Simultaneous vs. Sequential Lineups - What's Better? What Should The Police Do?
According to an article in USA Today - they are reporting:
At least five states — Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia — and some major U.S. cities have either revamped or started changing the way law enforcement officials use photographic lineups to identify suspects. Since changing its policy in April, Dallas Police Lt. David Pughes says the department has conducted 1,400 lineups and believes "we're bringing a stronger piece of evidence to court."
"Challenges to lineups were first dismissed as misguided academic exercises, until (law enforcement officials) could see the concrete disasters resulting in exoneration," says Iowa State University psychology professor Gary Wells, an expert on eyewitness identification. Earlier this year, Dallas became the largest police department to stop presenting blocks of mug shots to witnesses. Now, suspects' photographs are presented one at a time by investigators who are not involved in the cases. The new sequential technique is designed to focus witnesses' memories more precisely on who they saw and not allow for potentially faulty comparisons.
But are sequential lineups really better? The National Institute of Justice is not convinced. According to their research:
So far, research that compares simultaneous and sequential lineups and the use of "blind" administrators has not been conclusive. In a blind lineup, the person who is running the lineup does not know which person the police believe is the likely suspect.
According to an article published by the NIJ:
“At the present time, [when comparing simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations,] there is no definitive sense that one form of lineup presentation is superior to the other,” Roy S. Malpass, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Texas at El Paso..
Malpass noted that certain practices typically used in sequential lineups—such as asking witnesses to make a separate decision on each photograph or individual—have not been examined in simultaneous lineups. Thus, it is unclear whether differences in the effectiveness of the two lineup models are due to method of presentation (simultaneous or sequential) or the presence of these other variables.
Jury is still out. But crimes still need to be solved. Best tool police have to do that is still eyewitnesses - whether a psychology professor likes it or not.
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Today the Innocence Project released a new report entitled 