Should We Be Partial to Partial Identification?

Abstract

Eyewitness identification of criminal suspects from lineups and photospreads is the largest single cause of false imprisonment in the United States. Research programs have outlined experimentally proven techniques to reduce the dangers. Levi and Jungman have proposed a radical technique in which eyewitnesses choose several people from a large set of photos based on their similarity to the culprit. They argue that this will help solve many problems, including the tendency for courts to overbelieve eyewitnesses. Some problems and prospects for this new technique are discussed.