Articles Tagged with Eye Witness Identification

“Describe the ‘young man’ who walked into the room earlier,” asked the teacher.

Later the student learns the man that the teacher referred to was in fact, 55 years old. So the question begs, “Was he a “man”; or was he a “young man”?

This is an illustration of when a person might be influenced by another. If the witness had not been fully attentive to the man who walked into a room, they may have remembered the man as a younger man, perhaps younger than he really was, simply because it was suggested. Many factors including other people may adversely impact the validity of a witness statement.