Eyewitness testimonies are a tool used in court that can be used by the prosecution or criminal defense to help prove a point. However, using a witness to defend or prove your case can become unreliable if you don't use them correctly to back your defense. Not reacting properly during a cross-examination of a witness in a trial can be detrimental if you don't choose an experienced trial attorney.  

If you are someone who has come under the possible risk of being charged due to an eyewitness testimony, and you become our client, it's our job to let you know how the witness testimony may or may not dictate the outcome of your case. We seek to help you fully understand every step of the process along the way. This blog helps to serve the public to better understand the process if they end up being involved in a criminal case. 

In this blog, we will break down how and why criminal defense attorneys challenge eyewitness testimony.

What Does Eyewitness Testimony Represent

Eyewitness testimony is one of the biggest and most well-known parts of a criminal trial. The jury present in court gets to hear straight from the person who claims to have witnessed a crime being committed. This allows the jury to go and look at the evidence even more afterwards before coming to a verdict. 

Eyewitness testimonies add something to the evidence that DNA evidence and other tactics of criminal investigations don't fully show. It can only add to the physical evidence, like DNA or fingerprints, that's being used. There's a human touch to this that can sway the jury depending on whether the person who's on trial committed the crime or not.

Eyewitness testimony might be the most relied upon form of criminal defense when deciphering guilt or innocence. It's a reminder that the justice system has powerful tools for people to use to back their side, even if it's not fully 100% in execution. Understanding eyewitness testimony means grappling with how stories are framed to push a narrative, which, once again, is something that makes this unreliable at times. This is what it represents, and we want you to know this before we move forward with a criminal trial.

Challenging the Eyewitness Testimony and Its Flaws

This brings us to the topic of this blog, the reason why criminal defense attorneys challenge eyewitness testimony, and why you see a back-and-forth between a witness on the stand and the attorney/prosecutor. How much weight will a jury give to eyewitness testimony during a trial?

The answer to this question depends on the witness who testifies. There is really no concrete answer unless you factor in the conditions when they witnessed the crime, the consistency in the details that the witness is giving, given how many times they are put on the stand, or, most notably, if the witness has any motivation for their testimony that could also affect the decision made by the jurors.

There's potential that the testimony is unreliable and paints a different picture of what actually happened. Recalling and interpreting a crime that you witnessed can be miscontrued very easily if the evidence doesn't fully line up with it, and by that point, the judge will just dismiss the witness, and the whole case will be dismissed if something like that continues to happen during the trial.

You have forensic analysts, medical experts, psychologists, and accident reconstructionists, all who work to make sure the evidence is verified and looked at with the most professional eyes there are. It helps make information that coincides with an eyewitness testimony easy to understand, and even then, it's not enough for it to be helpful if it's not reliable.

And to be clear, this is something across both sides of the aisle, with the defense and the prosecution. Both use eyewitness testimony to back their evidence if they see that something is off. As we have said in a past blog, “Juries tend to give significant weight to experts—they rely on them to guide their understanding of critical issues that could determine the fate of the accused.”

This still doesn't mean it's all reliable, and is once again why attorneys challenge eyewitness testimony even if they are using it themselves to conduct a trial on their behalf. If you want to learn more about expert testimony, read our blog about it!

It's important for us to educate our clients on every possibility of circumstances occurring in a criminal trial. If you or someone you know is looking for legal defense, let us know through our contact form, and we will be happy to help!

DISCLAIMER: PAST RESULTS DO NOT GUARANTEE FUTURE RESULTS. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. DANIEL DUBOIS AND ANY DUBOIS LAW ATTORNEYS ARE NOT YOUR ATTORNEYS UNLESS RETAINED. INFORMATION SHARED HERE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. EACH CASE IS UNIQUE AND IS DECIDED BASED ON ITS OWN FACTS AND MERITS AND CANNOT BE COMPARED TO OTHER CASES WHICH MAY HAVE HAD DIFFERENT FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES.

Eyewitness Testimony FAQ

How do criminal defense attorneys challenge eyewitness testimony during a trial?

Despite a testimonial seeming to demonstrate fact, it all comes down to not just what someone says they saw, but what the prosecution can prove in court. A statement can sometimes overshadow other parts of the trial that involve evidence-based analysis.