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Memory comes from all sorts of sensory inputs; visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory. We remember what we ate for breakfast and how it tasted, which determines whether we will eat the same breakfast again. We remember how the public bathroom smells, which prompts us to pinch our noses closed when we enter another one. We remember how an outfit looks on us, which decides whether we will show it off again, or throw the outfit into the reject pile. However, as amazing as our memory is, it is not infallible. Over time, our memories can change, sometimes even drastically. Not all memories are stored in our brains to be recalled whenever we feel like it.

Memory is stored into short-term memory, and depending on how much input we are receiving, and how efficiently we are encoding the memory (through rehearsal or repetition), it will be stored in long-term memory. Some memories don't make it past short-term, like what we had for breakfast, or what our teacher said in class, because we're not fully paying attention. A routine is encoded into "muscle memory", or implicit memory, which doesn't require us to be fully conscious of what we are doing.

With long-term explicit memory, on the other hand, we can consciously recall these memories whenever we want. We can remember what we did for Christmas or what fun we had on a trip to the beach. But over time, if the memory isn't recalled often, it can fade, with the details growing fuzzier and less vivid. With input from other people who share these memories, we can "update" the memory: a family member may remember what you got for Christmas when you don't. Once they mention the detail to you, you "remember" it, even if it isn't truly in your memory.

If memories are this editable, how can we be sure about trusting our memory? In the case of the criminal justice system, witnesses share their memories of the events being covered in a trial. What if they forgot some details? What if the event was traumatic, which could prompt the brain to block the memory from entering long-term memory? What if investigators input their hypothetical scenarios to fill in the "blanks", causing their memories to be edited?

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Memory can be impacted by external stimuli.

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Memory can be impacted by external stimuli.

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Just about anything can impact our memories in the slightest way possible. As we age, our earliest memories fade. If we're not paying full attention, details of the moment we are in may not make it to our long-term memory. If we're in pain, the memory of the pain will take over the memory of whatever else was going on at the time. Our mental health and physical health also plays into how efficiently our memory works. In Archives of Medical Research, Kirk I. Erickson, Andrea M. Weinstein, and Oscar L. Lopez studied how our memory depends on our lifestyle in our younger years. They hypothesized that increased physical activity could reduce the risk of dementia or Alzheimer's Disease in later life. The hypothesis was confirmed true when they took brain scans from willing participants of a wide age range over a period of four years, comparing those that frequently exercised against those who did not. "Therefore, greater amounts of physical activity were associated with greater gray matter volume 9 years later which, in turn, was associated with a 2-fold reduced risk of developing cognitive impairment 4 years later. These results remained significant even after controlling for several potentially confounding variables such as age, mobility, and hypertension" (Erickson et al. 2012). The study proved that the brain reacts to external stimuli, and in reacting, changed the efficiency of memory.

Our brain is not a CPU with a permanent memory file. It is an evolving, malleable organ capable of changing our memories. In the criminal justice system, eyewitness testimony is held in high regard, especially in cases pertaining to murder, rape, or other capital crimes. While important, in a dangerous situation like a murder, would an eyewitness really be able to remember everything that happened? If the eyewitness received a head injury, could they trust their memories to stay intact? If they have a medical condition that affects the brain, what would become of their testimony?

H.M. is a famous patient in the psychological field. In Simply Psychology, scientists studied how H.M. was impacted by his epilepsy— specifically his memory. After receiving surgery to relieve him of seizures, H.M. not only experienced amnesia of the last 11 years, but also couldn't form new explicit memories. Scientists later had H.M. perform a task: drawing the outline of a star every day. While H.M. couldn't remember doing the task, his drawing improved every day, implying that his brain was still able to retain implicit memories. "Until H.M.’s watershed surgery, it was not known that the hippocampus was essential for making memories and that if we lost this valuable part of our brain, we would be forced to live only in the moment-to-moment constraints of our short-term memory. Once this was realized, the findings regarding H.M. were widely publicized so that this operation to remove the hippocampus would never be done again (Shrader 2012)" (Heaning 2023).

The hippocampus is a fragile part of the brain. A simple blow to the head could greatly injure it, thus impacting our memory, as proven by H.M's case. Explicit memory is what eyewitness testimony focuses on. "If the hippocampus is damaged by disease or injury, it can influence a person's memories as well as their ability to form new memories. Hippocampus damage can particularly affect spatial memory, or the ability to remember directions, locations, and orientations" (Cherry 2022). In a situation where an eyewitness suffered injuries, how would prosecutors be sure that their memory was not impacted by these injuries at the time of the crime?

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Memories can be repressed or affected by traumatic events.

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Memories can be repressed or affected by traumatic events.

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The "memory wars" are the ongoing arguments between psychology experts about repressed memory. Some believe in the concept while some don't. In Psychological Science, a study was conducted to see what percentage of experts and laypeople alike believed in repressed memory: "A large percentage of nonresearchers endorsed the validity of repressed memories, to some degree, and endorsed their therapeutic retrieval. Notably, we found a wide rift between the beliefs of psychologists with a research focus and those of practitioner nonprofessionals" (Patihis et al. 2014). Despite evidence of repressed memory being legitimate, many were still skeptical of the notion. The term "repressed" became so controversial that it isn't widely used in the field, according to Perspectives of Psychological Science: "Many clinicians adopted a new and perhaps more palatable term dissociative amnesia. This term became the preferred and more widely used appellation for the process whereby traumas are rendered inaccessible".

In the study conducted, Otgaar, Howe, and Loftus tried to prove whether repressed memory truly was possible. They compared different cases in which a patient suffered psychological trauma and went through therapy as a result. While some remembered their trauma clearly, there were many that forgot the source of their traumas, yet displayed symptoms of PTSD and other effects from that trauma. They commented: "One of the most important hypotheses underlying the memory wars was that during psychological treatment, some therapists suggested to clients that they had repressed a memory of trauma, which might have engendered false memories. Although experimental work has confirmed that suggestive questions can elicit false memories (Scoboria et al. 2017), a paucity of systematic research exists on how therapy shapes memory" (Otgaar et al. 2019).

A case where repressed memory was evident was in the case of the Central Park Five. Trisha Meili, the woman who was raped and nearly murdered in Central Park by Matias Reyes, did not recall any details of the traumatic event when she woke from her coma. It is possible that her hippocampus was affected by the trauma and subsequent coma, causing it to repress or even delete the memories of the event, which would benefit her in terms of mental and emotional health. However, after being told of the rape and the Central Park Five teens being convicted of the attack— most likely by media outlets covering the event—, it is also possible that Trisha "remembered" the incident by imagining the scenario with the five boys in question, causing her to believe they were her attackers. With how the media made the boys out to be cold-hearted rapists and killers looking for a "good time" by torturing someone, Meili could've developed hateful feelings towards them, imagining them enjoying her suffering. As well as her memories being repressed, could they also be edited? Could entirely new memories be created in lieu of her repressed memories of the real incident?

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In Learning and Memory, E. F. Loftus brings up a study conducted by Okado and Stark in 2005, in which a group of subjects observed a man steal a girl's wallet. While the girl's neck was hurt during the incident, after the subjects were told that the girl's arm was hurt, about half of them "remembered" seeing her arm being hurt, even though that wasn't true (Loftus 2005). This study proved that memory can indeed be "edited" to suit a certain narrative if the person is fed details that directly tamper with their recollection of the memory. If the person is affected by severe trauma after witnessing an event, or being pressured by investigators and legal authorities during an interrogation, they will be more susceptible to memory edition when investigators suggest a detail that didn't exist in the original memory.

In the case of Amanda Knox, after hours of aggressive questioning that reached physical abuse by Italian investigators, Knox was vulnerable enough to be tricked into believing she met with her boss, Patrick Lumumba, which led her to wrongly implicate him in the crime. A false memory of her meeting with her boss was created, opposing the original memory; he had only texted her not to come into work the next day. Later on, Amanda even had nightmares, "remembering" hearing the murder victim, Meredith, screaming as she was raped and killed in her apartment. Even though Amanda was nowhere near the area at the time of the crime, because of the repeated accusations made by the investigators, and the vulnerable state of mind she was in, false memories of her witnessing and even taking part in the murder were created and stored.

Loftus makes notes of many studies proving the existence of false memories being created: "One study used scenarios made up by relatives of subjects, and planted false memories of being lost for an extended time in a shopping mall at age 6 and rescued by an elderly person (Loftus 1993; Loftus and Pickrell 1995). Other studies used similar methods to plant a false memory that as a child the subject had had an accident at a family wedding (Hyman Jr. et al. 1995), had been a victim of a vicious animal attack (Porter et al. 1999), or that he or she had nearly drowned and had to be rescued by a lifeguard (Heaps and Nash 2001)" (2005). If false memories can be created so easily, can we fully trust eyewitness testimony?

A prime example of the unreliability of memory is the case of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton. During the traumatic experience of her rape, Jennifer had kept calm and studied her attacker so she could be able to identify him. However, once she went to identify her attacker in the photo lineup, her attacker's photo was not present, leading her to identify the suspect that looked the most similar to her attacker. "Days after the rape, she hesitated over six mug shot options for almost five minutes before she finally selected Cotton’s picture and uttered a tentative 'I think this is the guy.' And she waffled a good deal before fingering him during a police lineup later on. But by the time she took the stand she was steadfast" (Ryan 2015). Once she saw Cotton enough times, his face integrated into the memory of her attacker, causing her to feel more confident in her identification. Once she saw her real attacker, Bobby Poole, she had no recollection of him at all. The reliance on Jennifer's confident identification sent an innocent man to prison for over 10 years.

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Conclusion: Memory is not the "smoking gun".

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Conclusion: Memory is not the "smoking gun".

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Memory is a part of our brains that is highly efficient, but has been scientifically proven to easily be affected by external stimuli, trauma, health conditions, or misinformation, among other factors. The cases mentioned prove that relying on eyewitness testimony is a gamble. Different people react in different ways to different situations. Their traumatic memories can sharpen and haunt them for years, or hide in an inaccessible part of their brain so they never recall them. People in a vulnerable state of mind can easily be swayed to "remember" a certain incident according to a narrative being fed to them. People with conditions like epilepsy, Alzheimer's, dementia, and other illnesses will have their memories altered by their conditions. Eyewitness testimony should be presented along with other definitive, intact sources of evidence that align with the testimony. While it is an important piece of evidence that should be used, the criminal justice system should not rely on memory or eyewitness testimony as a definitive source of evidence in a criminal trial, as they would with other scientific evidences that have been proven to be less infallible in comparison.

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Cherry, K. (2022) What is the Hippocampus? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-hippocampus-2795231

Erickson, K. I., et al. (2012). Physical Activity, Brain Plasticity, and Alzheimer’s Disease. Archives of Medical Research. 43(8), 615-621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arcmed.2012.09.008

Heaning, E. (2023). Henry Gustav Molaison: The Curious Case of Patient H.M. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/henry-molaison-patient-hm.html

Loftus E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: a 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 12(4), 361–366. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.94705

Otgaar, H., Howe, M. L., Patihis, L., Merckelbach, H., Lynn, S. J., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Loftus, E. F. (2019). The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 1072-1095. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619862306

Patihis, L., Ho, L. Y., Tingen, I. W., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Loftus, E. F. (2014). Are the “Memory Wars” Over? A Scientist-Practitioner Gap in Beliefs About Repressed Memory. Psychological Science, 25(2), 519–530. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24539826

Ryan, B. (2015). Eyewitness Testimony Is Unreliable… Or Is It? The Marshal Project. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/10/30/eyewitness-testimony-is-unreliable-or-is-it