just saw the documentary film "Presumed Guilty." It is a very interesting film that made me think many things. Well, as usual, as I am a scientist because I immediately got to wonder if science could contribute something to help improve the Mexican judicial system is put in clear evidence in this documentary.
According to the documentary seems to be that a greater weight of evidence is the testimony of the witness's murder who recognize the suspect says as part of the band participated in the murder of his cousin. The use of such testimony is neither new nor exclusive to Mexico, as in other judicial systems such as the United States and Canada the use of eyewitness identification (or eyewitness, as they are called in English) also has an important bearing on trials. In these countries have developed different investigations which were reviewed by Gary L. Wells and Elizabeth A. Olson, and published under the title of "Eyewitness Testimony" in the Annual Review of Psychology, in 2003.
How does that of the witnesses?
not know how it works to fund the system by which the witness recognized the suspect in the Mexican system. However, as one can sense the documentary, bailiffs will have to witness the suspect control to do so or if not known. If the witness is recognized, it already was. This means that a fundamental aspect of the process is based on the recognition memory of the witness.
The U.S. system seems to be that the witness is presented with a "lineup" of subjects. That is, the witness is placed a row of subjects including the suspect is to see if it identifies as the culprit of the crime. A feature of this row is that subjects found in it, are not suspected of course except the subject who is believed involved in the crime. Thus, if it identifies one of the subjects which are filling, it is known beforehand that he is not guilty. Is simultaneously a row in which all members of the row are presented simultaneously. However, you can also put a row in which people parade one after another to the witness. Another characteristic of these rows is the number of participants who may be truly recognized. This is called the "functional size" of the row. For example, if the witness says that the culprit was a man with black hair, and all of the row are guilty except blondes, for then the "functional size" of the row would be 1, although there were nine other people in it. The operational definition of "functional size" is the number of subjects in the row that fit the description of the witness about the culprit.
To study this issue of functional size in the ranks, a test with simulated witnesses. In these studies used subjects who did not witness the crime, but who are asked to select the row to a person based on the verbal description given by the witness on the culprit. If the witness acknowledges simulated several people in the row, then a good row, and participants were chosen innocent might share characteristics with the suspect. That way the real witness would have to work to identify the suspect and not just based on general characteristics.
Among the variables that affect the accuracy of the identification by the witness are the instructions that are given to the witness before viewing the line as well as the functional size of the row. Other variables also include conditions under which the row is presented as light conditions, or whether the suspect is of the same race as the control; this because we know we're better identifying faces of our own race. For example, at first glance it would be difficult to recognize individuals with Asian features if few times we've visited. This effect is known as "other-race effect" or "the effect of different race" in the investigation of face recognition.
forensics What papa?
course in Mexico, the problem goes beyond the methodology used, because even if we could develop a very good system to help correctly identify a subject who participated in a crime, because if the judge does not value evidence, so it is no use in forensic science. This would seem to be the case in the documentary, and apparently the judge did not consider important the fact that the documentary evidence of Harrison and Gilroy had suggested that the suspect had not fired a weapon, or could not be found the murder weapon, or even the witness could not even give a description of the detainee who accused as having fired the gun.
Just to finish, it should be emphasized that during the "trial" shown in the documentary are also involved judicial officers, the representative of the prosecution, the judge, the witness and the suspect. I was surprised to see how the confrontation is one person against another asking and answering accusations. What a way where no one could assess whether any of them is lying?, But hey, I'll leave that for another post ...
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