State v. Henderson and the New Model Jury Charges - New Jersey ...

a-8-08.opn.html
processing and might improve accuracy, an eyewitness under high stress is less
likely to make a reliable identification of the perpetrator.” The State agrees that
high levels of stress are more likely than low levels to impair an identification.
Scientific research affirms that conclusion. A meta-analysis of sixty-three
studies showed “considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of
stress negatively impact both accuracy of eyewitness identification as well as
accuracy of recall of crime-related details.” See Deffenbacher et al., A Meta-
Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory, supra, at
687, 699.
One field experiment tested the impact of stress on the memories of
military personnel. See Charles A. Morgan III et al., Accuracy of Eyewitness
Memory for Persons Encountered During Exposure to Highly Intense Stress, 27
Int’l J.L. & Psychiatry 265 (2004). More than 500 active-duty military
personnel, with an average of four years in the service, experienced two types of
interrogation after twelve hours of confinement in survival school training: “a
high-stress interrogation (with real physical confrontation) and a low-stress
interrogation (without physical confrontation).” Id. at 267-68. Both
interrogations lasted about 40 minutes. Id. at 268. Twenty-four hours later, the
subjects were shown either a live lineup or a sequential or simultaneous photo
array, and asked to identify their interrogators. Id. at 269-70.
Across the procedures, subjects performed more poorly when they
identified their high-stress interrogators. Id. at 272. For example, when viewing
live line-ups, 30% of subjects accurately identified high-stress interrogators,
but 62% did so for low-stress interrogators. Ibid. The study’s authors concluded
that
[Id. at 274.]
[c]ontrary to the popular conception that
most people would never forget the face of a
clearly seen individual who had physically
confronted them and threatened them for more
than 30 min[utes], . . . [t]hese data provide
robust evidence that eyewitness memory for
persons encountered during events that are
personally relevant, highly stressful, and
realistic in nature may be subject to substantial
error.
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