The Police Lineup

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Abstract
Police lineups are an essential tool of justice but remain dangerous. Six problems still to be dealt with sufficiently are (a) the overbelief in lineup “identifications,” (b) the all-or-none nature of the lineup, (c) similarity of the foils to the suspect, (d) similarity of innocent suspects to the offender, (e) failures to choose the offender, and (f) the small size of the lineup. This article discusses these problems and suggests a radical departure in procedure. The proposed method would have witnesses view more than a hundred foils, have them choose foils by their own judgment of similarity to the offender, and allow multiple choices from the lineup.