Audio Forensics: Signal Processing helps unravel JFK Shooting evidence

IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) has started a public video section on its web site it calls ieee.tv.  I have been a member of IEEE since at least my graduate school days, as are many speech and forensic scientists, so if you are in either one or both of these fields and are not a member, I highly recommend that you check into it. (And in the spirit of full disclosure and in the hopes of avoiding investigation under who knows what new law is actually now or ever will be on the books about such things on the Internet - no, they didn't pay me to plug them as a professional organization!).

On to the subject of this post: ieee.tv has a fascinating video clip on the gunshot analysis performed by various experts on the recordings JFK assassination.

Hat Tip: Thanks Alex!

Evidence: Study of the impact of CSI-style shows on jurors

An overview of the study by researchers at the University of Leicester can be found at Science Daily.

Testimony: Memory is fallible, study confirms

Cosmos (Australian, popular-science magazine) has an article on research by James Ost, University of Portsmouth (UK) into the accuracy of recall, in this case, of video news reports seen some three months prior. There were a couple of interesting statements that popped out at me:

"Ost said that people who were more likely to come up with false memories scored higher on a scale of "fantasy proneness" than those that did not." (My comment - "fantasy proneness" appears to mean "creative" in this context.)

"Ost said that when DNA testing became available in the U.S. in the early 90s, 80 per cent of death row cases that were exonerated, were found to have been wrongly convicted on the strength of mistaken identity."

Although the article doesn't address it directly, previous studies have shown that accuracy of recall also depends greatly on the amount of time that has past since the event, which gives all the more reason to get witness statements soonest.

Evidence: New procedure to improve accuracy of witness recollections

BBC Focus Magazine has an article about a technique, called self-administered interview (SAI), that is said to improve the accuracy of witness recall by 42 percent.

Under current UK police procedure, there is apparently a two step process for interviewing a witness - first a brief (summary) interview and then a more detailed one. The proposed procedure instead makes the initial process much more intensive and has the witness record as many details as possible using a questionnaire. The work is by Dr Lorraine Hope (University of Portsmouth, UK) and other researchers at University of Abertay and Florida International University.

In contrast to what the current common perception of what crime scene investigation can accomplish is, in reality there are a large number of crimes where the crucial evidence is testimony by an eye, or ear, witness. This makes accurate recollection extremely important, particularly since detailed memory does degrade rapidly with time in most people and eye/ear witness testimony, as currently "managed", is at least occasionally later found to be erroneous.

Additional Link: The Daily Telegraph (UK, center-right newspaper) also has a write-up with a few more details.