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AllAboutMagic Veteran user California 333 Posts |
No need to delve into flames here. This is a question for our attorney friends on here. If you have seen the video released by the police department with the eyewitness account heard in the background l would love to hear your thoughts on what a piece of evidence like that means in a case like this.
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
I haven't seen it yet...will check back in when I do.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
AllAboutMagic Veteran user California 333 Posts |
Http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/168698-e......hooting/
Go to about the 6 minute mark and you will hear the conversation in the background. The language throughout the entire video is NSFW. |
mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts |
I listened to it. I'd like to see an impartially prepared transcript of what was actually said because certain portions of it are unclear. But, if the transcript is accurate this could work in favor of the officer. On the other hand, eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. It may be enough to create reasonable doubt, though, should any charges be filed. Of course all of the other witness testimony needs to be taken into account.
I'm wondering if the background speakers have been identified and interviewed yet. The sad part, though, is that all of this controversy over what exactly happened could easily have been avoided if the officer had turned on his dash cam and/or was wearing a body camera. An additonal puzzling factor is the fact that the Ferguson PD police report of the incident contains no details whatsoever concerning what happened. Simply that there was a homicide. I've never seen a police report like that and I've probably seen and reviewed hundreds. I understand that the St. Louis County police report also lacks any significant details of what happened. |
rockwall Special user 762 Posts |
It's true that eye witness testimony is considered notoriously unreliable. How about, though, eye witness testimony given at the exact same time as the event is unfolding? I would think there is a big difference between what someone thinks he 'remembers' seeing and what he recounts while he is watching it.
There was no dash cam on the car and even if there was, I think just about everything that happened would have been out of frame. (At least you might have been able to hear what happened which would be an improvement.) |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Eyewitness testimony as it happens is also unreliable. It is tainted by emotion, and excitement as events happen. VERY few are capable of narration during a situation.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts |
Danny's right. Contemporaneous eye-witness testimony, unless given by a trained observer, is just as unreliable as testimony given weeks or months later. A good example is the experiment sometimes performed in criminal justice classes, law schools, and even at the FBI academy- During a lecture an individual enters the class room, steals something and then leaves. The students are then ask to write down exactly what they saw, what the perpetrator looked like, etc. It's amazing how widely diverse, and often wildly inaccurate, the descriptions are.
Remember the famous "Invisible Gorilla" experiment, in which a man dressed as a gorilla walks right through a basketball game, pauses and waves, and walks away, completely unnoticed by people watching the game? It illustrates something known as "inattentional blindness" which offers another insight into why we should be skeptical of eyewitness testimony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness Elizabeth Loftus is one of the country's foremost experts on the fallibility of memory and eyewitness testimony. Read this for a good overview of the problems: http://www.nature.com/news/evidence-base......-1.13543 |
tomsk192 Inner circle 3894 Posts |
Yes, as magicians we actually rely on this principle, and think we are terribly clever for doing so.
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Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Bob if you want a funny story about how that exercise went in my class PM me.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
tomsk192 Inner circle 3894 Posts |
Is it too rude to share on here, Danny?
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts |
Okay!
And, yes, good magicians use these principles all of the time but, nonetheless, are equally susceptible to false memories themselves. |
tomsk192 Inner circle 3894 Posts |
For sure. It's one of those bits of neurology, where knowing the tendency does not necessarily enable one to override it.
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Dennis Michael Inner circle Southern, NJ 5821 Posts |
Come on people, they are not looters, they are undocumented shoppers.
Payless store was robbed and not a single pair of work boots were stolen. Enough is enough!
Dennis Michael
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rockwall Special user 762 Posts |
Quote:
On Aug 25, 2014, mastermindreader wrote: You and Danny may both be correct although I don't find this experiment to be a good example. It is not really contemporaneous eye-witness testimony as they are asked to write down what they saw AFTER they saw it, not during. Also, they probably weren't really pahing that much attention to it since they were watching a lecture. I suspect that if you told them to dictate what they see happen when the next person walked into the room, the results would be quite different. Of course, that's also not a great experiment as they are expecting it and not surprised by it which could also change their perception. I have no doubt that people miss details of something even while paying close attention to it but I still suspect that contemporaneous dictation of those events are significantly more reliable than trying to recall what was seen an hour or day later or of something that didn't necessarily catch their attention. |
acesover Special user I believe I have 821 Posts |
Quote:
On Aug 26, 2014, Dennis Michael wrote:
If I were to agree with you. Then we would both be wrong. As of Apr 5, 2015 10:26 pm I have 880 posts. Used to have over 1,000
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts |
The other night I was watching a baseball game on television. A player was thrown out trying to get back to first base. The announcers agreed with the first base umpire that the runner was clearly out. And one angle of an instant replay seemed to confirm it.
The play was challenged, though, and overturned. Other replay angles showed that the runner had actually touched first base before the tag. The conclusions of the contemporaneous eyewitnesses were clearly wrong. As far as I know, though, there are no contemporaneous accounts of the Ferguson shooting- that is, accounts that were recorded AS THE EVENT WAS TAKING PLACE. The background conversation you're referring to took place AFTER the shooting and is thus subject to the same problems of eyewitness testimony illustrated in the classroom exercise. |
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