Suppose that you have been called as an expert witness for a defendant accused o

•   Research examining the phenomena of flashbulb memories has shown that people’s initial and later recollections of events often differ dramatically. This should serve as a caution against automatically accepting them as evidence, and it challenges the conventional belief that certain memories are impervious to forgetting or other memory errors.
•   Post-event information, such as questions asked by the police, may become part of one’s memory for the event. Therefore what one recalls and what one actually saw are two different events. People can be led astray in their recall of information by suggestive questioning. Researchers have documented several instances of false implanted memories that seemed to be plausible memories to the person.
•   Research involving people who were exonerated by DNA evidence points to errors in eyewitness identification as one important factor in the individual’s being found guilty of a crime. Juries often believe eyewitness identification and are unaware that eyewitness confidence is, at best, a weak indicator of eyewitness accuracy.
•   Schachter summarizes the “seven sins of memory” and how they play a role in the accuracy of our memory, and he mentions several of the “sins” and describes how they would lead to problems in eyewitness identification.