An evaluation of the fairness of police line-ups and video identifications

✍ Scribed by Tim Valentine; Pamela Heaton

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 122 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0888-4080
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199911)13:1+<s59::aid-acp679>3.0.co;2-y

✦ Synopsis

Mistaken eyewitness identi®cation is a major source of miscarriages of justice. In England and Wales, procedures for obtaining identi®cation evidence are set out in legislation. The vast majority of identi®cations are obtained using a traditional `live' identity parade (or line-up). However, in some circumstances video identi®cations are being used more frequently. Records of line-ups and video identi®cations used in actual criminal cases were obtained. The fairness of these two procedures was compared by use of a mock witness procedure. In a perfectly fair line-up the suspect would be chosen, by chance, by 11% of the mock witnesses. However, 25% of mock witnesses selected the suspect from 25 photographs of live line-ups, compared to 15% of mock witnesses who selected the suspect from video identi®cations. An analysis of covariance, taking the number of visual features mentioned in the original witness's ®rst description as the covariate, showed that the proportion choosing the suspect was signi®cantly smaller from video identi®cations. It is concluded that the video line-ups were fairer than the live line-ups, and therefore that wider use of video identi®cations has the potential to improve the reliability of eyewitness identi®cation evidence.