Police lineup Procedures

Police lineup Procedures

Introduction

The misidentification by an eyewitness is the main source of wrongful convictions in the United States. The misidentification by eyewitnesses played a role in more than 75% of convictions quashed after DNA tests. From 1989 to 2007, more than 200 Americans proved innocent by a proof DNA. Of these, nearly half had already been sentenced to death. Considering that DNA evidence is only available in about 10% of cases, the proliferation of errors of eyewitness identification considered a serious problem contributing to wrongful convictions. The phenomenon of misidentification by eyewitnesses also contains a racial dimension: 55% of exemptions in cases of sexual assault or assassination involving African American defendants and white victims. The testimony of eyewitnesses tends to be convincing to a judge and jury. One study found that 80% of juries believe the testimony of eyewitnesses.

However, a social science research over the past 30 years has shown that the identifications made by eyewitnesses are often incorrect. This Research has shown that the human mind does not work like a VCR; the average man is not able to photograph instantly the author of a crime in his mind. Furthermore, the possibility of contamination of the memory is high throughout the process of gathering evidence in this research proposal; the researcher highlighted the main problem with the unequivocal identification decisions. The researcher's main focus on the eyewitness evidence because eyewitness is still a human being and the environment also changing rapidly in which the crime occurred (Steblay & Loftus, 2009). Therefore, the role of eye witness getting really sensitive with every passion day. 

The variables that contribute to errors of eyewitness identification divided into two categories:

The estimator variables: The variables that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system.

These include, for example:

The lighting during the event

The distance between the eyewitness and the perpetrator

Race of the perpetrator

The presence of a weapon

The degree of stress and trauma suffered by the eyewitness

System variables:

Variables that can and should be controlled by the criminal justice system.These include, for example:

How investigators gain access to information held by eyewitnesses

Type of identification parades or photo sessions

The selection of people for an identification parade

How the lineup administered (Whitebread, 2000).

Literature

The difficulty in the study of false convictions is the fact that false convictions only known once reversed, so it is impossible to estimate the total number of wrongful convictions. Exemptions are only 2% of all cases of rape and murder. Between 1989 and 2003, an error of eyewitness identification was the cause of error in 50% of cases of murder and exempt in 88% of rape cases exonerated. Psychologists and behavioral scientists have discovered that memory influenced by the conditioning of an observer. Time is also a consideration. Psychologists describe the influence of passing time as an effect of leveling and sharpening: over time, critical elements of the situation recalled are exaggerated or sharpened. On the other hand, the memory capacity to remember aspects considered less characteristic decrease (leveling). For example, an eyewitness may remember a weapon used in an armed attack in a store more precisely that the person ...