Sequential Lineups: The Jury Is Still Out
By A few months ago, I posted on reports of a new study purporting to show that sequential lineups, in which a witness is shown one possible suspect after another without knowing how many are coming, are not more accurate in the field than conventional simultaneous lineups (the kind we’re all familiar with from movies and TV). This was a surprising result; studies of simulated lineups have consistently shown the reverse. And it was a useless result — looking at the details of the study showed that the researchers had no way of determining the accuracy of the witness IDs, and that they were comparing blind sequential lineups to simultaneous lineups conducted by law officers who knew who the real suspects were. Under those circumstances, if there’s any prompting at all, conscious or unconscious, by the police, witnesses are going to be more successful in identifying the actual suspects in the simultaneous lineups.
An op-ed in today’s Times makes similar criticisms of the study — if you’re interested in this sort of thing, it’s worth reading.