Eyewitness Testimony In Ida Fink's Play 'The Table'
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Ever seen someone commit a crime, and it is up to you to give a testimony and serve justice? You would be called an eyewitness, in legal terms the phrase ‘eyewitness testimony’ refers to an account given by people of an event that they have witnessed. The real question is how reliable is an eyewitness testimony? In Ida Fink’s Play “the Table” there are four witnesses with all different testimonies. The testimonies given in the play relates to today’s society in which an eyewitness statement can involve false memories. A false memory refers to the memories that are untrue statements about an event that did not actually occur. Eyewitness testimony sometimes can be unreliable in a court room as they are in “the table” as we see the problem of…show more content… However research shows these statements can be affected by stress and other psychological factors. Some people may state eyewitness testimonies are validity juries and attorneys put pressure on an individual for an accurate testimony. In Fink’s play “The Table” the second man states “if a person saw a scene like that in a movie, maybe he or she can describe it in detail. This here, that there and so on. But when a tragedy like this is being played in real life? You expect me to look at a list when my life is hanging by a thread?” (Fink 1267) This quote is asking a powerful question, how can you impose multiple questions about a criminal event when we are all trying to get over the stress and anxiety that this event has caused? If a person or group of individuals witness a horrific crime their main focus isn’t to remember what happened step by step, but rather focus on getting to safety and staying alive. Since these testimonies cannot be 100% reliable; how can we present juries with eyewitness evidence? There has been discussions on whether cops should wear body cameras or not. This idea has been traveling around for a while but since the fatal shooting of Mike Brown, the idea has been brought up more recently. Hillary Clinton states “individual cop cameras will improve transparency and accountability in order to protect those on both sides of the