Research has shown that that is not the case. The reliability of earwitness accounts differs under the circumstances. We are quite good at recognising voices that we're very familiar with and very bad at recognising voices with which we're only slightly familiar or unfamiliar and have heard only once. And yet, the law does not make the distinctions among these different circumstances. Studies have shown that people vary in their abilities to recognise voices.
Young adults are better at it than young children and old people.
We also have difficulty recognising a voice if it is speaking with a foreign accent or is whispering. Flawed system Stressed voices can sound very different, and the number of exposures to a voice and the time since it was last heard also have a crucial bearing on recognition. So when we are on jury duty and we are listening to a trial and somebody says, 'Yes, the voice that I heard 11 months ago is the voice of the defendant', we will tend to overestimate the accuracy of that identification. Professor Solan said the courts in the US had ignored the work of many linguists and psychologists. It's time the judicial system sat up and took notice and started listening to what the linguists and psychologists have found.