Witness Evidence

[GrandizerII]

OP, look up the studies of Frederic Bartlett, Elizabeth Loftus, Allport & Postman, and other psychologists who over the decades have conclusively demonstrated that personal memory is often unreliable, especially under certain ambient circumstances. Bartlett showed that memory was reconstructed (not directly recalled), Loftus demonstrated that witness testimonies can be sub/unconsciously manipulated via leading questions, and Allport & Portman demonstrated that predetermined schemas set the stage for what we remember.

Also, look up studies on selective attention as well (weapon focus, the gorilla test, etc.)

Here's a link on the reliability of eyewitness testimony from the APA (American Psychological Association):
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr06/eyewitness.aspx

Iowa State University experimental social psychologist Gary Wells, PhD, a member of a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice panel that published the first-ever national guidelines on gathering eyewitness testimony, says Loftus's model suggests that crime investigators need to think about eyewitness evidence in the same way that they think about trace evidence.

"Like trace evidence, eyewitness evidence can be contaminated, lost, destroyed or otherwise made to produce results that can lead to an incorrect reconstruction of the crime," he says. Investigators who employ a scientific model to collect, analyze and interpret eyewitness evidence may avoid incidents like Olson's potentially flawed identification of the Fairbanks suspects, he notes.