Details of a fascinating new study were released today in Live Science:
When people see violent or erotic images, they fail to process whatever they see next, according to new research.
Scientists are calling the effect “attentional rubbernecking.”
“We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after viewing neutral images,” said Vanderbilt University psychologist David Zald.
The effect is akin to rubbernecking on the highway, Zald and his colleagues say. Your brain might suggest you watch the road ahead, but your emotions force you to look at the accident on the side of the road.
Research subjects were handed a stack of pictures that included pleasant landscapes and architectural photos. They were told to search for a particular image. Negative images were placed anywhere from two to eight spots before the search target.
I haven’t read the study, so I can not attest to the methodology or the accuracy of the description quoted above, but the first thing that came to mind was the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
While it is generally accepted within the legal community that eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence, many juries don’t realize this, and in case after case after case, eyewitness testimony has turned out to be just plain wrong. I am not going to go into the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, as Jeralynn Merritt has ably put forth numerous posts on the reliability of this sort of evidence.
You can see where I am going with this. If this study shows what I think it does (I need to get my hands on a copy), and further studies go more in depth and verify this, it might then be time to change the rules regarding evidence in jury trials as they pertain to eyewitness testimony. With the number of people we currently have on death row, and the number of people released very year because of DNA evidence, quite literally, lives are at stake.
And for those of you who think that I am merely parroting some sort of liberal ‘coddle criminals’ mentality, I will let you explain how convicting innocent men and letting guilty ones remain free to roam around meancing society is the ‘conservative’ position.
rilkefan
Rockin’ post, John. Keep it coming.
jg
Isn’t our judicial system based on the belief that it is better that a guilty man go free than an innocent man go to jail? I think I heard that on Law and Order. lol
Defense Guy
I’m glad you took out the native toungue bit, as I thought it too broad a brush. You can easily find instance of this, but I do not agree it is the rule.
Liberal coddler.
John Cole
I thought it would just be unnecessarily inflammatory and dominate the debate. I worked as a probation officer, though, and that is my firm belief.
Most policeman are good- but many of them lie at will on the stand.
ppGaz
Eyewitness testimony always requires corroboration or correlation to other facts. A study of accident investigation will show this quite clearly.
What troubles me is the backstories of overzealous prosecution that often accompany these stories of DNA evidence freeing the wrongly convicted. The ocurrences are rare, but not rare enough.
Which is worse? A guilty man free, or an innocent man in jail? I offer the question without comment.
Steve
The real problem in most wrongful conviction cases is inadequate assistance of counsel. Often defendants are provided with low-quality representation who couldn’t care less about the case. So often you see cases where the defense lawyer simply didn’t call a key witness, or didn’t examine the evidence, or didn’t check out an alibi.
We end up giving defendants the most minimal amount of due process we can muster because anyone who suggests an alternative course is smeared as “soft on crime.”
Rome Again
It seems to me that I’ve always known this, just as a naturally inherent part of my understanding of human nature, but… I’d go further. I don’t think it just limits the ability to see what happens 5 seconds later, but that it may be correlated to the severity of the emotional event and can cause people to not see certain facts that happened five minutes, five hours or maybe even five years after the event… such as the reaction to 9/11 that is creating such a divide in our culture today.
Bush went on camera from a school in Sarasota, FL and had that “deer in headlights look” just an hour or so after the attacks. A little later, he was flying all over the US (to Barksdale and to Offutt) to make sure he wasn’t a target himself, yet his supporters see him as a heroic he-man. I might suggest that it was the severity of the emotion from the 9/11 attacks that made them dismiss his behavior at that time, allowing them to pick up a flag and drive it around for weeks on the back of their pick-up truck as a sign of support of their president.
But of course, that’s just MY opinion, and I could be wrong.
John Cole
It isn’t easy hating Bush this much, is it? I mean, I admire your ability to take a post about the criminal justice system and turn it into a personal polemic about Bush, but, cripes. Does everything go back to your visceral Bush hatred?
Rome Again
Hard choice, but I think I’d have to go with an innocent man in jail. Just because it’s such a travesty to be wrongly convicted of a crime you didn’t commit and have your life totally ruined, possibly for the rest of your life-span.
I’m curious though, do you think it possible that the choice that everyone picks between these two could draw a conclusion as to what side of the political divide they are on? It seems to me that conservatives would probably pick the guilty man who is free over the innocent man in jail. That’s just an observation I have, I’d like to think it could be proved wrong. I’d hope that everyone could have more emotional reaction towards the one wrongly accused.
Defense Guy
Broad rules regarding which would be worse are nearly impossible when considered against individual circumstance. I would say that overall the innocent man convicted is the far worse situation. However, I could certainly think of situations in which it would be harder to say. What if the guilty man is some mass murderer who will continue his crimes?
Rome Again
No John, I was talking about the severity of the event. 9/11 is a prime example of a severely emotional event. I guess I should have used another example such as Pearl Harbor and the fact that a Papanese document stating that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked on Sunday, December 7th, was delivered to Washington at least several hours before the attack, but Washington failed to warn Pearl Harbor?
Same thing… our country failed to warn a base that it was going to be attacked, and yet America rallied together under our government to “get the Japs” and gave little thought to the fact that this document failed to get delivered in time and could have saved lives.
Rome Again
Whoops, make that Japanese
KC
I understand that not all cops and DAs are perfect, innocent people get put away mistakenly sometimes, but it also seems like I’ve seen cases in which they realize something is wrong with what’s happening. Cases, for example, in which the evidence doesn’t fit, etc., but an individual gets put away nonetheless. What I’m curious about is what cops and DAs think they’re accomplishing when this happens? I mean, why would they sacrifice public safety in favor of quick closure? Any answers anyone?
jcricket
I’m 100% with you John. I’ve served on a jury before, and I can see how easy it would be to sway them with “extra-legal” manuevering. We’re all only human, after all. I know this sounds elitist, but lay-people (i.e. juries) aren’t always the best at understanding what is/is not allowed as legal evidence. Sometimes they can be (in the case I served on everyone did a good job of ignoring evidence that was excluded by the judge in our deliberations). But other times, they can over-rely on evidence like eyewitness testimony because they believe it to be highly convincing.
If you couple issues with jury behavior with the fact that the system is severely stacked against the poor (public defenders are over-worked and under-paid, police and prosecutors are seen as pillars of the community) and you end up with hundreds (if not thousands) of verifiably innocent people on death row. And that’s just those we know about in the past 5-10 years.
It’s bad enough for people to be wrongly arrested, but for all these people to serve 5, 10, 15 or even 25 years in jail for a crime that they didn’t commit is just a travesty. Frankly, this is one of the pragmatic arguments against the death penalty (that our current system is virtually guaranteed to be imposing death on people that aren’t guilty).
Perhaps if our courts weren’t so clogged with low-level “drug possession” cases we could actually devote the right amount of time to properly prosecuting the serious cases (and avoiding either guilty people going free or innocent people being expediently convicted).
I’m also in agreement there. One of the conviently ignored sides of the “Oops, so we wrongfully convicted someone. They looked guilty” argument is the fact that it allows the real criminals to get off scott-free. I’m in favor of strong sentencing for violent crimes, large-scale corruption, etc. – but I’m not in favor of blindly locking people up “just in case” they might be guilty.
Matt
Protecting their jobs, I’d wager.
gratefulcub
No it isn’t. I thought that was the basis of our legal system. innocent until proven guilty. rather let 500 criminals loose than to put one innocent man in jail.
I may be proven wrong right here on this thread, but i don’t think that is right. I believe most people would see this the same way.
The difference I have noticed, is that the presumption of innocence seems to be different. I am not trying to generalize or stereotype conservatives and libruls, enough people do that.
But, from conversations I have had, it seems that people that tend to be conservative, don’t believe people that are charged with a crime could be innocent. They believe it is possible, but highly unlikely.
From the other side, I believe:
Eye witness testimony is close to useless because you can never trust a witness unless they know the defendant (that is what this post was actually about, right?)
The bottom rungs of our socioeconomic ladder have no chance getting a fair trial.
Public defenders are usually lawyers that can’t get the lucrative jobs in real defense firms.
In all honesty, the lives lived by the conservatives I know were quite sheltered compared to mine. Our college experiences were different. When Ray Lewis (Raven’s Linebacker) went on trial for murder, even though it became quite apparent he didn’t do it….their response was: he shouldn’t have been hanging around those people, he’s guilty in my book. My response was: I have surrounded myself with shady people in the past, I sure am glad none of them stabbed anyone while riding in my limo.
jcricket
I suspect that in a number of these cases the cops and prosecutors “know” the defendent is guilty, they just can’t prove it in a court of law. They “know” because of some sixth-sense, or past history with similar cases or whatever. I’m certain this frustration with not being able to prove it leads to the presentation of weak evidence as “strong” or the appearance of certainty where none exists.
This isn’t even discussing the actually corrupt cops: The ones that just want their arrest/conviction record to look good; Or the ones who are setting someone up.
pmm
Reason magazine had an interesting article on how the jury system can be gamed a few years back–while it focused on liability claims, it does make a good case that the jury system could use some serious review. The article is here.
As for grateful cub’s note that:
I blame Law & Order. Those guys toss innocent folks into jail 10 minutes into the show every week, and they routinely employ the harassing power of the state to coherce witnesses and suspects. I can only recall one episode where they realized that the DA had wrongly convicted someone…
Seriously, I’d have to agree–when I read or hear that someone has been charged with a crime, I’m inclined to assume that they’re guilty, and upon reflection I can’t see where I’d have any evidence for that sort of assumption. Is that a conservative/liberal thing?
Rome Again
That is actually the same line of reasoning I was using, but I guess I didn’t express myself very well. Growing up with a family full of Republicans (I’m the only Democrat in a family of 7) I observed this difference as well. I wasn’t trying to stereotype either, but I’ve noticed this anomaly also.
I hope that conservatives also say that the innocent man’s situation is worse, I’m not convinced that they will though. That may just be what I feel because my parents were “bring back the whipping post” types.
pmm
Although, I must tentatively & respectfully disagree with grateful cub here:
Obviously we are willing to accept some level of inaccuracy in our judicial system, since I don’t see how you can ensure that only guilty people go to the slammer. It’s the same problem that argues for the elimination of the death penalty–since your margin of error will never be 0%, how can you have the death penalty at all?
The question is what arrangement strikes an appropriate balance between the competing interests of enforcing the law & protecting the innocent? A poor analogy would be speed limits–if our only goal was to protect lives, the speed limit would be 2 mph everywhere. But since we’ve got other interests at stake, we have speed limits that reflect our other priorities.
ppGaz
It’s a little easier when the question is phrased this way:
Which is worse? A guilty man free, or you, an innocent man, in jail?
If you think that it’s okay for some other innocent person to be in jail, you’ve just surrendered your own freedom, and mine, and everyone else’s. eh?
ppGaz
Absolutely not. The imprisonment of an innocent person can never be acceptable under any circumstances. As soon as you allow that, the American Experiment is over.
There is no compromise position here.
That does not translate into “perfect system.” It translates into a level of integrity and intolerance for error and abuse that must be beyond reproach.
slickdpdx
How about some common sense here. Doesn’t your daily experience show you that your ability to recognize other people (and to determine that the person you though looked like x from behind or from a distance, wasn’t really x) is actually quite reliable. (Which is not the same as saying perfect.)
I wonder what will happen when ppGaz is robbed?
pp, the system is about making the determination of guilt through a reasonably fair and impartial jury system, rather than through lynch mobs. Your rejection of anything short of a perfect system is a certain recipe for disaster. (I’m not saying improvements can’t be made.)
ppGaz
Did you read my post? I said that the concern DOES NOT translate into “perfect system.” The question is not whether the system can be perfect. The question is what you’ll tolerate. If you tolerate innocent people going to jail, it doesn’t matter what else you say about the system, the system is unjust and immoral. Fix it, improve it, and keep doing so. Constantly strive to make it work better.
I’ll believe that you will accept innocent people in jail when you volunteer to be one of them.
ppGaz
If that’s not clear enough, let me put it this way:
You are not going to volunteer me to be one of them.
ppGaz
I thought I had already seen the most idiotic blurb I’d see on this blog today …. but we have a new winner.
When I am robbed? I’ll click my heels together and hope that some zealous prosecutor gets somebody in jail, even if it’s the wrong person?
If your life and your property depend on your willingness to see innocent people in jail because you aren’t willing to see to it — to expend every effort — that that doesn’t happen, then your life and your property are worth nothing, and what’s more, they’re a threat to me.
I’m not sharing a country with people who think their property is more important than my freedom from unjust imprisonment, pal. Trust me.
flak
JCole, you’re likely familiar with the research on memory and eyewitness recall done by Elizabeth Loftus. For those who aren’t, here is her UWashington faculty page, with links to articles. Highly recommended — it’s fascinating stuff.
Gus diZerega
When the Governor of illinois commuted all death sentences because of serious defeciencies in the state’s criminal justice system, deficiencies exposed through DNA analysis, many right wingers in the state were outraged.
I was amazed.
Apparently they would rather take the very good chance of killing innocent people than lock guilty ones up for life.
I think “conservative” has outlived its usefulness as a political term. Those folks were just vicious. They libel the term by adoting it. Where is the skepticism about government?
Gus diZerega
I wish I typed better…
Rome Again
ppGaz, I said before you rephrased the question that I was more concerned about an innocent man in jail, you didn’t have to substitute the innocent man with me. While I don’t expect to be going to jail (barring any major changes to our judicial system in the near future), I do concern myself with the plight of innocents all the time. I don’t need to substitute the victim with my own selfishness. I’m not a selfish person, never was.
That said, having mass murderers out there running around is still not comforting. I wish we lived in a perfect world where murder and mayhem didn’t happen, but we don’t. I do think that one might feel the need to weigh the matter of a murderer going free before coming to the conclusion that an innocent man is more wronged… but I personally will come to the conclusion of the wronged innocent every time.
Kathleen
I thought it was a sad commentary on conservative discourse that you had to publish this disclaimer:
“And for those of you who think that I am merely parroting some sort of liberal ‘coddle criminals’ mentality, I will let you explain how convicting innocent men and letting guilty ones remain free to roam around meancing society is the ‘conservative’ position.”
but I see from some of the comments that it was necessary (I am looking in your direction slickdpx). I would hate to see what some of the comments would be if you had omitted the disclaimer.
also: “I do think that one might feel the need to weigh the matter of a murderer going free before coming to the conclusion that an innocent man is more wronged”
I do not.
Randolph Fritz
I commend to the attention of all the book True Witness, by James M. Doyle (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2005). The book lays out the current status of scientific research on the reliability of eyewitness evidence and the efforts to make changes in the judicial system to reduce the rate of false convictions.
“Of the first 77 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence, 65 resulted from witness error.”
Richard Aubrey
One-fifth of a second? Did I read that correctly? Is that the period that goes blank due to “rubbernecking”?
Doesn’t seem relevant. Few actions actually take that short a time. If, for example, you see somebody club somebody else, the entire swing is going to take more than a fifth of a second. If you rubberneck the strike, it takes more than a fifth of a second for the perp to get turned around to run, if that’s what he does. You’ll have several seconds to watch that. More than likely, you saw the perp before the attack. The fraction of a second is meaningless.
Interesting, but not, if I understand the study correctly, relevant.
How many of the eyewitness errors involve lineups? Lineups have their own problems and adding those to witnessing errors is chancy.
Cyrus
Got to agree with Richard Aubrey here. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable for all the reasons mentioned in comments, but not the reason in the article that started the thread. Basing anything on this would be like – sorry to bring it up – basing anything about gender relations on that study of schizophrenia, like the article Amanda Marcotte made fun of did. According to the study, the way your brain processes images is unreliable in a specific and very limited way. That’s all the scientists said.
Also, about the conservative vs. innocent presumption of guilt thing, I think it’s less a partisan thing and has more to do with the kind of crimes you hear about. I tend to presume guilt myself, overall, and I’m pretty left-wing. Aside from local stories, the crimes that really grab your attention (or “get shoved in your face” might be more appropriate) are celebrity ones. So you’re prejudiced against them for a number of reasons: when a millionaire is on trial it’s easy to believe their high-priced lawyers might have gamed the system, and it’s axiomatic that power/ego corrupts, and you’ve heard about so many similar crimes that were open and shut cases, and so on.
For example, when Rafael Palmeiro denied using steroids, how many people said “bullshit”? Most of us, I’ll bet. Was that because you have deep and implicit trust in the people making the tests, or was it because, to use just one of a hundred possible similar contributing factors, Mark McGuire’s best-selling autobiography was titled “Juiced”?
pmm
Ppgaz,
I appreciate your conviction, but do you believe that every person that is currently imprisoned is guilty? “Reasonable doubt” doesn’t mean “no doubt”. I’m merely pointing out that we have a system that must have put innocent people in jail. If we’ve identified innocent men on death row, how many guys are in there on lesser charges and not getting that sort of attention? How we fix it, I don’t know. But obviously we are willing to let an imperfect system continue to operate rather than eliminate it all together, even as we work to make it better.
pmm
To clarify further: I’m referring to the fact that we statistically allow this. I’m certainly not saying that if we knew convict A was innocent that we would keep them in prison rather than releasing convict A along with his guilty neighbors B-Z.
Suppose that we had a situation where we knew convict A was innocent, but in order to release him we had to release prisoners we knew were guilty (this is obviously a hypothetical). How many guilty prisoners would we be prepared to release in order to free convict A?
I’ll retreat to my crummy analogy from above: would anybody volunteer to die in order to have a 55 mph speed limit? Would anybody knowingly kill another human being just to have a 55 mph speed limit? But we still have it, despite the fact that somebody is going to die solely as a result. That doesn’t mean we don’t make a vigorous effort to minimize accidents or deaths and injuries on the highways. But we’re definitely not doing everything we can to save lives.
slickdpdx
pp I didn’t mean to offend you. I only meant that someone will call you a liar and say how could we ever rely on your testimony when you are only an eyewitness. I meant it to dovetail with my remarks about common sense and everyday experience confirming the overall reliability of eyewitness idenitification and recall.
You are right that knowingly tolerating an injustice against an innocent person is wrong, but that is different from acknowledging that some unknown people will be unjutifiably accused despite our best efforts.