ABSTRACT
Eyewitnesses often provide descriptions of perpetrators (Schooler, Meissner, & Sporer, this volume), create composite pictures (Davies & Valentine, this volume), and examine mug shots (McAllister, this volume) to assist police in finding suspects. Usually, an arrested suspect will be at least somewhat similar to the description given by an eyewitness. Despite matching the witness’s description of the criminal, the suspect may be guilty or not guilty. Thus, when a suspect is found, the eyewitness often will be presented with a lineup to see if the witness will select the suspect. Selection from a lineup is viewed as evidence of guilt, frequently leading to further investigation, charges, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration. (Note: We use the term selected rather than identified because selected is neutral with regard to guilt. Witnesses clearly select lineup members. The term identification implies identity between the suspect and criminal and thus contains an inappropriate, linguistic presumption of guilt.)
Eyewitness evidence has been found to be highly influential, despite the fact that witnesses are often mistaken (see Beaudry, Boyce, & Lindsay, this volume). As a result, lineup procedures are needed that can help to reduce eyewitness errors to a minimum. The purpose of this chapter is to review research on lineup procedures. Research on the showup (essentially a single-person lineup) is not discussed here (but see Dysart & Lindsay, this volume). We will demonstrate that no currently used procedure reduces eyewitness errors to an acceptable level. We will conclude that, rather than just testing the limits of current police methods, more research is needed that uses radically different procedures to obtain acceptably low levels of eyewitness error.
