, 1906-08-10
WITNESSES AT FAULT
UNRELEABlLlTY OF EVIDENCE
GIVEN IN COURT.
Few Persons Take Accurate observa.
zion of Events Happening Before
Their Eyes-How Fear and Sorrow
Color and FaIsify Sensations

Prof. Cesare ~Lombroso, the famous
expert on crime and criminals, has
this to say on the errors that are apt
to be found in the testimony OF wit
nesses in court: Apart from the fire.
quency of the pathological lie (the lie
told by those who are inclined to
falsehood without reason) 1t In neces-
sary to remember that many have
been led into error through inaccurate
that a square divided horizontally ap-
pears greater In breadth than In
height, but when divided vertically 1t
appears greater In height than in
breadth. Similarly a. nan dressed In
black seems smaller and thinner than
when clad in white. We know, too,
that when objects sud denly loom upon
us on a dark night we. see them mag
niied extraordinarily. The causes of
psychological error are numerous.
Fear and sorrow intercept sensations
and falsify them. An ordinarily our
aseous man, unnerved in a railroad
smash, declared that he had seen a
hundred bodied wedged between the
carriages. AS a matter OF fact, there
vas only one. On the same occasion
another man fed away, imagining that
he could hear the derailed engine be-
hind him for three-quarters of an hour.
A criminal named Gusio threw him
self upon his warder and the warder
took to his heels in the belief that he
saw a knife in the prisoners hand; in
reality it was a fish,
the sum total of a series of images Of
partial movement. Some of these
images are perceived only by one set
of persons; others by another set.
Grassi records in his Criminal Psych-
ology' how, assisting at an execution
where the hangman wore gloves. he
asked four others present of what
color the gloves were. One said they
we're white; another deposed they
were black; a third was sure they
were gray, while the fourth swore that
the hangmsn wore no gloves at all.
In a game of dominoes the player does
not count the spots one by one, but,
having before his eyes a focused i'm
age, decides that there are seven or
nine, as the cast may be. But. sup
posing these images did not conform
to a type, the player would be obliged
to ascertain carefully each time before
making his total. and he would still be
liable to make mistakes. Something
like this happens in all our percep-
| tons.
Prof. Lutz, who has applied to juris.
prudence so many of the conclusions
reached by criminal anthropology, one
day had a homicide with dagger
thrusts enacted Unexpectedly in school
by two students. Immediately after
ward he assembled all his pupils who
had witnessed this sham tragedy and
made them give evidence as If In
court. OF sixty eye-witnesses of the
same age, and all of them well edu-
Gated, scarcely ten gave really accur-
ate evidence. All the rest fell into
more OF less important errors of de-
tail. More recently Weber has re-
lated his experience with the men,
bers of the Society of Legal Psychol-
ogy at Gottingen. Weber requested
from each of them a written statement
Of a sham crime perpetrated under
their very eyes. Over half their num-.
Der gave inexact information, while
many of them gave imaginary details
and agreed about the affair only on
general lines"