One person sees something and gives an account. Another person sees the same thing and gives an account. The eyewitness testimony is thus reproduced.
I don't think you understand the concept of reproducing something or what it means.
Two people seeing the same thing at the same time does not mean it has been reproduced. If two people saw the same thing at different times, say a week apart, then one could say it was reproduced.
Or to put it bluntly, two people see the exact same thing at the same time and are able to describe the exact same thing does not mean the "eyewitness testimony is reproduced". What that means is that it has been corroborated. Do you understand what that word means?
Which is why it is so "unreliable" in court trials, news reports, and history. Yeah..so unreliable. lol!
It actually is very unreliable. Multiple eyewitnesses will more often than not give completely different accounts to what they witnessed. For example, the Michael Brown shooting, which had multiple eyewitnesses.
The guy on his balcony:
“I see a guy on the side, on the driver’s side of a police vehicle. I just see something going on through the window, like a tussling going on through the window…
“The moment they take off running, I see the officer immediately gets out of his vehicle, pull out his gun definitely in his shooting position, and let me see. Mike must have probably made it about right here in front of this driveway, as I said before, he didn’t make to there, he just when he gets out of the car he just immediately starts shoot…
“He’s taking like large steps so I didn’t see him like run or anything, so he is just taking large steps, you know, towards him, you know, while his back is turned toward him.
“[After grabbing my phone] …I see Mr. Brown kind of bent down a little bit with his arms tucked in like on his stomach so now I’m thinking that he’s now shot. He was going down, definitely so, and the officer just let out a few more rounds to him and he hit the ground and that’s when I see blood...
“I didn’t see the hands go up. I didn’t see no hands go up.”
Another eyewitness from an apartment:
“I couldn’t really tell what was going on. It was just a lot of movement going on by the window of the car...
"So I’m looking at the officer chase Michael down the street.”
“And at this time, I heard another shot fired while they were running. After that, [Brown] then turns, had his hands in the air, by the time that I saw him have his hands in the air he got shot. I heard two shots like specifically in my head, I saw those two shots. And he dropped down like kinda drop hands first, then knee, then face and everything else.”
Just from these two witnesses, can you pick out the differences in what they saw of the exact same event at the exact same time?
The one on his balcony claims that Michael Brown took off running and the officer got out of the police car and pulls out his gun and assumes a shooter's stance, and just starts shooting. The other eyewitness claims that the officer chased Michael Brown down the street and then says that Brown turned and had his hands in the air when he was shot, two shots and he claims to have seen those two shots, and then he dropped his hands, then to his knees and then face down. The other witness from his balcony did not see Michael Brown put his hands up. Gee, two different people, saw the exact same thing and saw completely different things.
How about the other witness who pulled up in his car when the altercation first began?
“I seen a young man standing near the cruiser, you head two shots fired And then a police officer hopped out of his cruiser and started chasing him, the dude turned back around and started charging towards the police officer, the police officer told him to stop at least three times…
“He was still down the street, he was running back…he put his hands up for a few seconds and then put his arms down and kind of put them close to his chest and he started running.
“And the boy wouldn’t stop, he fired three rounds, the dude kept running, fired four more rounds, and the finished off the rounds I guess, and he fell on the ground dead.”
Again, vastly different.
Or the eyewitness who was walking down the street and was also an eyewitness:
“I saw the officer back his van up and hit the two boys. Um, immediately his friend took off and…Mike he started like fighting with the officer through his window. I don’t know why they were fighting through the window but then you heard the first shot and all the cars on the street stopped. They started backing up.
“Then he, uh, started running. He stopped halfway and turned around and that’s when you heard the rest of the shows. And I don’t have really good eyes so I couldn’t see like exactly where he got hit or anything like that. But it was about seven, eight shots that I heard…And like he did have his hands up. People wasn’t just saying that. He did turn around and put his hands up.”
He saw a police van hit Michael Brown and his friend... And he claims that the first shot was at the car window. The other witness who claims this said two shots were fired at the window, while the other witness said the shooting started after the running chase down the road and yet another eyewitness said there was no chase and the officer got out of his car, took a shooting stance and just opened fire.
The eyewitness who walked down the street said that Michael Brown started running, said that Brown put his hands up and simply turned around, and he heard 7 to 8 or so shots, after one shot when Brown was at the car window. A
recording of the shooting said this:
Forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg says he heard six shots, a pause, and then four additional shots. Ginsberg said, "I was very concerned about that pause ... because it's not just the number of gunshots, it's how they're fired. And that has a huge relevance on how this case might finally end up." CNN's law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes noted that most accounts of the shooting say there was a single shot earlier in the incident near the vehicle that is not audible in the recording. The recording was also analyzed by SST, Inc., a company specializing in gunfire locator technology. That analysis found the sound of ten gunshots and seven gunshot echoes within seven seconds, with a three-second pause after the sixth shot. The company's analysis also said that all ten rounds were fired from within a radius of 3 feet (0.91 m), indicating that the shooter was not moving.
And do you want to read an analysis of the eyewitnesses and how said "evidence" was handled when it came to eyewitness testimony?
Multiple witnesses saw part or all of the event and have given interviews to the media, testified to the grand jury, and were interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The witness accounts were conflicting on various points. David A. Klinger, a criminologist at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, said that eyewitness testimony often differs from witness to witness, a phenomenon commonly known as the Rashomon effect.
An Associated Press review of the grand jury found that there were numerous problems in the witness testimony, including statements that were "inconsistent, fabricated, or provably wrong". Several of the witnesses admitted changing their testimony to fit released evidence, or other witness statements. Prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch said, "I thought it was important to present anybody and everybody, and some that were, yes, clearly not telling the truth, no question about it."
The Department of Justice investigation into the shooting determined that witnesses who corroborated Wilson's account were credible while those who contradicted his account were not. The witnesses that claimed Brown was surrendering or did not move toward Wilson were not credible; the report stated that their claims were inconsistent with the physical evidence, other witness statements, and in some cases prior statements from the same witness. No witness statements that pointed to Wilson's guilt were determined to be credible. Twenty-four statements were determined to lack any credibility, while eight which were found credible corroborated Wilson's account. Nine did not completely contradict nor corroborate Wilson's account. Several witnesses reported fear of reprisals from the community for providing evidence that corroborated Wilson's account.
This is why eyewitness testimony is often unreliable.
And it is a prime example of just how eyewitness testimony can sometimes be used to pervert the course of justice.
