PrepTest 115, Section 4, Question 13
Nearly every criminal trial includes eyewitness testimony, and(18 more words not shown)
Each of the following, if(7 more words not shown)
- AEyewitnesses' reports are(6 more words not shown)
- BIn most crimes,(23 more words not shown)
- CThe shock of(17 more words not shown)
- DJudges often instruct(11 more words not shown)
- EJurors are very(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
An eyewitness confidently says, “That's the person I saw,” and the jury convicts the wrong person. I can see how that could happen. But describing a plausible mistake isn't the same as showing that it commonly explains mistaken convictions.
The psychologists have proposed a hypothesis. I'd like evidence about both parts of it: how often witnesses misidentify people and whether those identifications influence verdicts. For example, poor vision or a brief look at the offender could make identification unreliable. We would then need the mistaken identification to matter to the conviction.
What we’re looking for
The question gives us four facts that support the hypothesis and asks for the exception. So we're looking for the choice that doesn't help establish this connection. It could be irrelevant, or it could give us a reason juries are less likely to turn a witness's mistake into a mistaken conviction.
Working the answers
- A
This makes eyewitness reports important to verdicts. If convictions rarely depended on those reports, mistakes in them would have less opportunity to cause mistaken convictions. Making them the most common reason for conviction helps connect witness error with the outcome the psychologists want to explain.
A doesn't independently prove that witnesses often misidentify people. A strengthener can support one part of the explanation without establishing the whole hypothesis by itself.
- B
This gives a concrete reason to expect identification errors: witnesses often get only a brief look, and people generally remember briefly seen faces poorly. That supports the possibility that a witness's identification could be wrong, rather than treating eyewitness testimony as automatically reliable.
- C
Shock can distort the remembered face. That supplies another way the circumstances of witnessing a crime could interfere with accurate identification. A witness could sincerely believe the remembered image while that image differed from the perpetrator's actual face.
- DCorrect
Warning juries when eyewitness testimony can be unreliable could help them avoid relying on a mistaken identification. That doesn't support the claim that such mistakes commonly produce wrongful convictions; it describes a possible safeguard against that result.
The warning does acknowledge that eyewitnesses can be wrong. But the hypothesis concerns those mistakes leading to convictions, not merely the existence of unreliable testimony. Helping jurors recognize the risk could interrupt that connection. We don't have to prove the warnings always work to see why D is the exception.
- E
This links unreliable testimony to jurors believing it. If unreliable witnesses usually appear confident, and jurors are especially likely to believe confident witnesses, then jurors may trust testimony they should question. That helps explain how an eyewitness's mistake could become a mistaken conviction.
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