Discussion On Whether Children Can Provide Reliable Eyewitness Testimony
Children are often involved in criminal justice trials in which they sometimes act as an eyewitness. The reliability of their testimony is frequently questioned because there are many factors that influence this. Reasons that can impact the reliability of these testimonies are children's memory capacity, their honesty and vulnerability to suggestion and their ability to communicate. Eyewitness testimonies provided by children can be reliable if after the crime, they have given their statement within a reasonable time. Also, older children are far more reliable than younger children to provide reliable eyewitness testimonies. Possible means to increase the reliability of children eyewitness testimonies is to use relevant materials that were present at the time of the crime to trigger any memories. Taking this mechanism into account in future hearings will guarantee the most reliable statements, leading to lawful convictions. An eyewitness is an individual who has witnessed a crime by either seeing or hearing information and can therefore recollect relevant evidence regarding this offense. The use of eyewitness testimonies from children is useful in the criminal justice system, where perhaps the child is the only witness and victim and of the crime. The criminal justice system may have to rely on a child’s testimony where the child will provide the only or key testimony. A child that has witnessed or experienced a crime may have to provide an eyewitness account of the event. This testimony may contain crucial information regarding a serious crime hence could provide critical in convicting an offender. An example of a child being brought into the criminal justice system could be a case of sexual abuse where the child’s statement is directly making allegations against the defendant and this becomes a case of the child’s word against the accused.
Although a child’s recall of events has been proven to be very accurate, research has shown that the younger the child the more suggestive they tend to be during a recall of events an often a complete recall of the event is unlikely. Children’s testimonies tend to be more accurate as they mature with age.
As part of the forensic interview process, a child may be required to identify the offender from a lineup. Research shows that a child can perform this task quite well from the age of five and up. Although it should be noted that in some cases where the actual suspect is not included in the lineup children have a tendency to guess as opposed to providing an accurate suspect identification. Children who are asked open-ended questions tend to provide less reliable/inaccurate information as opposed to a child that is asked specific details regarding a crime or even that took place. Simple yes or no questions should be avoided as children often respond to “I don't know” as opposed to providing some details of the event that could prove to be crucial.
The major issue in regards to children’s testimonies is credibility. To assess if a child’s testimony is credible or not several different characteristics are examined, such as honesty, memory, suggestibility and communication ability. The biggest concern is suggestibility because their memory may become misleading or distorted. Studies show that there is a possibility for a child to develop “memories” of incidents that did not occur due to the repetition of misleading questions by a police officer or interviewer. Another major concern is children may be asked to disclose profound, uncomfortable or painful information. These sorts of interviews involve honesty and openness from children. Such questions may make some children reluctant in participating and therefore do not disclose reliable information. Characteristics that can detriment a child witness’s credibility are incapable speech style, low significance and lack of self-confidence.
Children can be made more reliable when they are questioned in a non-suggestive, non-leading manner and are not exposed to misinformation or deception. Children older than age three can provide reasonably accurate and relatively complete accounts of these experiences. Another way children can be made more reliable is if they are interviewed in a neutral location instead of the room in which the incident occurred. The distinctiveness of the event under deliberation will also influence the child’s testimony, because the distinctive item is memorized more quickly and retained longer. This is known as the von Restorff Effect.
There are questioning techniques that can increase the accuracy and completeness of an eyewitness testimony from children, such as showing kindheartedness and support, limiting yes or no questions and avoiding legal terminology, verifying the meanings of words, mirroring the language of the child and avoiding intellectual theoretical questions. Preparing children for court and providing them with memory retrieval strategies such as cues or materials can increase the recollection of these details.
A study conducted by Gordon, Baker-Ward & Ornstein in 2011 summarized that over the past 15 years children’s memory proficiency has improved to the point that even infants and toddlers can determine information about an event they have experienced and are able to store that information in their memory. And retain it for long periods of time. Even newborns are able to identify voices and gestures. These discoveries can be applied directly to a children’s testimony if two standards are met. Firstly, young children who don’t yet have the ability to speak and demonstrate events behaviorally must subsequently be accessible for vocal evidence after the language is recognized. Although it is understood that preverbal understandings may have long-term effects on children’s behavioral reactions, there is no way to directly link a particular behavior with the details of a specific occurrence such as a crime. Second, the comprehensible memories must be factual and not just sporadic in nature. That is, they must represent the child’s memory for personal experiences that involve the child, rather than a general remembrance of events that could be known as irregular.
Evidence concluded from Bauer & her colleagues regarding children’s abilities to verbally report early experiences after they have acquired language is mixed. The study found that 16 – 20-month-old infants demonstrated nonverbal evidence of memory even after 6 months of the event occurring. Children who were 20 months old at the time of exposure to the events made utterances that confirmed verbal evidence of recall, those in the younger group at the initial sessions did not Bauer and her colleagues. It is evident that the older the infant the better their ability to communicate effectively and recall of the event is present. The authors concluded, “Children who likely encoded events without the benefit of language are capable of subsequent verbal mnemonic expression of them”. It appears, however, that at the lower age limit of infants, information recall over time appears to be restricted. In contrast, Peterson and Rideout (1998) clearly examined infants between thirteen to thirty-four month old children. The infants in this study had experienced a traumatic injury requiring emergency medical treatment. The study conducted interviews with the infants at six-month intervals up to two years after their accident. The study found that children two years of age and older that were able to speak were able to report at least two central components of the event after a delay of 2 years. Although children under the age of 2 who could not speak at the initial assessment provided some verbal information about the experience but seemed to be vague and quite inaccurate. In addition, there was little evidence that preverbal memories could become verbally accessible. Only two of the twelve children in the group of infants below two years old provided verbal information about the experience after twelve months of the occurrence when they were able to speak. There was some concern from the children’s reports that their families may have had some influence on the actual memories embedded rather than the true facts retrieved from their memory.
To summarize their study, a child under the age of two is unlikely to give a definite and precise recollection of events. Due to sometimes long legal proceedings, that When reporting events they have experienced due to the long delay between the occurrence and the recall stage the study showed family influence can be a big contributing factor to these children recalling actual facts. For these reasons it can be concluded that, children that experienced an event when under the age of two should not be used to testify or provide detailed statements.
In addition to these studies, Koenig, Clement & Harris exposed a discovery in 2004. This finding was, 16-month-old children focused more attention towards adult speakers who misleadingly labeled items. For example, ‘That’s a dog’ in reference to a cup than toward those who straightforwardly labeled items or objects truthfully. In fact, many children tried to correct the speaker’s false labels through their own behaviors. Similarly, 18-month-old children with a mean sound period of 1. 0, clearly overruled false but not correct affirmatives, for example ‘That’s a ball’ in reference to a car, by saying ‘no’. Therefore, when adult speakers deliver evidence that encounters with children’s understanding and knowledge, they establish an ability to distinguish, correct and contradict statements that they know to be untrue. When children agree to false grounds as part of a make-believe or imaginary context, they are more likely to check observed deliberations and reason accurately from a given statement. Consequently, children’s distinctive failure to reason from false premises cannot be credited to any reasonable incapability. To summarize, when young children have unshakable knowledge of a given fact, for example, they know what an object is called, they know what colour it is, or they know the properties of the class to which it belongs, they do not accept accounts that reverse those known facts. They correct speakers who make false declarations and refuse these statements as foundations for successive thinking. Although this is an important protective device when children’s knowledge and other people’s testimony conflict, children often encounter new information that conflicts with nothing simply because they lack information about the topic in question. To gain an understanding of, for example, new words, future events, God or even the afterlife, children doubtless depend on information from those around them. For an array of unfamiliar objects, the evaluation of the informant becomes essential. One important marker of an informant’s trustworthiness is whether that informant typically spoke the truth in the past. As we have noted, following any given piece of testimony, young children appear to react differently and appropriately depending on whether they know an informant’s claims to be true or false.
Children should provide eyewitness testimonies because as stated in some cases the child is the only witness and victim of the crime. Studies have shown that children are able to demonstrate memory recollection along with detailed descriptions of events and suspects in the justice system. The study conducted by K. Oates in 1993, shows that memory in children improves with age but that’s not to say that a child of 6 years old isn’t as competent as a child of 8 years old when recalling events, its dependent of the child’s mental capacity. It was also found that stress could impair a child’s ability to recall events. Holding a testimony or eyewitness statement from a child in a private non- threatening scenario has proved to be far more effective than having a child stand up in a courtroom with unfamiliar faces. For a child to be a credible witness, the child must have the mental capacity to observe and register the event accurately, have sufficient memory to retain a recall of that event and the ability to communicate this memory.
In conclusion, children could play a crucial role in the prosecution of an offender and given the conditions are acceptable for the child, the testimony and eyewitness accounts are worthy of the justice system.
