What is this paper about?
In 1996, the American Psychology Law Society created a committee to compose guidelines for line-up identification procedures. The authors were this committee and this paper is the result of this committee.
The authors have created 4 rules that they suggest should be used in conducting lineups.
The Foundation for these guidelines:
Essentially, this says that when a witness is viewing a line up, he or she will id the person who looks most like the perpetrator in comparison to the other members of the line up. This process might be fine if the perp was in the line up (but if the police knew that, there would not be a line up, would there?), but if the line up is full of innocents, then there is a definite problem with this process.
Compare this to an absolute judgment in which the witness compares each individual in the line up to his or her memory of the perp. This is quite a different process.
Evidence that witnessed uses RJ:
Essentially, this assumes that the logic we use as scientists to conduct experiments (variables, counter balancing, control conditions, ect.) can and should be applied by the legal system when conducting line-ups. This logic assumes the hypothesis of a certain subject and uses experimental logic to produce evidence for this hypothesis.
1. The person who conducts the lineup or photospread should not be aware of which member of the lineup or photospread is the suspect.
This rule is basic double blind experimental procedure.
Also, this would prevent the confidence of the witness being manipulated by the officer.
2. Eyewitnesses should be told explicitly that the person in question might not be in the lineup or photospread and therefore should not feel that they must make identification. They should also be told that the person administering the lineup does not know which person is the suspect in the case.
This would help to prevent the use of the relative judgment process (1st part) and prevent the witness looking to the officer for instruction (2nd part).
3. The suspect should not stand out in the lineup or photospread as being different from the distracters based on the eyewitness’s previous description of the culprit or based on other factors that would draw extra attention to the suspect.
This rule also refers to the RJ process. If the police design the lineup around what the individual they believe is the culprit looks like, then they are only enforcing the use of the RJ process and not the use of recollection. Essentially, the line up should not be designed in a way that someone could deduce who the suspect is from the design. The authors comment on how to get around the problems that might go along with this: unique cases, ECT.
4. A clear statement should be taken from the eyewitness at the time of the identification and prior to any feedback as to his or her confidence that the identified person is the actual culprit.
This is based on the malleability of confidence. If the confidence rating is not confounded (again, experimental logic) with other factors or events (and combined with rule 1 that helps eliminate these confounds) then, the confidence of the witness is more reliable.
The authors then discuss the cost/benefit analysis. Essentially, these rules they believe are relatively low or no cost. The benefits, however, are high. First off, the likelihood of false ids is believed to go down. Thus, the legal system does not have to pay for an innocent conviction and an innocent person is not going to jail.
Finally, the authors recommend two other procedures. They do not make these rules (for various reasons I will touch on in my talk) but make these recommendations:
1. Sequential Lineups.
This would favor an absolute judgment process.
2. Videotaping the lineup.
This would be a good record of how the lineup was conducted. However, there are reasons not to advocate the use:
Could be used as an excuse to ignore rules 1-4
Videotape may not show all that happened
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