STF NA MÍDIA

cooperation from police departments
in San Diego, Tucson
and Charlotte, N.C., suggest
that “the sequential procedure
should catch fewer
innocent suspects in its net.”
The new study shows that
“we have the tools to reduce
eyewitness error, to protect
the innocent and help law
enforcement apprehend the
guilty,” said Barry Scheck,
co-director of the Innocence
Project, a sponsor of the report
along with the American
Judicature Society and the
Police Foundation.
“I think it’s wonderful,” said
Rosemary Lehmberg, the
district attorney for Travis
County, which includes Austin.
“It’s the first time I have
seen a study that has the potential
to convince folks that
double-blind sequential can
really help cut down on mistaken
identity.”
Others are not convinced. Art
Acevedo, Austin’s police
chief, said his department
was not ready to fully embrace
sequential lineups and
would allow officers to use
both methods. The study is
“a great starting point,” he
said, “but we’re not at the
finish line yet.”
Seth M. Lieberman, senior
appellate counsel with the
Brooklyn district attorney’s
office, said the new study
was unlikely to change his
office’s policy of using simultaneous
lineups, though
the office does administer
double-blind lineups and
incorporates other recommended
procedures.
“It would be imprudent to
just quickly say, ‘We’re going
to change our minds,’ ”
Mr. Lieberman said, noting
that the report had not yet
been peer reviewed. “There’s
a certain percolation that
goes on with experts in the
field.”
The fallibility of eyewitness
identification is well known;
75 percent of the more than
250 convictions overturned
based on DNA evidence involved
mistaken identifications.
A landmark decision last
month by the New Jersey
Supreme Court cited this
“troubling lack of reliability”
in setting new rules for addressing
those weaknesses in
New Jersey courtrooms.
While the court took a strong
stand that lineups should be
conducted by law enforcement
agents with no interest
in or knowledge of the case
to avoid the potential for
influencing witnesses, the
justices were more guarded
in their view of sequential
lineups, writing that “there is
insufficient authoritative evidence
accepted by scientific
experts for a court to make a
finding in favor of either
procedure.”
Gary L. Wells, a professor of
psychology at Iowa State
University and lead author of
the new report, said in a statement,
“Sequential presentation
is not a silver bullet for
the mistaken identification
problem, but can lead to fewer
innocent suspects being
misidentified when the lineups
are conducted doubleblind.”
The new study, conducted
between 2008 and 2011, used
laptops with special software
to ensure that the lineups
were conducted in a consistent
way. The next phase of
the study, Professor Wells
said, will continue to examine
the data gathered to gauge
the level of certainty of witnesses
and the effect of factors
like cross-racial identification
on accuracy.
The lead author of the 2006
report, Sheri Mecklenburg,
said in an interview that she
was pleased to see new field
research on the topic. “There
is still significant conflicting
information among both the
lab and the field studies,” she
said, “and I hope that the
issues can be resolved in a
reliably scientific manner
that leads to meaningful improvements
in eyewitness
identification.”
The results of the new report
must be followed up with
further research, said Steven
Clark, a professor at the University
of Southern California
who has expressed skepticism
about the superiority
of sequential lineups. “This
is a field study — it is not the
field study,” he said. “In a lot
of ways, this study raises
more questions than it actually
answers. Good studies do
that.”
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