Witness Testimony: Albert Cadosche

[A P Tomlinson]

If the article told us which was mistaken and which was not, that would be worth reading.
As it is we still have to figure it out, so how does that article help?

It only helps people who need an easy way to eliminate suspects that are inconvenient to their theory.
It creates a means by which people get to pick and choose their witnesses based on whether or not is supports their theory rather than measuring it alongside the surrounding evidence as a package.
"Witnesses can be unrelibale" becomes a blanket statement where there is no need to substantiate why a specific witness is being eliminated from the theory, rather than providing a valid basis for discounting that witness.
If a witness says they saw someone in passing, in the dark at distance, after the witness left the pub with a skinful, there is valid issue that may (MAY) support an argument that they were mistaken. But the "witnesses are unrleiable" lumps every witness into that same standard.
Which is wrong.

I'm working my way through it, but I don't see how it helps with any specific cases.
If you apply this thinking to all witnesses, how does it help identify reliable testimony - maybe it's in the last chapter.

It isn't.
I read it all... spare yourself... (ironically it's VERY forgetable.)

It spends a great deal of time and effort explaining how any number of external influences can cause or trigger the "Misinformation Effect" but seems to support that if you leave a witness alone to just remember the basics of something without dicking about asking misleading questions or pushing answers on them, they are pretty reliiable.

And even when they have been led to an answer, that doesn't mean they will give that false answer, only tthat they are more likely to give the false answer than someone who WASN'T fed the lie.

"...in another experiment, participants were also shown an image of a car at a ‘stop’ sign and then supplied with the misinformation that there was a ‘yield’ sign (Loftus et al. Reference Loftus, Miller and Burns1978). Participants provided with the misinformation were more likely than controls to claim that they recalled seeing a ‘yield’ sign."

(I KNOW!!! Groundbreaking science at work folks!)


And none of it seems to apply to Albert Cadosche.
Certainly nothing that meets the;
"The studies suggest that at least one of a number of ‘eliciting’ or triggering conditions need to be in place for the misinformation effect to occur..."
...standard.

If the argument and conclusions put forward in that document are supposed to support Cadosche's unreliability I'm afraid they seem to do the opposite.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

PC Watkins said he passed through at 1:30, but the important detail is he left via the Mitre Street exit, which could have been fortunate for a couple entering the square from St. James Passage, which would be behind him as he exited.
This gave the killer & Eddowes a max of 14 minutes. Perhaps they heard his footsteps in the square, and paused while the constable made his way towards the exit.

Alternately, they may have just missed him, clearly PC Watkins didn't see them or he would have mentioned it.



Because there is nothing to the story, if the PC did enter the square following this supposed couple, they must have hid somewhere while he passed.
The duty of the coroner is to establish the identity of the victim, to establish the, when, where & by what means, the victim met their death.
His duty is not to investigate a murder case, that is the role of a Judge. Langham was only a coroner and his duties are not investigative.
Neither Blenkingsop's statement or that of the PC (more like Detective), are going to throw any light the I.D., or the when, where or by what means she died.
In fact, the police are waiting for the coroner's jury to establish the victim was murdered. That's just a formality in a case like this.

Sorry, Jon, but you assume that the couple hid from Watkins.

The fact that Watkins did not mention them can also be explained by their not having been there.

He checked all the entrances to the Square.

They could already have been there, in which case Watkins would have seen them.

To have been seen by a plain clothes policeman on their way into St James' Place, and yet somehow managed to arrive in the Square after all its exits had been checked by another policeman, seems very unlikely.

[New Waterloo]

If we consider the statement of Long on complete face value it does seem to match that of Chapmans 'boyfriend' Edward (Ted) Stanley. He caused some confusion during the inquest, somehow suggesting he wasn't the person who used to stay with Chapman at her lodgings on Saturday nights. He also seems to confuse people regarding dates that he was in Gosport (as a Militia man). It appears that he was in Whitechapel at the time of Chapmans death and MAY have been in Whitechapel at the time of Tabram and Nicholls murders. He was known by his landlord as Ted Wand a fairly unusual name.

Interestingly there was a Frank Wand living at 24 Bucks Lane in 1881. Described as a horse slaughterer. (maybe a relative)

I know he has been discussed at length before but perhaps there is more to this name Wand. Ant there is more, on the 1st September there is a big argument about soap. He wanted to wash himself whilst visiting Chapman at her lodgings. Seems a bit odd to me.

I am sorry if I am being a bit vague but thought I would mention the Wand name while I was thinking about it

NW

[Wickerman]

Sorry, Jon, but you assume that the couple hid from Watkins.

The fact that Watkins did not mention them can also be explained by their not having been there.

He checked all the entrances to the Square.

It's all "could have this", or "could have that". Unless we resort to the lying witness argument, we are dealing with someone seen entering the square at 1:30 that was not noticed by PC Watkins.
However we choose to explain it is irrelevant, according to Blenkingsop, it happened. So there is no point is raising objections based on "what-ifs" - it happened.

What we need to do is figure out if & how it plays into the rest of the story.

To make "what happened" fit, we might as well accept the best fit is that Watkins was leaving the Square by Mitre Street exit at the same moment these people came in by St. James Passage. They came in behind him, which is why he doesn't see them.
If Watkins was anywhere else in the square, he would have seen them.

Blenkingsop admits he only saw "people", but as they were being followed by someone dressed like a Detective, then it is reasonable, given Major Smith's instructions, that this couple were a man & woman.
Not saying it is a fact, but saying it is a reasonable deduction.

They could already have been there, in which case Watkins would have seen them.

Exactly, so we know that is not a viable option.

To have been seen by a plain clothes policeman on their way into St James' Place, and yet somehow managed to arrive in the Square after all its exits had been checked by another policeman, seems very unlikely.

Blenkingsop does not say which way these people went, plus we do not know where Blenkingsop was positioned.
There are three entrance/exits to St. James Place; Duke St., King St., St. James Passage.

This is St. James Place (ie; Orange Market) looking down from the King St./Duke St. road, at left is the Duke St entrance (out of pic), on the right is the King St. entrance (corner just visible), but directly opposite, almost in the middle you see an arched passage - this is St. James Passage.



I suspect this couple went into the passage at the far end, leading to the square.
The man following (Detective?) must have come in at Duke St, and left by King St. or vice versa, but didn't follow into the passage, as it was night perhaps he didn't know it was there?
But, he cannot have followed them into the square, for whatever reason.

This is my speculation based on meager evidence, I just prefer this possibility as opposed to Lawende's story, this alternate gives the killer about 4-5 mins more.

[Wickerman]

This is what Blenkingsop said:

A Couple Asked After.

James Blenkingsop, who was on duty as a watchman in St. James's-place (leading to the square), where some street improvements are taking place, states that about half-past one a respectably-dressed man came up to him and said, "Have you seen a man and a woman go through here?" "I didn't take any notice," returned Blenkingsop. "I have seen some people pass."


It's not a lot to go on.

[Fiver]

And, I doubt very much that many, if any, reading this thread were aware of this:

RE-EVALUATING THE CREDIBILITY OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: THE MISINFORMATION EFFECT AND THE OVERCRITICAL JUROR | Episteme | Cambridge Core

It's concerned with 'the misinformation effect' and 'the contamination effect', broadly, witnesses recollecting information in an event that did not happen in that event.

One study found that misinformation was remembered as being a part of the original event 47% of the time.

Misinformation or contamination can come from a variety of sources, including at an inquest or via discussing the event with others.

That article completely undermines your position.

"I argue that where evidence has been presented suggesting that an eyewitness has provided testimony that includes inaccurate details, jurors are likely to lower the credence that they assign to all or a substantial part of an eyewitness testimony, concluding that the eyewitness is either motivated to deceive or lacking a good supply of true beliefs about the event about which they are testifying. However, if the error is due to the misinformation effect then the eyewitness is likely to have a good supply of true beliefs that she is motivated to provide via her testimony. In these types of cases, the juror would be more likely to make a correct credence assignment, because she would be less likely to lower the credence that she gives to all or a substantial part of the eyewitness's testimony, if she were aware of the psychological findings on the misinformation effect. These psychological findings would show that people can make errors in their testimony (due to the misinformation effect) but nonetheless be trustworthy sources of much information about the case.."

"What these studies suggest is that people tend to tell the truth when they have no motive to deceive. Moreover, where people are deceptive, it is usually in presenting information about themselves. This means that as long as the people sharing information about a crime to an eyewitness are knowledgeable about the subject matter that they are discussing, and are not talking about themselves, or aiming to achieve some goal that they cannot achieve through truth-telling, they are likely to present accurate information. If this information is integrated with other information deriving from memory, then the product is likely to be true beliefs about the crime that has been witnessed."

"As errors in the details provided within eyewitness testimony can be the result of the misinformation effect, and the misinformation effect is not caused by an intention to deceive, errors in the details of testimony can occur in the absence of an intention to deceive. Jurors who assess the credibility of an eyewitness who provides erroneous testimony due to the misinformation effect and conclude that they intend to deceive are therefore likely to inappropriately lower the credence that they give to much of the eyewitness's testimony."

"The studies suggest that at least one of a number of ‘eliciting’ or triggering conditions need to be in place for the misinformation effect to occur (Loftus Reference Loftus2005), and, for any event, these conditions might be in place for some details about the event but not others. Most obviously, for the misinformation effect to occur, misinformation about the details of an event must be made available to the person who misremembers. For example, an eyewitness must be exposed to suggestive questioning or provided misinformation from another eyewitness about the specific detail."

"Work on source-monitoring thus suggests that people often avoid the misinformation effect because they can properly identify the source of some misinformation that they have been supplied. Consequently, evidence that a person has made an error that is the result of the misinformation effect does not mean that she is likely to make numerous other errors."

"This section shows that, if leading theories in cognitive science and contemporary philosophy of memory are correct, the errors that occur due to the misinformation effect are the result of a feature of human cognitive systems which can bring substantial epistemic benefits. Moreover, the epistemic benefits gained through this feature or these features of human cognition increase the chance of any person being a good eyewitness. This means that errors in testimony can be a sign of the ordinary operation of the cognitive mechanisms that make human beings able to be good eyewitnesses."

The article repeatedly makes clear that errors in eyewitness testimony do not justify completely discarding that testimony. And you haven't shown any errors in Cadosch's testimony.

[Fiver]

I reckon it's pretty clear.

In that: one study found that misinformation was remembered as being a part of the original event 47% of the time.

I'm not really sure what you're asking.

And, have you read the article?

I'm not sure you have.

The study mentioned in the article shows that when people were deliberately given misinformation about what they had witnessed, 47% remembered it as being part of the original event. The flip side of that is that even when given deliberate misinformation, 53% of people continued to recall that part of the event correctly.

And that deliberate misrepresentation of one part of the event did not affect people's memories of the rest of the event.

[Fiver]

In relation to identifying colours at night I refer to George Hutchinsons statement in the Kelly murder in his statement he described, amongst other things, the colour of the suspect’s eyelashes and the colour of the stone on the watch chain the man was wearing. All of these things would be very difficult to see in poor lighting conditions.

Hutchinson said the man had dark eyelashes. Most of what Hutchinson described was dark or light, without mentioning specific colors.

To prove or disprove his story I carried out a controlled experiment using three different coloured pendants. I used a volunteer to wear each one separately in poor lighting conditions at night and asked the volunteer to walk past me. I was unable to distinguish the different colours, all dark colours i.e. red and blue and black, all looked the same under my controlled lighting test. So I would say that Hutchinson’s statement in its entirety should not be relied upon and that goes for the colours mentioned by the witnesses in the other murders.

Your experiment proves nothing.

* All your pendants appear to have been dark. The pendant is one of the few things Hutchinson did not describe as dark.
* We have no idea how large the pendant Hutchinson described was compared to the pendant your volunteer wore.
* We have no idea if your experiment matched the lighting levels that Hutchinson would have experienced.
* We have no idea how your vision in poor lighting compares to Hutchinson's night vision.

Even if you were able to find a small error in Hutchinson's statement, that has no bearing on whether the rest of the statement is accurate - as the article FM linked clearly shows. And a small error in one witnesses' testimony tells us nothing about the accuracy of any other witnesses' testimony, let alone given a reason to dismiss all witness testimony.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I'm working my way through it, but I don't see how it helps with any specific cases.
If you apply this thinking to all witnesses, how does it help identify reliable testimony - maybe it's in the last chapter.

It helps a huge amount, Jon, because the hundreds of studies tell you that witnesses do not always recollect an event as it actually were. To the tune of 47% in one study.

That should be very useful information to people interested in this case, because it is food thought in terms of faith placed in witness statements.

I'm not exactly sure what you're objecting to.

In the event you're objecting to taking statistics and applying them to an individual case, then you're wrong.

It is acknowledged that utilising wider statistics and building an argument around those statistics, is entirely valid providing the statistics are accurate and the premise follows.

These statistics will not tell you exactly what Albert saw, but what they will tell you, by virtue of empirical data; is that a good number of witnesses do not recollect that which actually happened. Almost 1 in 2 according to that study, which at the very least would place Albert in the bracket of doubt, 50/50 chance more or less.

You may be objecting to something else, feel free to explain.

[Fleetwood Mac]

The article repeatedly makes clear that errors in eyewitness testimony do not justify completely discarding that testimony. And you haven't shown any errors in Cadosch's testimony.

The article I posted?

This one?

RE-EVALUATING THE CREDIBILITY OF EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: THE MISINFORMATION EFFECT AND THE OVERCRITICAL JUROR | Episteme | Cambridge Core

In the very first paragraph, the authors state:

It is argued that jurors should be informed about psychological findings on the misinformation effect, to ensure that they lower the credence that they give to eyewitness testimony to reflect the unreliability of human memory that is demonstrated by the effect.

They're telling you that eyewitness testimony should not be given the credence that outdated thinking affords.

I answered your 'prove it' point three times and here's a repeat: what we have is Albert's recollection of the event, and that is a fact, we do not have a video of the event.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I'm not sure you have.

The study mentioned in the article shows that when people were deliberately given misinformation about what they had witnessed, 47% remembered it as being part of the original event. The flip side of that is that even when given deliberate misinformation, 53% of people continued to recall that part of the event correctly.

And that deliberate misrepresentation of one part of the event did not affect people's memories of the rest of the event.

It's not 'the study', the article clearly states:

Hundreds of studies have now been undertaken demonstrating the robustness of this phenomenon (Howe and Knott Reference Howe and Knott2015), which has become labelled the misinformation effect because it occurs due to the influence of misinformation provided after an event.

They reference a few studies:

Some participants were then asked how fast the cars involved in the crash were travelling when they ‘hit’ each other while others were asked how fast the cars were travelling when they ‘smashed’ into each other. Those who were asked the question using the word ‘smashed’ were more likely to falsely report that there was broken glass in the image. In another experiment, participants were also shown an image of a car at a ‘stop’ sign and then supplied with the misinformation that there was a ‘yield’ sign (Loftus et al. Reference Loftus, Miller and Burns1978). Participants provided with the misinformation were more likely than controls to claim that they recalled seeing a ‘yield’ sign. In a more recent study, participants were shown a complex event, e.g. a girl having her wallet stolen by a man (Okado and Stark Reference Okado and Stark2005). Then they were presented with misinformation about the event, e.g. that the man hurt the girl's arm when it was her neck that had been hurt. The misinformation was remembered as being a part of the original event 47% of the time.

At its core, the article is demonstrating that the human mind/memory is not a photograph for posterity. There is a process of storage, encoding and retrieval; and along the way retrieval can become distorted from the event. The information that distorts reality comes from a number of different sources, as they tell you. It's simply how the human mind works.

As for 'did not affect people's memories of the rest of the event', in the above there is no more than a car at a stop sign and they were asked which sign was it. That's not much of an event and the sign was central to it. Albert's wasn't much of an event, and two noises were central to it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And after a million words in report after report and page upon page of research what do we now know?

That witnesses can be mistaken.

If only it was that easy when I posted a large list of the expert, none debatable evidence on ToD estimation using Rigor and Algor mortis. That bit of concrete evidence questioned endlessly.

The effort that has been put in to try and demonise, denigrate and dismiss the three witnesses is close to unbelievable. Especially when it’s such a complete waste of time.

[Scott Nelson]

This is St. James Place (ie; Orange Market) looking down from the King St./Duke St. road, at left is the Duke St entrance (out of pic), on the right is the King St. entrance (corner just visible), but directly opposite, almost in the middle you see an arched passage - this is St. James Passage.

I suspect this couple went into the passage at the far end, leading to the square.

According to the Langdon story, the PC (likely Watkins) met the man coming out of Mitre Square via the St. James passage (In the right center of the drawing you posted above) 7 minutes after the PC last the square.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

According to the Langdon story, the PC (likely Watkins) met the man coming out of Mitre Square via the St. James passage (In the right center of the drawing you posted above) 7 minutes after the PC last the square.

I've just read the Langdon story at:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/victorian-age-s-finest/other-police-and-authorities/33763-city-pc-e-t-langdon-retires-with-article

I do not know how anyone can find it credible.

Langdon related that shortly after having checked the entrances to Mitre Square and left the Square, Watkins encountered the man whom Langdon suspected of having been the murderer, and who had supposedly just left the Square.

A few minutes later, upon entering the Square once more, Watkins found the body.

If it had been at all plausible at the time that that man had committed the murder, then Watkins would surely have mentioned his encounter with him.

The idea that someone whom Watkins encountered shortly after leaving the Square could already have committed the murder is not believable.

[Fleetwood Mac]

And after a million words in report after report and page upon page of research what do we now know?

That witnesses can be mistaken.

If only it was that easy when I posted a large list of the expert, none debatable evidence on ToD estimation using Rigor and Algor mortis. That bit of concrete evidence questioned endlessly.

The effort that has been put in to try and demonise, denigrate and dismiss the three witnesses is close to unbelievable. Especially when it’s such a complete waste of time.

Argumentum Ad Misericordiam:

To persuade an audience by purposely evoking certain emotions to make them feel the way the author wants them to feel.

It is not a reasonable, logical nor valid argument.