Third Lineup Evaluation Results

Third
Lineup

Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory
At the University of Texas at El Paso

Criminal Justice
Program

Psychology
Department

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We asked 29 white people from the UTEP campus to examine the lineup and try to pick the offender. The expected ID rate per lineup member is 4.8. Here are the results:

White Participants

2	0	2
6	5	14

The defendant in this case is in position #6, and 48% of the participants identified him on the basis of the verbal descriptions. The lineup is biased towards picking the defendant, because he stands out from the fillers in the lineup.

Note that the 3 lowest frequency fillers taken together do not add up to the number of choices expected for one lineup member. One of the five fillers may as well not be there, and the other two are less than 1/2 as effective as expected. Taken together, though, the risk of false identification for an innocent suspect is about 1 in 3, or 33%. The 3 ineffective fillers in this lineup fail in their role as a safeguard against false identification.

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