Memory Errors in Alibi Generation: How an Alibi Can Turn Against Us

Behavioral Sciences and the Law

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2017, Pages 6-17

  Crozier, William E ^a,b   Strange, Deryn ^a   Loftus, Elizabeth F ^c  

^a JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE   (United States)

^b CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CRIMINAL JUSTICE; DECEPTION; DECISION MAKING; ERROR; GUILT; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; INFORMATION RETRIEVAL; LAW ENFORCEMENT; MEMORY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; WITNESS; CRIME; CRIMINAL LAW; PHYSIOLOGY; PROCEDURES; PSYCHOLOGY; RECALL;

CRIME; CRIMINAL LAW; DECEPTION; DECISION MAKING; GUILT; HUMANS; JUDGMENT; LAW ENFORCEMENT; MEMORY; MENTAL RECALL;

EID: 85012912808     PISSN: 07353936     EISSN: 10990798     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/bsl.2273     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Allison, M., & Brimacombe, C. A. (2010). Alibi believability: The effect of prior convictions and judicial instructions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40(5), 1054–1084. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00610.x.
2. Allison, M., Michael, S. W., Mathews, K. R., & Overman, A. A. (2011). Brief report: Narrative qualities and perceptions of generated alibis. North American Journal of Psychology, 13(3), 359–365.
3. Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1063–1087. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.20.5.1063.
4. Ayers, M. S., & Reder, L. M. (1998). A theoretical review of the misinformation effect: Predictions from an activation-based memory model. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5(1), 1–21. doi:10.3758/BF03209454.
5. Barnier, A., Hung, L., & Conway, M. (2004). Retrieval-induced forgetting of emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories. Cognition and Emotion, 18(4), 457–477. doi:10.1080/0269993034000392.
6. Bartlett, F. C., & Burt, C. (1933). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 3(2), 187–192. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1933.tb02913.x.
7. Berman, G. L., & Cutler, B. L. (1996). Effects of inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony on mock-juror decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(2), 170–177. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.81.2.170.
8. Berman, G. L., Narby, D. J., & Cutler, B. L. (1995). Effects of inconsistent eyewitness statements on mock-jurors' evaluations of the eyewitness, perceptions of defendant culpability and verdicts. Law and Human Behavior, 19(1), 79–88. doi:10.1007/BF01499074.
9. Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 717–726. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80006-9.
10. Brewer, N., & Burke, A. (2002). Effects of testimonial inconsistencies and eyewitness confidence on mock-juror judgments. Law and Human Behavior, 26(3), 353–364. doi:10.1023/A:1015380522722.
11. Bromwich, J. E., & Stack, L. (2016, June 30). Adnan Syed, of ‘Serial’ podcast, gets a retrial in murder case. New York Times. Retrieved 1 September 2016 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/serial-adnan-syed-new-trial.html?emc=edit_na_20160630&nlid=41687349&ref=cta&_r=0
12. Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. (2011). Plea and charge bargaining: Research summary. Retrieved 4 April 2016 from: https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf
13. Burke, A., Heuer, F., & Reisberg, D. (1992). Remembering emotional events. Memory & Cognition, 20(3), 277–290. doi:10.3758/BF03199665.
14. Burke, T. M., & Turtle, J. W. (2003). Alibi evidence in criminal investigations and trials: Psychological and legal factors. Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services, 1(3), 193–201.
15. Burke, T. M., Turtle, J. W., & Olson, E. A. (2007). Alibis in criminal investigations and trials. In The handbook of eyewitness psychology (pp. 157–174) 1. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publ.
16. Culhane, S. E., Hosch, H. M., & Kehn, A. (2008a). Alibi generation: Data from US Hispanics and US non-Hispanic whites. Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 6(3), 177–199. doi:10.1080/15377930802243395.
17. Culhane, S. E., & Hosch, H. M. (2012). Changed alibis: Current law enforcement, future law enforcement, and lay person reactions. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(7), 958–977. doi:10.1177/0093854812438185.
18. Culhane, S. E., Kehn, A., Horgan, A. J., Meissner, C. A., & Hosch, H. M. (2008b). Consistency in alibi generation: Data for true and false alibis. In annual meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, Jacksonville, FL. USA.
19. Dahl, L. C., Brimacombe, C. A., & Lindsay, D. S. (2009). Investigating investigators: How presentation order influences participant-investigators' interpretations of eyewitness identification and alibi evidence. Law and Human Behavior, 33(5), 368–380. doi:10.1007/s10979-008-9151-y.
20. DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. J., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 74–118. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.1.74.
21. Dillon, M. K., Jones, A. M., Bergold, A. S., Hui, C., & Penrod, S. D. (2016). Henderson instructions: Do they enhance evidence evaluation? Manuscript under review.
22. Dysart, J., & Strange, D. S. (2012). Beliefs about alibis and alibi investigations: A survey of law enforcement. Psychology, Crime, & Law, 18(1), 11–25. doi:10.1080/1068316X.2011.562867.
23. Ebbinghaus, H. (1913/1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. Translated by Henry A. Ruger & Clara E Bussenius. New York: Columbia University.
24. Fisher, R. P., Brewer, N., & Mitchell, G. (2009). The relation between consistency and accuracy of eyewitness testimony: Legal versus cognitive explanations. In Williamson, T., Bull, R., & Valentine, T. (Eds.), Handbook of psychology of investigative interviewing: Current developments and future directions (pp. 121–136). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell
25. Gabbert, F., Memon, A., Allan, K., & Wright, D. B. (2004). Say it to my face: Examining the effects of socially encountered misinformation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 9(2), 215–227. doi:10.1348/1355325041719428.
26. Hartwig, M., & Bond, C. F. Jr. (2011). Why do lie-catchers fail? A lens model meta-analysis of human lie judgments. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 643–659. doi:10.1037/a0023589.
27. Hartwig, M., Granhag, P. A., Strömwall, L. A., & Kronkvist, O. (2006). Strategic use of evidence during police interviews: When training to detect deception works. Law and Human Behavior, 30(5), 603–619. doi:10.1007/s10979-006-9053-9.
28. Hessick, F. A. I. I. I., & Saujani, R. (2002). Plea bargaining and convicting the innocent: The role of prosecutor, the defense counsel, and the judge. Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law, 16(2), 189–243.
29. Hill, C., Memon, A., & McGeorge, P. (2008). The role of confirmation bias in suspect interviews: A systematic evaluation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13(2), 357–371. doi:10.1348/135532507X238682.
30. Hope, L., Mullis, R., & Gabbert, F. (2013). Who? What? When? Using a timeline technique to facilitate recall of a complex event. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2(1), 20–24.
31. Inbau, F. E., Reid, J. E., Buckley, J. P., & Jayne, B. C. (2013). Criminal interrogations and confessions (5th ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
32. Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3–28. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.114.1.3.
33. Jones, T. C., & Jacoby, L. L. (2001). Feature and conjunction errors in recognition memory: Evidence for dual-process theory. Journal of Memory and Language, 45(1), 82–102. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2761.
34. Kassam, K. S., Gilbert, D. T., Swencionis, J. K., & Wilson, T. D. (2009). Misconceptions of memory the Scooter Libby effect. Psychological Science, 20(5), 551–552. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02334.x.
35. Kassin, S. M., Drizin, S. A., Grisso, T., Gudjonsson, G. H., Leo, R. A., & Redlich, A. D. (2010). Police-induced confessions: Risk factors and recommendations. Law and Human Behavior, 34(1), 3–38. doi:10.1007/s10979-009-9188-6.
36. Kassin, S. M., Goldstein, C. C., & Savitsky, K. (2003). Behavioral confirmation in the interrogation room: On the dangers of presuming guilt. Law and Human Behavior, 27(2), 187–203. doi:10.1023/A:1022599230598.
37. Koenig, S. (Producer). (2014, October 3) The Alibi [Episode 1], Serial [Audio podcast]. Retrieved 2 April 2016 from http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/537/the-alibi
38. Krix, A. C., Sauerland, M., Lorei, C., & Rispens, I. (2015). Consistency across repeated eyewitness interviews: Contrasting police detectives' beliefs with actual eyewitness performance. PloS One, 10(2), 1–17. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118641.
39. Lampinen, J. M., Faries, J. M., Neuschatz, J. S., & Toglia, M. P. (2000). Recollections of things schematic: the influence of scripts on recollective experience. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14(6), 543–554. doi:10.1002/1099-0720(200011/12)14:6<543::AID-ACP674>3.0.CO;2-K.
40. Leins, D. A., & Charman, S. D. (2016). Schema reliance and innocent alibi generation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 21, 111–126. doi:10.1111/lcrp.12035.
41. Lindsay, D. S. (2008). Source monitoring. In Roediger, H. L. III, & Byrne, J. (Eds.), Cognitive Psychology of memory. Vol 2 of Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (pp. 325–347) 4. Oxford: Elsevier.
42. Liptak, A. (October 30, 2011). Supreme Court to Weigh Effects of Bad Plea Advice. The New York Times.
43. Loftus, E. F. (1996). Memory distortion and false memory creation. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 24(3), 281–295.
44. Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning and Memory, 12(4), 361–366. doi:10.1101/lm.94705.
45. Loftus, E. F., & Ketcham, K. (1994). The myth of repressed memory: False memories and allegations of abuse. New York: St. Martin's.
46. Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of an automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3.
47. Luke, T. J., Crozier, W. E., & Strange, D. (in press). Memory errors in police interviews: The bait question as a source of misinformation. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
48. MacLeod, M. (2002). Retrieval-induced forgetting in eyewitness memory: Forgetting as a consequence of remembering. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 135–149. doi:10.1002/acp.782.
49. Marion, S. B., Kukucka, J., Collins, C., Kassin, S. M., & Burke, T. M. (2015). Lost proof of innocence: The impact of confessions on alibi witnesses. Law and Human Behavior, Advanced online publication. doi:10.1037/lhb0000156.
50. Marsh, R. L., Hicks, J. L., & Davis, T. T. (2002). Source monitoring does not alleviate (and may exacerbate) the occurrence of memory conjunction errors. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(2), 315–326. doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00005-0.
51. National Academy of Sciences (2014). Identifying the culprit: Assessing eyewitness identification. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
52. Neisser, U. (1982). Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
53. New Jersey vs. Henderson. 27 A. 3d 872 (New Jersey Supreme Court, 2011).
54. Newman, E. J., & Lindsay, D. S. (2009). False memories: What the hell are they for? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(8), 1105–1121.
55. Nieuwkamp, R., Horselenberg, R., & van Koppen, P. J. (2016). A lie and a mistress: On increasing the believability of your alibi. Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law, 1–13. doi:10.1080/13218719.2016.1142934.
56. Nolan, J. R. (1990). Black's Law dictionary (6th ed.). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.
57. Odegard, T., & Lampinen, J. (2004). Memory conjunction errors for autobiographical events: More than just familiarity. Memory, 12(3), 288–300. doi:10.1080/09658210244000621.
58. Oeberst, A. (2012). If anything else comes to mind…better keep it to yourself? Delayed recall is discrediting – unjustifiably. Law and Human Behavior, 36(4), 266–274. doi:10.1037/h0093966.
59. Olson, E. A. (2013). “You don't expect me to believe that, do you?” Expectations influence recall and belief of alibi information. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 43, 1238–1237. doi:10.1111/jasp.12086.
60. Olson, E. A., & Charman, S. D. (2012). ‘But can you prove it?’ – examining the quality of innocent suspects' alibis. Psychology, Crime, & Law, 18(5), 453–471. doi:10.1080/1068316X.2010.505567.
61. Olson, E. A., & Wells, G. L. (2004). What makes a good alibi? A proposed taxonomy. Law and Human Behavior, 28(2), 157–176. doi:10.1023/B:LAHU.0000022320.47112.d3.
62. Olson, E. A., & Wells, G. L. (2012). The alibi-generation effect: Alibi-generation experience influences alibi evaluation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 17(1), 151–164. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8333.2010.02003.x.
63. Rubin, D. C., Berntsen, D., & Bohni, M. K. (2008). A memory-based model of posttraumatic stress disorder: Evaluating basic assumptions underlying the PTSD diagnosis. Psychological Review, 115(4), 985–1011. doi:10.1037/a0013397.
64. Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54(3), 182–203. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.182.
65. Shaw, J. S., Bjork, R. A., & Handal, A. (1995). Retrieval-induced forgetting in an eyewitness-memory paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2(2), 349–253. doi:10.3758/BF03210965.
66. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (2011). What people believe about how memory works: A representative survey of the US Population. PloS One, 6(8). doi:10.1371/journal/pone.0022757.
67. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (2012). Common (mis) beliefs about memory: A replication and comparison of telephone and Mechanical Turk survey methods. PloS One, 7(12). doi:10.1371/journal/pone.0051876.
68. Skagenberg, E. M., & Wright, D. B. (2008). The co-witness misinformation effect: Memory blends or memory compliance? Memory, 16(4), 436–442. doi:10.1080/09658210802019696.
69. Sommers, S. R., & Douglass, A. B. (2007). Context matters: Alibi strength varies according to evaluator perspective. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 12(1), 41–54. doi:10.1348/135532506X114301.
70. Strange, D., Dysart, J., & Loftus, E. F. (2014). “Oops, I guess I made a mistake”: Why alibi errors are not necessarily evidence of guilt. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 222, 82–90. doi:10.1027/2151-2604/a000169.
71. Talarico, J. M., & Rubin, D. C. (2009). Flashbulb memories result from ordinary memory processes and extraordinary event characteristics. In Luminet, O., & Curci, A. (Eds.), Flashbulb memories: New issues and new perspectives (pp. 79–97). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
72. Thompson-Cannino, J., Cotton, R., & Torneo, E. (2009). Picking cotton: Our memoir of injustice and redemption. New York, NY: St Martin's Press.
73. Van Brunt, A. (June 17, 2015). Poor People Rely on Public Defenders Who Are Too Overworked to Defend Them. The Guardian.
74. Wells, G. L., Memon, A., & Penrod, S. D. (2006). Eyewitness evidence: Improving its probative value. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(2), 45–75.
75. Wells, G. L., Small, M., Penrod, S., Malpass, R. S., Fulero, S. M., & Brimacombe, C. A. E. (1998). Eyewitness identification procedures: recommendations for lineups and photospreads. Law and Human Behavior, 22(6), 603–647. doi:10.1023/A:1025750605807.