Opinion ID: 2543459
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Photo Lineups Generally

Text: Suggestive lineups are disapproved because they increase the likelihood of misidentification and have, in the past, too often brought about the conviction of the innocent. In United States v. Wade , the United States Supreme Court observed: A major factor contributing to the high incidence of miscarriage of justice from mistaken identification has been the degree of suggestion inherent in the manner in which the prosecution presents the suspect to witnesses for pretrial identification.... Suggestion can be created intentionally or unintentionally in many subtle ways.[ ] And the dangers for the suspect are particularly grave when the witness' opportunity for observation was insubstantial, and thus his susceptibility to suggestion the greatest. 388 U.S. 218, 228-29, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967)(footnote omitted). Furthermore, the Supreme Court has noted that, once an eyewitness has chosen a suspect from a line-up, that witness is not likely to go back on his word later on, so that in practice the issue of identity may (in the absence of other relevant evidence) for all practical purposes be determined there and then, before the trial. Id. at 229, 87 S.Ct. 1926. The danger of misidentification is further increased in prosecutions where the victim is the witness, such as in a robbery, because there is a particular hazard that a victim's understandable outrage may excite a vengeful or spiteful motive. Id. at 230, 87 S.Ct. 1926. Subsequent experience and empirical evidence support the Supreme Court's conclusions. For example, a study of forty cases in which the convicted persons were later exonerated through DNA testing revealed that ninety percent (90%) of the convictions were obtained, at least in part, by erroneous eyewitness identifications. Gary L. Wells et al., Eyewitness Identification Procedures: Recommendations for Lineups and Photospreads, 22 Law & Hum. Behav. 603, 605 (1998). The study concluded that mistaken eyewitness identification is responsible for more of these wrongful convictions than all other causes combined, and that eyewitness identification evidence is among the least reliable forms of evidence and yet is persuasive to juries. Id. The study further demonstrated that accuracy of description is a rather poor predictor of identification. Id. at 608. A different study revealed that recognition accuracy was found to be poorer when the perpetrator was holding a weapon. Vaughn Tooley et al., Facial Recognition: Weapon Effect and Attentional Focus, 17 J. of Applied Social Psychology 845, 854 (1987).