Roy S. Malpass

Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads

There is increasing evidence that false eyewitness identification is the primary cause of the conviction of innocent people. In 1996, the American Psychology/Law Society and Division 41 of the American Psychological Association appointed a subcommittee to review scientific evidence and make recommendations regarding the best procedures for constructing and conducting lineups and photospreads. Three important themes from the scientific literature relevant to lineup methods were identified and reviewed, namely relative-judgment processes, the lineups-as-experiments analogy, and confidence malleability. Recommendations are made that double-blind lineup testing should be used, that eyewitnesses should be forewarned that the culprit might not be present, that distractors should be selected based on the eyewitnesss verbal description of the perpetrator, and that confidence should be assessed and recorded at the time of identification. The potential costs and benefits of these recommendations are discussed.

More Than Suggestion The Effect of Interviewing Techniques From the McMartin Preschool Case

Child interviewing techniques derived from transcripts of the McMartin Preschool case were found to be substantially more effective than simple suggestive questions at inducing preschool children to make false allegations against a classroom visitor. Thirty-six children interviewed with McMartin techniques made 58% accusations, compared with 17% for 30 children interviewed with suggestive questions. Social influence and reinforcement appeared to be more powerful determinants of childrens answers than simple suggestive questions. The SIRR model is proposed to explain how false statements may be elicited from children or adults. Categories identified in the SIRR model are suggestive questions, social influence, reinforcement, and removal from direct experience.

Cross-Racial Identification

This article reviews the research on differential recognition for own-versus other-race faces. A meta-analysis of 14 samples revealed that the magnitude of the own-race bias is similar for both Black and White subjects, accounting for about 10o of the variance in recognition accuracy. There is a considerable consistency across studies, indicating that memory for own-race faces is superior to memory for other-race faces. Both Black and White subjects exhibited own-race bias in 79%0 of the samples reviewed.

From the Lab to the Police Station A Successful Application of Eyewitness Research

The U.S. Department of Justice released the first national guide for collecting and preserving eyewitness evidence in October 1999. Scientific psychology played a large role in making a case for these procedural guidelines as well as in setting a scientific foundation for the guidelines, and eyewitness researchers directly participated in writing them. The authors describe how eyewitness researchers shaped understanding of eyewitness evidence issues over a long period of time through research and theory on system variables. Additional pressure for guidelines was applied by psychologists through expert testimony that focused on deficiencies in the procedures used to collect the eyewitness evidence. DNA exoneration cases were particularly important in leading U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to notice the eyewitness literature in psychology and to order the National Institute of Justice to coordinate the development of national guidelines. The authors describe their experience as members of the working group, which included prosecutors, defense lawyers, and law enforcement officers from across the country.

Psychological Issues in Eyewitness Identification

Contents: Preface. S.L. Sporer, G. Koehnken, R.S. Malpass, Introduction: 200 Years of Mistaken Identification. J.P. Lipton, Legal Aspects of Eyewitness Testimony. D.J. Narby, B.L. Cutler, S.D. Penrod, The Effects of Witness, Target, and Situational Factors on Eyewitness Identifications. S.L. Sporer, Psychological Aspects of Person Descriptions. J.W. Shepherd, H.D. Ellis, Face Recall--Methods and Problems. R. Hammersley, J.D. Read, Voice Identification by Humans and Computers. J.E. Chance, A.G. Goldstein, The Other-Race Effect and Eyewitness Identification. R.S. Malpass, Enhancing Eyewitness Memory. G. Koehnken, R.S. Malpass, M.S. Wogalter, Forensic Applications of Line-Up Research. G.M. Davies, Childrens Identification Evidence. A.D. Yarmey, The Elderly Witness. A. Maass, Logic and Methodology of Experimental Research in Eyewitness Psychology. R.S. Malpass, S.L. Sporer, G. Koehnken, Conclusion.

Verbal and visual training in face recognition

Black and white Ss were given recognition training for black and white faces. One experiment asked black and white Ss to describe black or white faces verbally, to recognize faces from verbal descriptions, and to describe similarities and differences in triads of faces. While verbal training did affect verbal usage and verbal recognition performance, there was no indication, either before or after training, of verbal usage or performance patterns which parallel visual recognition performance. Black Ss yielded higher recognition scores for black faces than for white; white Ss yielded higher recognition scores for white faces than for black. The second experiment trained white Ss for recognition of black or white faces by feedback trials, using a four-alternative forced-choice procedure. The initial difference in performance for white and black faces (W > B) was not present after 100 training trials. Results are related to an earlier study of face recognition by Malpass and Kravitz (1969).

SEQUENTIAL VS. SIMULTANEOUS LINEUPS A Review of Methods, Data, and Theory

A considerable amount of empirical research has been conducted on ways to improve the eyewitness identification process, with emphasis on the use of lineups. Public policy changes are currently underway with respect to lineup procedures: Sequential lineups are being recommended to police as the best practice. This may be premature because the conditions under which sequential lineups are superior to simultaneous lineups are not well understood given the current literature: Many studies are reported with insufficient detail needed to judge the adequacy of the research design, new data show that the sequential superiority effect may vary as a function of study methodology, theoretical assumptions have not been adequately tested, and important comparisons that may rule out the ostensible superiority of the sequential lineup have not been studied. This review summarizes the literature, presents new data, and identifies the need for further empirical work before appropriately grounded recommendations as to the superiority of sequential lineups can be made.

Effective size and defendant bias in eyewitness identification lineups

Two aspects of fairness in eyewitness identification lineups are discussed: the effective size of a lineup, and the degree of bias towards or away from the defendant. Procedures are proposed for measuring both aspects of lineup fairness and a range of hypothetical examples is given. An appendix discusses and explains procedural and computational details, and provides a table of critical ranges of identification proportions for lineups of varying sizes and for different numbers of observers.

A NATIONAL SURVEY OF US POLICE ON PREPARATION AND CONDUCT OF IDENTIFICATION LINEUPS

A great deal of research has been aimed at identifying the factors that produce errors in eyewitness identification. However, most of this work has been conducted in laboratory environments using undergraduates and naive lay persons as research participants. Little information is available on what police officers do in the course of their identification activities. The present research investigated the procedures that police officers report employing when constructing and administering eyewitness identification lineups. We developed a survey that addresses a number of these issues, including experience, sources of lineup foils, lineup formation and display, lineup fairness evaluation, presence of suspects attorney, witness instructions, historical records, and legal challenges. Surveys were sent to 500 US police jurisdictions; 220 were returned. Several survey items showed results consistent with previous laboratory research, however police officers reported using some procedures that are different from those established as most effective in the research literature. This paper summarizes the results of our survey and discusses the implications for future research and forensic procedures.

RACE, AROUSAL, ATTENTION, EXPOSURE, AND DELAY An Examination of Factors Moderating Face Recognition

Otto H. MacLin, M. Kimberly MacLin, and Roy S. MalpassUniversity of Texas at El PasoA large percentage of people recently exonerated by DNA evidence were impris-oned on the basis of faulty eyewitness identification. Many of these cases involvedvictims and suspects of different races. Two studies examined the recognition ofHispanic and Black target faces by Hispanic participants under nonoptimal viewingconditions. When viewing time decreased, recognition performance for same- andother-race faces systematically shifted downward. Recognition accuracy for faces ofboth races decreased under conditions of high negative arousal and attention load;however, recognition of same-race faces was differentially affected by attentiondistractors. Face recognition accuracy was not affected by a delay between initialpresentation of the faces and the face recognition test. An understanding of howrecognition of other-race persons differs from that of same-race persons can assistby reducing misidentifications and ensuring that the perpetrator rather than aninnocent person is imprisoned.Eyewitness testimony often serves as direct evidence in a courtroom settingand can have a strong influence on juries (Loftus, 1974; Penrod & Cutler, 1995).Unfortunately, eyewitness identification is imperfect and can at times lead to theconviction of innocent people, as evidenced by a series of recent DNA exoner-ation cases. Breakthroughs in DNA testing have facilitated the isolation of factorsthat lead to false imprisonment. Of 62 cases examined, 52 involved mistakenidentifications (Connors, Lundregan, Miller, & McEwan, 1996; Scheck, Neufeld,& Dwyer, 2000). In 69% of the misidentification cases, the victim was White,whereas in 57% of those cases the exonerated defendant was Black, whichindicates that a proportionally greater number of misidentifications occurredacross racial lines.This finding may come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the phenom-enon commonly known as the own-race effect, cross-race effect, or own-race bias(Chance & Goldstein, 1996; Malpass & Kravitz, 1969; Brigham & Malpass,1985), which posits that people perform poorly when attempting to recognize aperson of a different race (Meissner & Brigham, 2001). A large body of literatureexists that examines factors affecting the recognition of own-race faces, such asdistinctiveness of the face, sex of the face, age of the witness, attention, arousal,exposure, and delay between observation and testing; however, only 18% of the