Eyewitness testimony has received harsh scrutiny as new research emerges showing that witnesses tend to be inaccurate in recalling details of high stress situations and can consolidate false memories. Furthermore, eyewitnesses can be biased in their interpretations of these events, especially when viewing court video evidence. Recent studies have shown that the manner in which video evidence is presented may have an impact on the viewer's memory of the event that transpired.
Research from Northwestern University was conducted on the perception of police dash cam versus police body cam footage. This footage depicted either real or staged police reenactments that took place at the same time from different angles. Researchers were curious to see if presenting one form of video evidence would lead to harsher punishments than the presentation of the other (Yirka 2019). Almost 2,000 volunteers were recruited for this study and served as jurors as if they were evaluating the officer’s culpability of a crime. Participants watched the video from the perspective of the dash cam or from the body cam, and then completed a survey about the intent of the officer. Results found that people did view the officer’s intentions differently in the dash cam footage than in the body cam footage. More participants found the officer guilty when viewing the dash cam footage than the body cam footage so long as the body cam footage did not show any body parts of the officer in the shot. If the body cam footage did contain the officer’s limbs in the frame, participants viewed the officer’s culpability generally equally in both groups (Yirka 2019). This research implies that people are less likely to find an officer guilty of a crime when they cannot see that officer in the video, perhaps because they see the situation from the officer’s perspective.
Dr. Yael Granot et al. (2014) conducted an experiment that also examined how people viewed video evidence in which the suspect’s intentions were ambiguous. Two studies were conducted that either measured or manipulated social group identification with the police force. Eye tracking technology was used to track visual attention towards the outgroup target by recording the number of fixations and look duration. Results showed that those who fixated more frequently on the outgroup target tended to give harsher punishments. Meanwhile, those who fixated infrequently on the outgroup target appeared to not be influenced by prior group identification. It is important to understand the factors that influence the effect of visual attention on recall of evidence. If social group identification does in fact impact visual attention and subsequent punishment decisions, then the manner in which video evidence is presented in the courtroom must be reevaluated to ensure that justice is carried out accordingly.
Both of these studies comprehend that the perspective from which video evidence is viewed, whether physically or from a social standpoint, can be crucial in the way that juries carry out their decision-making process. In order to have a better understanding of the biases that arise from having different perspectives on ambiguous wrongdoings, further research is necessary to evaluate the contributions to these biases. By identifying how biases transpire, we can establish more effective ways to present courtroom evidence to ensure accurate decision making and lead to the fulfillment of justice.
Granot, Y., Balcetis, E., Schneider, K. E., & Tyler, T. R. (2014). Justice is not blind: Visual attention exaggerates effects of group identification on legal punishment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), 2196–2208. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037893
Yirka, B. (2019, January 8). How police body cam videos impact jurors differently than dashcam videos. Retrieved April 27, 2020, from https://phys.org/news/2019-01-police-body-cam-videos-impact.html
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