Comparing the English Video Lineup with the 48-Person Lineup

Avraham Levi

doi:10.13189/ujp.2017.050601

Abstract

Levi has been experimenting with large lineups, in particular a 48-person lineup. After showing experimental participants a 2 minute video more than an hour before, participants were shown 4 screens of 12 lineup members. They could view the screens as often as they liked before reaching a decision. This study compared the 48-person lineup with the British lineup. Contrary to prediction, the British lineup did not outperform the 48-person one in identifications of the target. As there was also no difference in mistaken choices in target-absent lineups, as expected the 48-person lineup outperformed the British lineup, since the likelihood that the innocent suspect would be the person chosen is 1/10 in the ten-person British lineup, while only 1/48 in the 48-person lineup.

Highlights

The lineup is a procedure in which a person suspected by the police of having committed a crime is shown the witness, along with a number of known innocent people ("foils")
The average number of lineup members left after discounting some in the 48-person lineup was 9.098, while for the English lineup the number left was 2.96
The 48-person lineup would be vastly superior to the English lineup in preventing mistaken identifications

Summary

Introduction

The lineup is a procedure in which a person suspected by the police of having committed a crime is shown the witness, along with a number of known innocent people ("foils"). The two consistent findings have been that both the number of correct identifications and the amount of choosing when the target is absent (mistaken choices) remain constant and comparable to small lineups even as the lineup grows from 24 to 120 members. A popular rival theory explaining why witnesses choose the target more often in simultaneous lineups than in sequential lineups is the notion of relative judgment (Lindsay & Wells, 1985 [23]) According to this idea witnesses with imperfect memory compare between the lineup members and pick the person who seems most similar to their memory of the target. The British lineup differs from the six-person simultaneous one in that the photos are shown sequentially This gives witnesses a far less opportunity to compare between the lineup members and to hit upon the strategy to discount some and guess from the remaining ones. All witnesses were asked to count the number of lineup members that they could discount

Method

Results

Discussion