Eyewitness Testimony

Each year, many people are convicted largely because a witness pointed them out. Psychologists have doubted the reliability of eyewitnesses for decades, and recent findings leave little question that jurors trust these accounts far more than they deserve. The courts, as the description observes, have not yet dealt with the problem directly.

Loftus, an experimental psychologist known for her research on false memory, builds her case against the eyewitness step by step. She begins with obvious weaknesses such as poor lighting, brief glimpses, and fear, then turns to subtler influences like what a witness expects to see and the stereotypes they carry. Along the way she shows that memory is often inaccurate in unexpected ways.

Her experiments show that the way a person is questioned after an event can change what they remember, and that new details can be planted and older ones quietly reshaped during interrogation. These findings bear on courtroom reform, police interview methods, defense strategy, and both criminal and civil procedure. The book is written for trial lawyers, social psychologists, and anyone who might face an eyewitness accusation in court.