Today’s guest speaker Gil Zamora did a great job of giving real world context to the concepts that we have been learning in class so far. His experience was definitely evident as he spoke about what it was like to be a criminal sketch artist. I was very interested in the importance of understanding how unreliable memory can be. We have spoken a lot in class so far about how different bias’ and perceptions can affect the outcome of a case. It never occurred to me that this concept also applies when trying to identify a suspect. Although eyewitness accounts of crimes are important, they can lead to unreliable information which could cause an innocent person to be put behind bars.
To me, the most interesting concept from today’s speaker was the concept of asking improper questions to a witness while sketching. For example, in class today he decided to have us all describe features to him so that he could draw out a “suspect”. One student was asked to describe the suspect’s eyebrows. The guest speaker then prompted him by asking whether the suspect had a unibrow or not. That question was considered “improper” because it suggested something to the witness that they did not bring up first. It is more important for the sketch artist to get correct information than to draw a really nice realistic sketch. Details are extremely important when identifying the correct suspect in a case.
It was really interesting to hear about a different aspect of crime today. Both professors that I’ve heard from so far have had different experiences with criminology and it has been interesting to see the difference between real life crime and what we see in T.V shows.
