Effectiveness of Various Police Line-up Procedure - Literature review Example

Effectiveness of various Police line-up procedure Literature Review Customer Inserts His/ Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 19, 08, 2010 Introduction Eyewitness is said to be one of the most significant discovery in the field of criminal investigation. Eyewitness information over the years has helped in safeguarding society from criminal suspect that may continue to terrorize them over period of time. However, false information presented by an eyewitness in police lineups may lead to incarceration of the innocent individual while the culprit continues to pose threat in the community. There is false perception that most identification result forms a positive identification of culprit. On the contrary, false identification has made many innocent persons to be wrongfully incarcerated. This questions the effectiveness of police line-up procedures in presenting accurate investigations to the court of law. Psychology among other disciplines and professions in various field have stepped in to explain why misidentification of suspects occur. It has brought in enormous knowledge which has contributed greatly in eliminating false identification during a police lineup procedure (Turtle, 2003). Research and theoretical framework of a police lineup According to Mecklenburg (2006) report, in most cases police lineups comprises of a suspect who is placed among non-suspects called distracters (six or five depending). This entire group is presented in front of the eyewitness either simultaneous or sequential .For better analysis of a case; it is argued that a control group should be used to maximize the effectiveness and dependability of eyewitness identification. One example of control group is “blank control group” where the witness is exposed to a police lineup that does not include the suspect. The core goal here is to identify a witness who has poor memory of perpetrator or to measure individual stereotypes. Even though blank lineup may seem to be deceptive, it has a major goal of measuring individual biasness. The other example is known as “Mock witness” and here the witness is exposed to the normal lineup containing the culprit. This is an effective technique in creating valid and fair lineup. However, it may not always be the case, especially where the witness memory is affected by other extraneous variables, especially when encoding the event or acquiring information in presented events. In the United States eyewitnesses play an important role in administration of justice. Through providing evidence in legal process, they present information relevant in identifying, charging and convicting the culprit suspected of a criminal case. Eyewitness may be the only evidence existing in the court of law, and therefore, police lineup procedure should be proficient, effectual and professional to ensure fairness in administration of Justice (Turtle, 2003). According to (Schacter et al., 2007) some scholars have argued that eyewitness evidence is not always ideal. They emphasize that they can fail to identify the perpetrator and this is because humans are not always infallible. Mistaken identification has not been the only problem in police lineups, for example in 1968 Simmons vs. United States, it was also pointed that lineup procedures played a part in miscarriage of justice. The police had presented one single suspect for witness identification which was against measuring accuracy of the case in court proceedings. Steblay (2006) assert that many questions on the validity of eyewitness came to be asked after introduction of forensic use of DNA analysis in criminal investigations, in early 1990’s. By mid 1992, 75% of 185 cases of wrongful conviction were exonerated and this was due to prevailing evidence provided through DNA analysis (the use of semen in kidnapping and rape cases) which found that justice was not done to the convict. Most investigative bodies, eyewitness evidence are among the least reliable forms of evidence in the court trial, and today it continues to have less persuasion on Juries during court verdict. People should not however remain skeptical on the importance eyewitness evidence, but rather mechanisms should be put in place to provide eyewitness reliability. With the emergence of DNA exonerations, there emerged a heated debate among the researchers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officials and other stakeholders about a suitable method to obtain consistent eyewitness evidence by means of police lineups, but the situation is still lacking. Commonly used police lineup procedure is the simultaneous lineup, and some scholars argue that by using this kind of lineup, the witness utilize “relative judgment” indicating that they tend to compare lineup photographs or one member to the other in the live lineups, rather than using the memory of the offender. However, it is said that eyewitness is inclined to identify the person from lineup who presents the same feature as the real culprit therefore misleading investigation. This examination may appear to be obvious and benign; it tends to lack validity in cases where the culprit is not presented. This theory fails to identify accurate procedure of not hand picking the wrong person in the absence of culprit. Therefore it fails to explain the best mechanism of using right procedure in police lineups. On the other hand, in sequential lineups, witnesses are required to make the right decision before they can move to another photograph or person in the lineup, making them to use “absolute judgment” rather than “relative judgment”. In this case, witnesses are compelled to use their memory to identify the offender. With the growth in the field research on simultaneous verses sequential methods, researcher have discovered that the double-blind sequential methods (where the administrator lacks the knowledge of whom the offender could be) (Turtle, 2003). However, the results published in 2006 was a contrary to the prior findings on double-sequential, they argued that these lineups had managed to curb the false identification of the suspect by the witnesses. On the other hand Mecklenburg (2006) states that double-blind sequences hand presented a more reliable outcome during the laboratory test; this was contrary in the field. Statistic collected on the photo arrays and live lineups from in Illinois discovered that double sequential lineups procedure produced high cases of false identification and had lower rate of suspect identification as compared to simultaneous lineup. These argument maybe countered since the study shows that the result were subjective rather than being objective. The study by Mecklenburg (2006) focuses on various parts of the state and the striking inferences of the Illinois Program pilot have been marred, the methodology used however questionable. The use of the sequential lineups rather than simultaneous lineups left a window that influenced witnesses’ false identification during simultaneous lineups. However, there is need to bridge the gap between the laboratory research and field research which shows widening disparities in the lineup procedures (Schacter et al., 2007). Steblay (2006) indicates that most findings in the scientific research shows that identification procedures such as use of photographs and lineups can be more reliable and they can be presented to the witness sequentially and not simultaneously. Although most investigative bodies use sequential presentation, there is lack of consensus on the use of any particular method. In most cases when the photos are presented poorly to the witness during lineup, they may illicit false identification on the part of the witness who may have had a glimpse picture of the criminal or culprit during the actual event (Ebbesen, 2006). Malpass (2006) points out that reliability of eyewitness evidence can be distorted in some situation especially by investigators’ unplanned cues such as tone of voice. This can be controlled through the use of ‘blind procedure’ (conducting investigation without knowing the identity of a person) in identification of culprit. However reliability and accuracy should be the major concern of any police lineup which may produce fair administration of justice during the court proceedings (Wells, 2006). Well (2002) says that when identifying similarities in the suspects age, ethnicity or race research suggest that when a suspect is present in a lineup young children and old people make the correct decision as the adult in identifying the culprit. However, if the suspect is absent from the line the young and old people tend to present false identification as compared to young adults (Turtle, 2003). More so, research has indicated that people are more likely to recognize faces of the culprit who comes from the same race. It is common for someone to forget something and this indicates that human mind is not perfect. Witnesses are not exceptional and the reason to this is that there are some factors affecting human memory at three stages of information processing (encoding, storage, and retrieval). These factors as investigated by Schacter et al.,( 2007), more often this come into play during eyewitness cases. Decades of research has indicated that there exists a problem in encoding information or acquiring the relevant details during an event. This can be attributed to individual heightened physiological arousal in periling situations, violence level, lighting condition, age, gender, and eye sight of the witness among others. Also memory interference by external factors such as media after the event had occurred, may affect the person’s memory (O’toole, 2006). Lastly, memory is also affected by inappropriate retrieval strategy which leads inaccurate identification of the offender. Conclusion In conclusion, the examination of the police procedure has left many questions unanswered since most police line-up procedures are not in agreement. They lack a specific criterion to reduce false presentation of witness evidence in court litigations. This has left many people skeptical on the use of police lineup procedure. Present studies have failed to come up with effective ways of controlling the effects accompanied by estimator variable (factors influencing encoding of events by witness memory) (Klobuchar, 2006). Read More