Week 2 Graham Davies

1
Week 2Graham Davies

• Eyewitness Identification and Composite Production

2
MISTAKEN IDENTIFICATION

• In English law, one positive identification by a
  confident witness is sufficient to convict an
  accused
• English criminal history is littered with cases
  where miscarriages of justice have occurred
  because of honest but mistaken identification
• One of the most astonishing and instructive cases
  is that of a Hungarian émigré called Laslo Virag

3
THE DEVLIN REPORT (1976)

• Devlin Recommendations
• - Caution to witnesses
• - Judges summing up
• - No identification only cases
• Turnbull Judgements (1977)
• - Good versus Poor quality
  identifications
• PACE Guidelines

4
IDENTIFICATION PARADES TODAY

• Styles of Identification permitted in UK
• A parade
• Group identification
• Confrontation
• Video identification
• Frequency and costs of parades (14M)
• Delay and exposure time (Slater, 1994)
• Outcome by witness age (Pike et al, 2002)

5
RATES OF IDENTIFICATION IN LONDON IN 1992 (Wright
McDaid, 1996)

• Picked suspect 611 (39)
• Picked foil 310 (20)
• No ID 640 (41)
• TOTAL 1561
• of Violent Crimes 71
• of White Suspects 57

6
RESEARCH ON IDENTIFICATION PARADES(OR LINE-UPS)

• Research should be directed to establishing ways
  in which the insights of psychology can be
  brought to bear on the conduct of parades and the
  practice of the courts
• (Devlin, 1976)
• Wells on System versus Estimator variables

7
ESTIMATOR VARIABLES

• Impact of delay
• (Shepherd et al. 1982)
• - The Demjanjuk case
• (Wagenaar, 1988)
• Cross-Race Identification
• (Lindsay Wells, 1983)

8
SYSTEM VARIABLES

• Exposure to photographs
• (Gorenstein Ellsworth, 1980)
• - The George Ince case
• Concept of Functional Size
• (Wells et al. 1994)
• Positive feedback on performance
• (Wells Bradfield, 1997)

9
CAN ACCURACY BE IMPROVED ?

• Confidence not a reliable guide (Penrod et al.,
  1982)
• Simultaneous versus successive line-ups (Wells
  et al., 2000)
• - Absolute vs relational judgements
• (Stern Dunning, 1994)
• VIPER parades (Valentine, 2002)
• - 51 of all live parades cancelled
• - 39 selection from VIPER 35 live

10
COMPOSITES

• Old technology
• IdentiKit
• Photofit
• Police Artists
• New technology
• E-fit
• CompPhotofit
• But how accurate?

11
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF PHOTOFIT (Christie et al.
1981)

• From From
• View Memory
• Identified 37 23
• Type likeness 54 48

12
FIELD STUDY OF PHOTOFIT (Home Office, 1976)

• Entirely responsible 5
• Very useful 17
• Useful 33
• Not very useful 20
• No use at all 25

13
WHY ARE TRADITIONAL COMPOSITES SUCH A POOR GUIDE
TO LIKENESS?

• Selective attention
• (Ellis et al. 1975)
• Limited range of features
• (Shepherd et al. 1980)
• Compatibility with encoding method
• (Davies Christie, 1982)

14
ARE THERE BETTER METHODS ?

• Computer-based systems
• - Lots of features
• - Whole-face construction
• - Lifelike appearance
• But only more accurate when composite made in
  the presence of the target (Davies et al., 2000)
• Breeding Faces EvoFIT (Frowd et al., 2005)
• Machine Recognition the Newham Experiment