photo: Gone-Walkabout

The validity of eyewitness testimony has long been debated. How can someone’s memory be perfect during a tramatic event when they hardly remember normal everyday details? Yet another study has been performed by psychologists on the topic, this time to prove that fake video can easily change an eyewitness’s recollection of an event. Psychologists at the University of Warwick showed members of a gambling-type game doctored video of their opponent cheating during the game. Over half of the participants agreed to sign an official statement verifying the cheating even though the test subject did not witness any cheating in reality because it did not occur. This study continues to prove the theory that memories are often influenced by outside information, even if it is completely fictional. Fabricated evidence could lead an eyewitnesses to falsely accuse a defendant, and enter additional evidence into a criminal case that is only correlated to the case through a lie. Wired.com published an article on this study to show how serious photographic and video evidence can be to a criminal case.