Why I Don’t Trust Eyewitness Testimony

I was a criminal defense paralegal for 22 years and learned to trust circumstantial evidence over eyewitness testimony because people don’t always see what they think they see.  This morning I was 30 minutes into a telephone reading when I saw a car pull into my driveway.  I did not recognize the small beige sedan, so I excused myself to see who it was.  Jeremy got to the door before me, and it was a friend of  his.  I told him I hadn’t recognized the small car, I had only seen his friend’s truck.  Jeremy said it was his truck.  Not the car I swear that I saw??  Nope.  I was surprised, because my first thought was the only one who shows up this early is this one person.  Since I identified the vehicle as a small sedan and not the truck I expected to see, I didn’t recognize it.  So what happened?  Granted, I was 30 minutes into a psychic reading and maybe not as grounded as I could have been to see what was in the 3-d around me.  But it’s things like that that remind me, we don’t always see things as they are.