Guest speaker Reflection

This week for class we had a guest speaker come into class. He was a criminal sketch artist located in California. He had gone over a lot of really interesting things that I’d like to touch on. At the beginning of his presentation, he spoke about memory and eye whiteness memory. He explained how the mind can change over time. This makes it hard for law enforcement to use eyewitnesses. This is why when a crime is committed and there’s an eye witness post-event information is super important to get. Post-event information is asking lead questions, pictures, and suggestions made. This is how can we get reliable information regularly. The human memory is unstable and not always reliable and the criminal justice system relies on one it to convict people. Getting reliable information is important because if it’s not someone could be wrongfully convicted. Our guest speaker brought up The Innocent’s Project a group that is trying to help people who have been seen to be wrongfully convicted and get them out of prison. The only thing is the innocent’s project can only help if their DNA evidence is in the case. This leaves many people stuck in our prison systems. This is why it’s vital that law enforcement and sketch artist don’t use heuristics (shortcuts) when interviewing. It’s a danger to take shortcuts, take time and gather reliable information. He had urged that it was important how you gather information. The biggest thing in sketch art is that eyewitnesses can use references. Which can mess with the reliability of the information, and can pick up on other information. Our minds are working on making connections all the time and that’s why it’s important to think about your role when asking questions and be mindful when you’re trying to retrieve cognitive evidence.