Police lineup

The suspect, along with several "fillers" or "foils"—people of similar height, build, and complexion who may be prisoners, actors, police officers, or volunteers—stand side-by-side, both facing and in profile.

[2] The lineup sometimes takes place in a room for the purpose, one which may feature a one-way mirror to allow a witness to remain anonymous, and may include markings on the wall to aid identifying the person's height.

While photos and videos are often more practical and convenient, lineups where suspects are physically present have been shown to improve identification.

The early studies of sequential lineups found that there was a significant difference in the wrongful conviction of innocent persons.

The New York Times reported that Wells will continue to "examine the data gathered to gauge the level of certainty of witnesses and the effect of factors like cross-racial identification on accuracy.

Gronlund, Carlson, Dailey, and Goodsell state one of the disadvantages: "Sequential lineups do not enhance accuracy but rather make eyewitnesses more conservative in their willingness to choose.

[15] According to the Innocence Project website, many states and law enforcement agencies have started to implement the tools that would be necessary to run double-blind sequential lineups but have yet to fully embrace them.

[12] Brain L. Cutler and Steven D. Penrod conducted this study in 1988 to examine multiple variables' influence on eyewitnesses' accuracy during a lineup.

They also did not find a significant enough difference in correct identification rate between simultaneous and sequential lineups when the target was present.

In an effort to reproduce the results found in previous studies done on sequential lineups, Steblay, Dysart, and Wells took and combined results from 72 tests from 23 different labs from across the world including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and South Africa.

Developed at the University of Birmingham,[18] this new technology aims to overcome the limitations of traditional photo or live lineups by allowing witnesses to manipulate the view to better match their memory of a suspect's appearance.

The study involved 475 participants who were randomly assigned to one of six conditions, which varied by lineup procedure (interactive, photo, or video) and encoding angle (front or profile).

Results: These findings suggest that interactive lineups offer significant improvements over traditional methods in terms of identification accuracy.

Results: This research underlined the potential of interactive lineups to significantly enhance the effectiveness of police identification procedures.

Winsor and colleagues conducted a study in 2021 to explore the reliability of child witnesses using an interactive lineup system.

Results: This research highlights the potential of interactive lineups in calibrating child witness testimonies, challenging the traditional view that children’s identifications are inherently unreliable.

For example, a witness might identify a receptionist as the guilty suspect simply because they had met briefly before, misattributing the familiarity to seeing the individual committing the crime.

Witnesses are more likely to correctly identify the faces of those with whom they share common features, such as race, age, and gender.

[31] According to a 2021 study, optimal lineups have fillers who are similar to the description of the perpetrator of a crime, but who are otherwise dissimilar to the suspect.

[33] When fillers are highly dissimilar to the suspect, it increases the chances that witnesses erroneously identify an innocent person.