Epistemic Innocence and the Overcritical Juror
In this post, Katherine Puddifoot , Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University, discusses her paper “ Re-evaluating the credibility of eyewitness testimony: the misinformation effect and the overcritical juror ,” recently published in Episteme. Should we trust eyewitnesses of crimes? Are jurors inclined to trust eyewitnesses more than they should? People tend to adopt a default position of trust towards eyewitness testimony, finding it highly convincing. However, as has now been widely acknowledged, eyewitnesses are subject to memory errors, which make them susceptible to error. These two observations have pointed many researchers towards the conclusion that jurors do trust eyewitnesses more than they should. However, in a recent paper, I argue that jurors are susceptible to being over critical, assigning too little credence to eyewitness testimony, due to the presence of memory errors. How can this be so? Jurors might adopt a default position of trust to...