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This is something which has been in the back of my head for quite some time now. I've not really thought about it in depth nor am I well versed in law or intricate workings of the judicial system and was hoping for responses from those who possess a much better understanding.
Are witness testimonies just another form of anecdotal evidence? Why are witnesses used if they cannot be definitively or even largely backed up by solid, factual evidence? If enough people give the same account of a crime, does that override the inherent unverifiable nature of an anecdote?
I believe the judicial system is relying less and less on eyewitness testimonies as concrete proof (it should, anyway). The problem is that human memory is unreliable and really bad at correctly representing single events. There are a number of reasons for this-- one being that episodic memory is schematic. The classic office experiment from the 80's showed this:
It's also easy to induce false memories in humans. There have been cases where fathers have been wrongly jailed for molesting their children when it later turned out the children had been given false memories of rape by unethical therapists
