You may think that being inebriated would result in an eyewitness’s testimony being less reliable than a sober one's.
Not so, reports the Feb. 15, Wall Street Journal citing a study, “Do Sober Eyewitnesses Outperform Alcohol Intoxicated Witnesses in a Lineup?” published in the European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context.
The WSJ reported that the five Swedish researchers' methodology included the use of an alcohol free control group and two experimental groups – both which drank screwdrivers.
The first experimental group’s blood-alcohol level was brought to a 0.04 concentration while the second experimental group was portioned the vodka and orange juice concoction until their blood-alcohol level reached 0.07.
Once the subjects of the two experimental groups were at their targeted level of inebriation, they, along with the control group, were shown a video of a staged kidnapping.
A week later, each of the study’s volunteers was asked to pick the suspect out of a lineup. The results: All three groups, the two experimental and the control, “performed about the same – better than chance, but poorly nonetheless.”
The results were very similar to those of previous studies.
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