This talk is a great one about how certainty, when it relates to memories, can be misplaced and can even be very destructive. I guess it is really a great example, though a tragedy for the person involved, of memories being created after the experience. We are all eyewitnesses at one time or another. Remembering our family discussion from this morning. Remembering how we went on our last holiday. Remembering how the work performance meeting went. Remembering how the talk by our boss went. The little memories of life. Not as important as the ones described here but just as likely to be off the mark. Especially when you said ...
Forensic psychologist Scott Fraser studies how we remember crimes. He describes a deadly shooting and explains how eyewitnesses can create memories that they haven't seen. Why? Because the brain is always trying to fill in the blanks. As he states "The accuracy of our memories is not measured in how vivid they are, nor how certain you are that they are correct."
When it comes to witnesses in criminal trials, the accuracy of human memory can mean the difference between life and death. Scott Fraser is a forensic psychologist who researches what's real and what's selective when it comes to human memory and crime. He focuses on the fallibility of human memory and encourages a more scientific approach to trial evidence. He has testified in criminal and civil cases throughout the U.S. in state and federal courts.
In 2011 Fraser was involved in the retrial of a 1992 murder case in which Francisco Carrillo was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences in prison. Fraser and the team that hired him staged a re-enactment of the night in question, and they showed the testimonies that had put Carrillo in jail were unreliable. After 20 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, Carrillo was freed.