SMU | YPH SCHOOL OF LAW | 2026
SEMINAR 7
HUMAN MEMORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE
Seminar synopsis
What did you wear to last week's class? When was your boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend born? Under what circumstances can a contract be vitiated? How did you feel on your first day in primary school? Where did you first learn to ride a bicycle?
Some of these questions are easy to answer; some aren't. But responding accurately to all of them (and a whole host of other questions we meet in our daily life) necessitate accessing our memories to some extent. Forgetting is part and parcel of life. Not being able to recall information completely or accurately may cause us the occasional inconvenience (or a mark or two in our exams). However, the same kind of imperfections in our memory, when observed in the legal system, may have further-reaching consequences.
In this week's class, we are introduced (very briefly) to how the human memory functions. With that basic understanding in mind, we further explore the various factors that influence how accurately a witness to an event can recall the details of what he/she saw or experienced. Finally, we look at how our courts have approached the fallibility of human memory, and whether or not judges have taken this into consideration when hearing and assessing eyewitness evidence.
Readings
The following chapters from NOBA (which are very manageable in length, and ought to give you a working understanding of human memory and its mechanics):
Bartol, Chapter 5: Eyewitness Evidence
This chapter discusses the various factors that may affect the accuracy of an eyewitness' ability recall information accurately and completely.
Watch the following TED Talks:
Kaplan, R. L., Damme, I. V., and Levine, L.J., Loftus E.F. (2015) Emotion and False Memory. Emotion Review, 8(1), 8-13. (available on eLearn)
Loftus, E.F., and Palmer, J.C. (1974) Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example Of The Interaction Between Language And Memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 585-589. (available on eLearn)
Read the following cases with this question in mind: in each of these cases, what are some of the factors that could have affected the credibility of the evidence presented by the eyewitnesses? Did the court recognise these factors? If so, how were the outcomes of these cases shaped by these factors?
Thirumalai Kumar v PP [1997] 2 SLR(R) 266
Heng Aik Ren Thomas v PP [1998] 3 SLR(R) 142
Ye Wei Gen v PP [1999] 2 SLR(R) 1074
Sandz Solutions (Singapore) Pte Ltd and others v Strategic Worldwide Assets Ltd and others [2014] 3 SLR 562, in particular, at [42] – [56]
R v Turnbull [1976] 3 WLR 445
State of New Jersey v Larry R Henderson (2011), Supreme Court of New Jersey
Kunasekaran s/o Kalimuthu Somasundara v Public Prosecutor [2018] 4 SLR 580
Public Prosecutor v GCK and another matter [2020] 1 SLR 486