WITNESS CONFIDENCE AND WITNESS ACCURACY - ASSESSING THEIR FORENSIC RELATION

Jurors overbelieve eyewitnesses, have difficulty reliably differentiat ing accurate from inaccurate eyewitnesses, and are not adequately sens itive to aspects of witnessing and identification conditions. A major source of juror unreliability is reliance on witness confidence, a dub ious indicator of eyewitness,accuracy even when measured at the time a n identification is made, Confidence appears to be influenced by posti dentification factors such as repeated questioning, briefings in antic ipation of cross-examination, and feedback about the behavior of other witnesses. Juror reliance on witness confidence appears to be unaffec ted by traditional safeguards such as cross-examination and judges' in structions in eyewitness cases, Expert psychological testimony on the factors that influence eyewitness memory, in contrast, appears to redu ce juror reliance on confidence and enhance use of other factors known to affect memory.