Ezekiel Edwards

The Malady of Mistaken Identification

In countless television courtroom dramas, there arrives the riveting moment when the testifying witness, voice quivering, points a steady finger at the defendant and says, "it was him", causing the prosecutor to beam triumphantly, the defense lawyer to stare helplessly ahead, and the jurors to glare disdainfully at the accused, sitting with his head hanging dejectedly.

Despite the fictionalized insistence that witness identification is 99% accurate, in fact the most common reason that innocent people languish in prison in the United States is mistaken identification. Identification is amazingly powerful in theory, but equally fallible in reality. For instance, of the first 130 people exonerated after post-conviction DNA results proved their innocence, 101 had been wrongly convicted as a result of mistaken identification.

The traditional lineup procedure, which has led to so many mistakes, usually involves six people, including the suspect, lined up against a wall and viewed simultaneously by a witness who is told by the lineup administrator (who knows which person is the suspect) that the alleged perpetrator is in front of them.

In response to the troubling and recurrent defect of such a procedure, several suggestions have been made towards developing more accurate alternatives to the standard lineup. Proposed variations have included telling the witness that the suspect might not even be in the lineup (thereby removing the witnesses' compulsion to pick someone), conducting "blind" lineups (where the official administering the lineup is unaware of who the suspect is) to prevent the police from corrupting the witness through verbal cues, facial expressions, body language, encouragement, etc., and a procedure known as double-blind sequential lineups --- the most substantive (and contested) alteration studied so far --- where a witness is shown photographs individually (as opposed to viewing possible suspects all at once) by an official ignorant as to which photograph contains the suspect.

This method forces the witness to compare the person in the photograph to his or her own memory of the perpetrator, as opposed to comparing the person to other people in a lineup (which can lead a witness to identify someone not because of a striking resemblance to the perpetrator but merely because of a greater resemblance than the other people in the lineup).

Many are still divided as to which lineup procedure is preferable, a division highlighted by a recent study in Illinois in which double-blind sequential lineups led to more false identifications (which may simply reaffirm how untrustworthy identifications are) and to fewer overall identifications (which could be a good thing, since we want absolute certainty from witnesses when they identify a suspect).

Despite the Illinois study, most people acknowledge that changes must be implemented to address the many mistaken identifications that have arisen from traditional lineups. In addition to double-blind sequential lineups, some have suggested stricter legal standards for police before they can even conduct a lineup, while others have proposed "multiple identifications", where a witness views sequential photographs, first of people's faces, then of their bodies minus the faces, then hears a recording of their voice (if applicable). For cities and counties who continue to use the conventional lineup, reformers have suggested implementation of other reforms, such as easing pressure on witnesses by informing them that they are not required to pick someone, documenting a witness's comments or observations during the identification procedure so that at trial the jury will be privy to the witness's original degree of certainty regarding the identification, and ensuring that people acting as lineup "fillers" strongly resemble the suspect.

Though there is still much research to be done to determine which method is the most error-proof, it is clear that conventional lineups have lined up thousands of innocent people in our nation's prisons (and hence let the actual culprits remain at large). As a result, New Jersey became the first state to adopt the sequential method, in 2001. Subsequently, the Wisconsin Legislature recommended the same approach, as did commissions in North Carolina, Virginia, and California. Boston and Minneapolis now use sequential lineups, and Washington, D.C. is studying them.

The Hollywood myth of identifications as undeniable evidence of guilt makes for a great scene on film; in our everyday reality, however, our faith in identifications causes grave injustice. In addition to those listed above, states and cities should immediately study and reform their lineup procedures. Otherwise, our criminal justice system will continue to be plagued by the current commonality of condemning innocent people to prison.

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Posted at 7:00 AM, May 02, 2006 in Criminal Justice
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