The cornerstone of any
criminal investigation is eye witness testimony. Amid the abundance of crime
investigation shows saturating broadcast schedules, there is a common theme,
the witness is brought in, shown a lineup of potential criminals that fit the
description of the suspect, and asked to pick out which of the people in front
of them is the one whodunit, or say that the real culprit is, in fact, not
there. It shouldn’t be surprising that, contrary to what TV and movies would
have you believe, these lineups are typically done with photos of suspects
(rather than rounding up the lookalikes for in person lineups) to save time and
money. Across the pond in Great Britain, investigators are beginning to use
video lineups as a more refined alternative to the traditional photo lineups
presented to witnesses. In these video lineups, a frontal view of the suspect
is shown, followed by two profiles of the suspect; this slideshow is then
repeated for the remaining suspects.
Sadly, we really aren’t
that good at making the right decision in regards to police lineups. Child
witnesses, who are often the only witnesses to crimes, are particularly bad at
making the right lineup decision – especially when the real culprit isn’t
there. In fact, some research shows that (when the real criminal isn’t in the
lineup) child witnesses only make the correct decision one in four times –
meaning they are three times more likely to pick an innocent person than to say
“he’s not here!”. Child witnesses often feel compelled to choose someone – even
when the actual criminal is nowhere to be found in the lineup of photos. So
what’s the big deal if some kid makes a mistake and picks out the wrong guy
from a police lineup? Surely, the other evidence will overturn the mistaken
child’s judgement. Not so. Judges and jurors place a huge amount of emphasis on
eye witness testimony. Children who identify innocent people as criminals in
police lineups can contribute to sending these innocent people to court and
because the identification from an eyewitness is so powerful, these innocents
are sometimes falsely convicted, forcing them into jail for years before their
appeals can be heard.
Researchers have
developed a strategy to help reduce the chances that a child will mistakenly
identify an innocent person in a lineup if the child doesn’t see the real
criminal in the lineup. He’s called the mystery man. The mystery man is an
additional set of pictures put into the video lineup that is simply a
silhouetted man with a question mark on his face. The idea is that this mystery
man is the catch-all option for children. Because children feel compelled to
choose somebody from the lineup (even
if they’re told that it’s okay to say “he’s not here”), the mystery man allows
the child to make a choice without mistakenly picking a picture that looks
close enough to the real criminal.
The researchers showed
children a video of a man robbing an office and then, a few days later, gave
the children a video lineup either with or without the mystery man, where the
real robber was either pictured or not pictured in the lineup. The researchers
found that children, as young as five, had a better chance of making the right
decision when the real criminal wasn’t in the lineup with the mystery man
included in the lineup, than when the mystery man was not included in the
lineup. When the mystery man was included, children were over two times more
likely to correctly say that the real criminal wasn’t really there. When the
culprit was in the lineup as well as the mystery man, children correctly
identified the criminal just as often as when the mystery man wasn’t included
and the criminal was there. So, the mystery man did not hurt the children’s
ability to pick out the criminal when he was actually in the lineup.
In a practical sense, the
simple addition of a male silhouette with a question mark on his face can
greatly increase a child’s ability to make the right decision in a police
lineup. In many cases, children are the only witnesses and provide an important
source of information about the crime. By using the mystery man in police
lineups, investigators can help children to be better at making the right
decisions when the real criminal is not in the lineup. The result is that fewer
innocent people will be identified by these child witness, these innocent
people will be less likely to go to court to face charges to crimes they did
not commit. This next-to-free change in police lineup procedures will help
children to be more accurate witnesses – even children as young as five years
old!
Adam Newton
Havard, C., & Memon, A. (2013). The mystery man
can help reduce false identification for child witnesses: Evidence from video
line‐ups. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 27(1),
50-59. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.2870
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