Week 7: Whodunnit?

Introduction

First, watch the weekly video with Graham and Catriona.

Download this video clip.Video player: ou_futurelearn_psychology_vid_1026.mp4

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Transcript

GRAHAM PIKE

Welcome to week 7. During this course, we have learned a great deal about the psychology of being an eyewitness, the problems of obtaining accurate eyewitness evidence and the investigative techniques that have been designed to make the most of human memory.

This has included the common errors made by eyewitnesses, problems associated with attention, weapon focus, face recognition and co-witnessing and how different types of questions and identification procedures, can alter the information that is elicited.

CATRIONA HARVARD

Our two detectives have now concluded their investigations and passed the evidence they have gathered to the prosecution. You will see that although they agree on some things, they disagree not only on what happened, but who the perpetrators are.

Using your knowledge of psychology and police investigations, you will help the defense team prepare counter arguments against the evidence that the prosecution will use.

GRAHAM PIKE

This week you will also get the chance to solve the case yourself. We will then show a video of exactly what happened in the crime and we will get the opportunity to see the results of the investigation that was conducted by a real team of police officers.

See you next week.

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This week, you’ll evaluate the investigations conducted by DI Bullet and DS Sund and determine how sound their conclusions are. You will also get a chance to solve the crime yourself before seeing what actually happened, and seeing how well real police officers managed to solve it.

You’ll be presented with the cases for the prosecution that have been built on the evidence collected by our two detectives, DI Jake Bullet and DS Lara Sund. In a real case, the defence team can bring in experts to give evidence to the jury about certain aspects of the case. Psychologists can be asked to provide expert testimony on many things, including issues of mental health and eyewitness memory. When evaluating the prosecution cases, you will take the part of a psychologist who has been hired by the defence as an expert on eyewitness memory. Your job will be to evaluate the way the evidence was collected and use the knowledge you have about eyewitness memory to show that the prosecution’s case is flawed.

In producing your expert evaluation, try and judge which pieces of evidence are the most reliable. These will come in very useful at the end of the activity when you attempt to solve the crime yourself.