Criminologist says witness conflict not a surprise in sniper case

A criminologist from Cedar Falls says it’s not surprising that the investigation of the Maryland sniper shootings has taken a big setback because of flawed eyewitness reports. U-N-I psychology professor Otto McLin says it’s not easy to be a good, accurate witness when events happen suddenly.He says people don’t always know what to look for, and might look at the victim of a shooting instead of looking where the shot came from, and suffer a kind of “attention deficit” as they try to piece together information that’s not always correct. Professor McLin says while some do intend to get attention or cause trouble by bearing false witness, most people simply know at the time that they happen to be in a situation where events are occurring that they’ll be asked about later. While some cranks do mean to feed reporters or police wrong or misleading information, he says most don’t mean to — but even good witnesses aren’t in control of what events they’re memorizing at the moment. Some people who wanted to help police with the recent rash of Washington-area shootings weren’t even within sight of the fatal attacks. He says with eyewitnesses we’re relying on human memory, and to properly encode something in memory, you have to have a good view of it to begin with. McLin says eyewitness testimony is properly handled just like any other evidence in a case, and he compares it to the use of DNA samples. He says they can risk contaminating it: just as with DNA where they don’t want it mixed with anything else, people who do have eyewitness information may become confused whether their memory includes what they saw or information they picked up later talking with other witnesses. Professor McLin says that’s why police are taught how to handle eyewitnesses, and often separate them so they won’t talk about an event with others. Can you train to be a good eyewitness? Often people are witnesses but don’t know it, and he gives the example of someone coming around later to say “Did you see this vehicle outside?” to which you might answer “Well, I guess I did.”