The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory

by Julia Shaw

Everyone has the right to a fair trial, and that trial is only fair if there are empirically based standards of evidence. We need to ensure that trials become less biased against people who are accused of crimes, and take more to heart the truism that just because you have been accused of doing something bad it does not mean you did it. Given what I know about memory, I would not want to live in a world where a single memory by itself is enough to enact legal sanctions. According to the international organisation the Innocence Project,16 which is dedicated to exonerating convicts who they strongly believe are innocent, faulty memories, particularly of eyewitnesses, are the major contributing factor for wrongful convictions. For example, in 2015, out of 325 cases where modern DNA testing proved innocence beyond reasonable doubt, a whopping 235 cases involved eyewitness misidentification. This suggests that false memories play an absolutely critical role in the imprisonment of the innocent.