Identification Parades Flashcards
Causes of miscarriages of Justice
Brochard 1932
65 wrongful convictions, most common cause of error
1) mistaken identity (29 or 45% of convictions) in only two cases did the defendant resemble the real culprit
2) over-reliance on circumstantial evidence
3) perjury by witness
4) self-incriminating confessions
5) unreliability of “expert” witness
Brandon and Davies 1972
70 British cases
1) mistaken identification
2) self-incriminating confessions
Beau and Radeltt 1987
350 cases in the USA. Four groups of errors
1) errors caused by police investigation prior to trial (23% of sample) 49 (14%) of these involved false confessions, mainly due to coercion
2) errors caused by prosecution prior to or during trial (50, or 15% of cases) Most common error was suppression of evidence of innocence
3) prosecution witness: perjury (117 cases) and mistaken identification (56)
4) miscellaneous: circumstantial evidence (9%) public demand and outrage (20%)
Misidentification is a major factor in wrongful convictions
The U.S. “Innocence Project”
330 exonerations: over 70% of cases involved eyewitness misidentification
Antonio Beaver
1) Convicted of 1st degree robbery
2) Served 10 years of an 18 yr sentence
3) Contributing causes: eyewitness misidentification
4) Cleared by DNA evidence
Eyewitness identification:
1) ID parades (lineups) present the suspect amongst innocent “foils” (distractors)
Problem: can be unreliable, due to false positives (false identifications) and false negatives (failing to identify the suspect as present)
Why are ID parades so unreliable?
1) Unfamiliar face recognition is poor
2) Physical changes in the suspect between initial encounter and testing
3) Witness’ misattribution of feelings of familiarity evoked by a suspect’s face
4) Jurors have misplaced faith in witnesses’
Stably, Tix and Benson 2013
Students saw video “purse-snatching”
Both lineups contained either the same culprit OR same innocent person (all other line ups changed)
Correct identifications
No significant improvement from L1 to L2
Only 37% of witness correctly identified suspect at both L1 and L2
False identifications:
85% witnesses mistaken at L2 repeated mistake at L2
13% of witness changed from “not present” at L1 to “present” at L2
14% reduction in “not present” responses to L1 to L2
Simultaneous vs Sequential lineups
Simultaneous: lineups allow witness to use a relative judgement strategy - to compare lineup members decide which is closest to their memories for the criminal and then infer this is the guilty person. Result in higher rate of false identifications, when the criminal is absent
Sequential - lineups force witnesses to adopt an absolute judgement strategy - deciding whether or not the person currently being examined is the criminal
Sequential lineups are superior to simultaneous lineups because they reduce lineups because they reduce false-positive choices
Hybrid lineup presentation procedures:
UK: sequential presentation but you see the line up twice
US: sequential presentation, seen twice if witness requests it
Accuracy and confidence:
Neil vs Biggers 1972
Bothwell, Deffenbacher and Brigham 1987:
Wells and Bradfield 1998
1) Witness confidence should be considered in court
Little relationship between confidence and identification accuracy e.g. Luus and Wells 1994
2) confidence-accuracy correlations ranged from 0.08 to 0.42
3) Participants tried to identify gunman from target-absent lineup
Group A: confirming feedback
Group B: disconfirming feedback
Group C: no feedback
Feedback distorted subsequent confidence ratings and retrospective reports of how well they had seen the gunman
Selective Cue Integration Framework SCIF
Charman, Carlucci, Vallano and Gregory 2010
1) Assessment stage: witness assess strength of internal cues for making a judgement
2) Search stage: if cues are weak witness looks for external cues e.g. from the lineup administrator
3) Evaluation stage: external cues are evaluated for credibility: if credible, these cues are used to make the judgement
Explains why manipulations that discredit the feedback reduce the influence of PIF (and why accurate witnesses show a reduced - though still significant PIF effect
Douglass and Stably 2006: Recommendations for “good lineups”
1) effective use of fillers
2) Blind administration of lineup (PACE does not ensure this)
3) Warn witness that the culprit may or may not be present (reducsed false identifications by 25% - meta-analysis by Stably 1977)
4) Sequential presentation
5) Record eyewitness’ assessment of their certainty at the time identification is made
6) Do not give witnesses feedback about their identification performance
Conclusions
Eyewitness identification is highly influential with jurors but a major cause of miscarriages of justice
Eyewitness confidence is highly influential with jurors, but is
1) an unreliable guide to witnesses’ accuracy
2) Susceptible to alteration by post-identification feedback
