Lineup Woes

A story in today's New York Times raises an interesting question: What is more important, getting a conviction in a criminal case, or protecting the innocent against false accusations?

It turns out that new procedures in the identification of suspects by way of police lineup are resulting in fewer positive identifications of suspects, and more identification of innocent people as perpetrators.

The traditional simultaneous lineup procedure involved placing a group of suspects before a witness. By comparing and contrasting the suspects, a witness could ponder which person, if any, was the perp. The danger in the procedure was the subtle assumption that at least one among the group was correct. Rather than picking the right person, the wtiness was feared to pick the one who looked most like the perp.

Reforms in lineup procedures require that witnesses be shown one photo at a time. And these photos are shown in such a way as to limit or eliminate subtle sources of selection bias law enforcement officers may signal in the procedure.

The results have been disappointing: fewer positive identifications, and, when there is an identification, more misidentification. In a controlled experiment in Illinois, witnesses chose the correct person 60 percent of the time using the simultaneous method, as opposed to 45 percent of the time using sequential lineups. The wrong person was picked 9 percent of the time using sequential lineups, as opposed to 3 percent of the time using simultaneous procedures.

So now the debate will renew: Should we retain the simultaneous lineup?

The data suggests we might want to consider scrapping both. The Times reports that each year 77,000 people are put on trial as a result of lineup identification. That number seems too high. I doubt there are 77,000 criminal trials in the country in a given year.

But if 77,000 people are charged as a result of lineups, a claim that seems more likely, then with simultaneous lineups, we are charging the wrong person 2,310 times; using sequential lineups, the wrong person is charged 6,930 times. That's hardly reassuring, unless our goal is simply to close files with arrests.

Comments

[Aaron]

The study apparently assumes that the guilty perpetrator always appears in a lineup. Beyond the different methodology used in the sequential versus simultaneous lineups as described in the article, the absence of a control (lineups with no actual suspects included) makes it more difficult to gauge the significance of the results.

The article suggests that a wrongly identified person would be a filler photograph - not an alternative suspect - such that an incorrect identification would not result in any charges being filed against the wrong person.

The difference may well be that it is easier to narrow down the lineup by appearance ("this person looks the most like the perpetrator") when the photographs can be compared side-by-side as opposed to when they are presented sequentially.

[Lear's Fool]

In a criminal code legislated a good while ago, witnesses received rather stiff penalties for accusing wrongly: The witness received the very punishment the accused would have received.

That'd make you think twice about pointing your finger if you weren't sure, wouldn't it?

[Aaron]

It would make me think twice about pointing the finger... at a guilty suspect. Let's apply it to an individual who already risks deadly retaliation for identifing the perpetrators of a gang drive-by in her neighborhood. Should the state imprison her for life (or sentence her to death) if the perps are acquitted?

[Lear's Fool]

Who said anything about punishing the witness upon acquittal of the accused?

No, Aaron, what we're after is reliable eyewitness testimony. But when we reduce or eliminate the consequences of false and flawed testimony, we can expect more of it. Is it any wonder, then, when such testimony is accorded less weight in a trial?

Conversely, when we increase the consequences of false and flawed testimony, we can expect less of it. Would it be any wonder, then, that such testimony would be accorded by a jury more weight as a result?

But after enduring years of Hollywood's onslaught of "near-sighted eyewitness" tales (a la 12 Angry Men), we've developed FAS (Falsely Accused Syndrome), and prefer instead the celebrity-endorsed "objective" evidence they serve up day in and day out.

Justice cuts both ways. False testimony - whether intentional lying or otherwise - has weighty consequences for the accused. Those who abuse the trust placed in them by the courts ought to be held to account. In so doing, mightn't we restore some reliability and integrity to this facet of our system of justice?

[Aaron]

I guess it is fortunate that we will have you as the ultimate seer of truth and arbiter of what constitutes a true or false accusation, and won't have to rely upon such measures as jury verdicts to suggest to us which defendants are rightly versus wrongfully accused....