Witnesses 'choose faces they dislike at ID parades'

Witnesses may point the finger at a suspect in a line-up simply because they do not like the way they look, scientists said today.

Psychologists Dr Hartmut Blank and Dr Jim Sauer, of the University of Portsmouth, have been awarded £100,000 to examine what may influence people when picking out a possible perpetrator in an identification parade. Their initial research suggests that people are more likely to identify line-up members they dislike and less likely to identify someone they like.

They say that such decisions are automatic and spontaneous rather than thought out.

Dr Blank, a specialist in memory and the effect of social influences on how and what we remember, said: "It's natural that we don't enjoy creating trouble for someone we like by identifying them as a perpetrator. "The feeling of liking can definitely influence judgment. "The liking bias is a subtle effect though otherwise the justice system would have long been aware of it."

Dr Sauer said that this "liking bias" might be behind a growing number of documented cases in which mistaken identifications contributed to the convictions of people who were later proved innocent through DNA testing.

He said: "The legal system finds eyewitness identification evidence compelling but it has contributed to many wrongful convictions over the years. "Eyewitness error represents a significant cost to society and criminal justice system.

"The first cost is an innocent person is jailed, the second cost is once an individual has been identified, police investigations may narrow, so the perpetrator remains at large. "Most people think their memories are reliable but no-one is exempt from vulnerability to bias.

"Some people are more resistant than others; generally, those with better memories of an event are more resistant to biases and those with poorer memories of an event are more vulnerable.

"In a police line-up, the witness goes in thinking they have a job to do. "They assume the police have caught someone and that person is standing in the line-up. "They also assume the police have other information to back up their arrest or suspicions. They think their job is to pick the suspect.

"If the eyewitness has no clear memory of the perpetrator, they look for cues available in the identification situation, perhaps subconsciously they just don't like the look of someone in the line-up, so they point to them."

The researchers will conduct four experiments trying to identify the underlying causes and boundaries of liking bias in the hope that they can then find ways of limiting or eliminating the effect of such bias in real identification procedures.

Original report here




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