–The following story was written by Taia Goguen-Garner.
Eyewitnesses are an instrumental aspect of identification when a crime occurs, but what happens if the eyewitness’s memory is not so sharp?
Simona Mackovichova, who just graduated with her Master’s degree in Psychology, has been researching how mistaken eyewitness identification contributes to the wrongful conviction of innocent individuals.
“I look at factors that influence the accuracy of eyewitness identifications as well as how various factors involved in eyewitness identification evidence influence juror decision-making,” shared Mackovichova.
During the grad student’s undergraduate degree, she became interested in human memory and the way it often fails us.
“While some of these memory errors may be harmless, bearing no serious consequences, others can be incredibly costly,” said Mackovichova.“Eyewitness identification errors are among the latter type as eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of known wrongful convictions.”
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