:33.000 about the accuser as being a big, fat liar. 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:36.200 So you're an expert witness in a lot of cases 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:40.119 that depend on eyewitness testimony. You know, we've talked a 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:45.440 lot throughout the course of this podcast about how some 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:50.320 expert witnesses aren't basing their testimony on good science or facts. 0:24:50.960 --> 0:24:53.640 But you're not that kind of witness. I mean, you've 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.680 been studying memory for years and years, and you've done 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:02.199 experiments and you know, tested with thousands of participants. You 0:25:02.280 --> 0:25:04.280 have a lot of data to back up what you're 0:25:04.320 --> 0:25:07.159 testifying to in court. But tell me, have you ever 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:10.400 heard of witness testifying in court or read their testimony 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:13.720 and it kind of made you think, well, this isn't 0:25:13.800 --> 0:25:17.199 science at all. They're actually twisting this so much that 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:19.000 it's more like junk science. 0:25:20.280 --> 0:25:24.400 I guess what I've seen happen in some cases, and 0:25:24.440 --> 0:25:29.800 this bothers me where I think opposing experts are introducing 0:25:30.000 --> 0:25:35.840 junk science. It's about trauma. They want to introduce to 0:25:36.000 --> 0:25:43.800 science that basically says traumatic memories are completely different. Traumatic memories, 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:47.440 you know, are stored in the body. Traumatic memories can 0:25:47.480 --> 0:25:51.080 be relied on traumatic memories that kind of don't have 0:25:51.200 --> 0:25:56.680 these same problems. In fact, traumatic memories operate under similar 0:25:56.760 --> 0:26:01.000 in similar ways. They fade over time, they can be 0:26:01.119 --> 0:26:05.439 influenced by post event information. They are just lots of 0:26:06.040 --> 0:26:10.280 features of memory that are true, whether you're trying to 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:13.439 remember something that's upsetting or whether you're trying to remember 0:26:13.520 --> 0:26:18.800 something that is a little bit more neutral and less emotional. 0:26:19.520 --> 0:26:21.760 You see this in the movies all the time. They're 0:26:21.800 --> 0:26:25.280 saying something like I was so frightened when this happened. 0:26:25.760 --> 0:26:28.480 I'll never forget that face as long as I live. 0:26:28.920 --> 0:26:33.679 That's an expression of the belief that this traumatic memory 0:26:33.720 --> 0:26:37.280 is sort of imprinted in the brain and is reliably 0:26:37.359 --> 0:26:40.399 and solidly there and you just need to read it out. 0:26:40.920 --> 0:26:45.280 And that is not the way things work with memory 0:26:45.320 --> 0:26:48.600 in general, or even traumatic memories. 0:26:49.320 --> 0:26:52.359 So tell us more about that, because I do think 0:26:52.440 --> 0:26:56.639 that when we hear about someone who has been raped 0:26:56.880 --> 0:27:01.239 or there's been a violent attack, are in instinct is 0:27:01.240 --> 0:27:04.439 that we should believe them no matter what, right, like, 0:27:04.480 --> 0:27:08.080 why would somebody make this up? So how do we 0:27:08.200 --> 0:27:14.040 reconcile the desire to believe a victim or the natural 0:27:14.160 --> 0:27:18.760 tendency to believe a victim with the knowledge that memories 0:27:18.840 --> 0:27:21.400 just aren't the most reliable form of evidence. 0:27:22.600 --> 0:27:25.640 I think the way we reconcile all this is that 0:27:26.080 --> 0:27:30.840 when there is somebody with an accusation, we certainly listen 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:35.119 to it and examine it. And we don't want to 0:27:35.240 --> 0:27:39.840 uncritically accept every accusation, no matter how dubious, And we 0:27:40.000 --> 0:27:45.520 don't want to routinely reject an accusation just because we 0:27:45.600 --> 0:27:48.920 don't like how it sounds. So I do think there 0:27:49.080 --> 0:27:55.480