Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Police Lineups Work

Episode Date: July 15, 2023

Police lineups are something most people have never had any firsthand experience with. What you see on TV and in movies isn't so far off though. Learn about how these tropes work for real in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From I Heart Podcasts, these are the whistleblowers. I wasn't just gonna sit silently by. Somebody needs to just give everybody the whole truth. You take your question in black self and get it on up out of my facility. If you speak out, you won't pay. It should be prosecuted. When power corrupts, conscience is the last line of defense.

I'm Miles Taylor. Listen to the whistleblowers every Thursday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello! This is LeVern Cox. I'm an actress, producer, and host at the LeVern Cox show. Do you like your tea with lemon or honey? History-making Broadway performer Alex Newell. When I sing the Holy Ghost shows up, that's my ministry and I know that well about me. That's the G-Hunting. Whoever it is, you can bet we get into it. My guest and I, we go there every single time.

I can't help it. Listen to the LeVehrin Cock Show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's Selective Chosen Our 2018 episode, How Police Lineups Work. It's one of those things that you just kind of know about and then you find out about it and you say to yourself, how are we doing this?

It's a great episode, I think you'll enjoy it, so sit back relax and you're ready for police lineings. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry out there outside of the bowl. And also, there's guest producer Noel in our pal Ben. But, yeah. I'm in the room this time, yeah. Yeah, on the mic. Thanks for having us.

I, this is way better than that time you had me on the April Fools episode. Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because you may remember Ben from that. I think it was 2013 or 15 something on godly time ago. It's my replacement. Yeah, it was 2013 or 15 something on godly time ago. It's my replacement. Yeah, it was an April fools joke for the 3D printing episode. So this is your second time on the show. Yeah, the internet Shredgy Ben, was it where they were you like a target of

abuse? I want to thank everybody for the very polite emails and as we can tell thankfully Chuck is fine. Yeah, they took it easy on him. Okay. We have very nice listeners. Oh, it's awesome. And then this might be the first time you're ever speaking on the podcast, even though you've guessed produced it like a million times. I think I may have mumbled something in the background the time to shoot.

I'm not thinking we edited it. Oh, really? Wow. Wow, Josh. So we're having you two on, let's cut, let's get down to business. Because you two have a podcast together, right? No, you also run mini crush movie crush. It's true. Yeah, you're also on real world's colliding right now. Right.

There's a lot. I'm going over them all. You're on stuff they don't want you to know, but you two Ben and Noel have come together and made Ridiculous history, which is awesome. Oh, yeah, that's right. We're just missing that. Oh my God. I'm starting to sweat. But you guys are on ridiculous history together. We are. Yeah, tell us about that. So history is full of these cartoonish, bizarre events often not covered in your typical history class. Sounds familiar, right?

Sure. Because for one reason or another, people thought, that's no way. That didn't really happen. The first recorded instance of a mooning did not result in the death of hundreds of people. It's surely not. Surely not, but it did.

It did. It did. And surely the US government did not have a plan to shoot a nuclear missile at the moon Right that was just a mr. Show sketch surely not which it also was it was kind of parallel thinking is the mr. Show sketch happened before this story Became declassified is that right? It is I don't remember a one one nine. Yep. So our continuing mission with ridiculous history, not to sound too star trekky about it, is to find those moments, the bizarre people, places, and things throughout the span of human civilization that at least crack the both of us up on a continual basis. And sometimes we do have to stop recording just for a second because we're so tickled.

Do you really? Yeah. Wow, that's actually high quality mainly because we tickle each other. I got to physically show. That's cheating. Man, you're making it sound so serious. It's actually a lot of fun. It is.

It's a fun show, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm giving Ben a hard time. But yeah, that is definitely like, we touch on, from time I mean, I'm giving it a hard time, but yeah, that is definitely like, we touch on, from time to time, it'll go into a heavier territory. Like for example, we did an episode about how women in Kansas in the 1920s were imprisoned in labor camps

for having STDs. Why that certainly falls under ridiculous, not exactly fun or funny, but not out. Ha ha ridiculous. So it's all of those things. Some of them are, you know, crack you up hilarious moments, like Napoleon Bonaparte getting attacked by bunnies.

True story. Or, you know, the aforementioned SDT labor camp. Or the racist special Olympics that were held here in the States and were a complete well, to borrow phrase we use on the show, a complete ship show. Yeah, absolutely. So, wait a minute, I think you are, like you need to name the state that hosted that. Oh, it was St. Louis.

Yeah, St. Louis. Mm-hmm, sure, is that true? Yeah, sure, yeah. Yeah, sure. And it's because the world's fair was happening in St. Louis, and they were gonna have it in Chicago, but the people hosting the world's fair said,

if you don't do your Olympics as part of the world's fair, we're going to totally blow you out of the water with how awesome our world's fair is and no one's going to come to your Olympics. And scared them. Yeah. In the early days of like, you know, not the earliest days of the Olympics when they brought it back like in them, you know, 1890s. It was not ancient Rome. It was not in fact ancient Rome. No. And it was not a fact in general it was also yeah it was not a good example of the olympics either uh... because the white supremacist who were in charge of the whole shebang uh... decided that this would be the perfect time to

uh... prove their cockamama ideas of like uh... eugenics ideas of kind of like white superiority and like they would have indigenous people competing in these Olympic events Okay, of course they didn't teach them how to you know do the events So they didn't just automatically know how to pull vault or throw a javelin or whatever So and what supremacist can ruin anything Anything they put their hands on you really can just turns to poop. Yeah We are doing an episode on flatulence later. So stay tuned for that So so before we give everything away guys tell everyone where they can find ridiculous We are doing an episode on flatulence later. So stay tuned for that.

So before we give everything away, guys tell everyone where they can find ridiculous history and win. You can find ridiculous history at our website. No, it's ridiculous history show. I think so. The website is back too. You guys definitely came prepared for this. We do.

Yeah, we've got the stack of notes right here. We're shuffling them. Yeah, we've got the stack of notes right here. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to go through my rolling back stuff. So you can find us in Apple Podcasts, you find us in Spotify, you can find us wherever you find your favorite shows, like stuff you should know, or stuff they don't want you to know, or I should I list the entire Pantheon of all the shows we have. I know. It's too many of this.

It's too many of this. But yes, you can find us in all of those places. We also have a community page that we're really proud of and really happy with called ridiculous historians on Facebook. Yeah, taking a total cue from the the CISC army. Yeah, nice. Well, first of all, thank you for all of the flattery that you've been heaping on us for the last few minutes. It's much appreciated But also, thank you for coming by. Appreciate it guys. last few minutes is much appreciated. But also thank you for coming by. Appreciate it guys. Thank you guys for having us.

Yeah, thank you so much. Let's do this every week. Yeah, that might be a bit much. Let me check the sketch. I gotta tell you I love those guys, but I'm glad to get out of that new studio box. Oh yeah. It's like a FEMA trailer, man. It's formaldehyde, wafting off, slowly poisoning us.

It is still off-cassing, it feels like. Yeah, big time. It's in my hair, which is now falling out. We're in bad shape. Well, before, I like what you're wearing, by the way. Thank you. I spilled a tremendous amount of coffee on myself. And luckily, I had a bunch of samples

of our new t-shirt. Yeah. And this is not just a plug everyone. Josh is literally wearing a Lewis the Child Skeptic t-shirt from the stuff you should know store, because they sent us every shirt. I'm like, oh great, to the guy who has 100 t-shirts, here's 20 more. But they are pretty cool. I'm pretty happy with this. Yeah, that's a cool one.

The size of it. Look at the size. It's a perfect size. It's not so big that it wraps around and gets all mangled by my love handles. But it's also not so small that it looks like you know a cave d'in chest. You know what I mean? I didn't remember that reference though. Well, it's a problem. I didn't either. Like they listened to the pi pi per episode. Oh, there you go. That sounds like a u-thing. Sounds like a Josh. But it was just an off-handing comment.

I made it now. It's a t-shirt I'm wearing, which is, I love it. Makes it a pretty great time to be alive. By the way, I need to give a shout out to Brittany Schiff. Brittany Schiff sent this idea to us. Oh, okay, great. And the reason, we don't often take,

well, that's not true. We kind of keep up Kitty of listener suggestions, but we don't often do one the next week and then shout out the person. Sure. But I thought we had fully exhausted our crime and punishment series. Nope.

So I was delighted that Brittany Schiff sent this in and I was like, why haven't we done police line up? I don't know. It's a great question. There's just sit in there. Yeah. Waitin'. Yep.

The only other one that's left is what kind of shoes detectives wear. That's this. That's the last one. You know what gum shoes means? It's this. Yeah. That's gum shoe. Or You know what Gumshoe means is this. Yeah, that's Gumshoe, or Crapesold, I think. You knew that? Yeah, but I don't know how it relates to cops.

I guess they wore those because they're so comfortable. Yeah. Cops are always walking around, walking. Yeah. Yeah, no. But sometimes when they're walking, they're actually out on the street looking for people who resemble a suspect that they have in the jailhouse and they say, hey, you, come on over here.

How did you like to make 10 bucks? And the person says exactly how copper and the cop says, by standing in is what we call a filler in a police line up. Or they do like Homer Simpson and wouldn't there like a boat raffle that they said he had to come down to the police station? Yeah, he won a boat. Yeah. And then they beat him mercilessly for like parking, unpaid parking tickets.

I also shout out to Beth Schuster who wrote this article in the NIJ journal, the National Institute of Justice. I believe so. Is that right? Yeah, they're pretty much committed to keeping people from being wrongly convicted. So I would guess the J stands for Justice. Yeah, and this is a good start, and we have some other stuff we added to it, but thank you, Ms Schuster. Yeah, for your work.

Yep. Well, I already led into the episode and it didn't take. So let me try again. This N.I.J. article you sent calls out a dude named Jerry Miller, who back in 1981 was 22 years old, I believe. And Jerry Miller had a particularly bad day when he was arrested, and he was charged with robbing, kidnapping, and raping a woman. And he got convicted. He was convicted because

two people, two eyewitnesses, saw him in a lineup, picked him out, and then later at trial, the victim said, maybe that's him, maybe it's not. But who cares? There's two eyewitnesses that picked this schmo out of a lineup. He's done. Yeah. He did 24 years in prison.

And you may notice from the tone that I'm using here, he was wrongfully convicted. Yeah. He actually got out of prison and was living life for Lisa and parole, wearing an ankle bracelet, a monitor constantly. As a registered sex offender. Right. And then finally, I think, oh, I'm not quite sure.

Oh, 2007, in 2007, as part of the Innocence Project, which we've done an episode on with that lady. What is her name? Oh, Ha hauline I want to say different more bill but it's definitely not no Paul is on Paul is on thank you Jerry yeah I wanted to say Paulie sure so bad I just knew it was wrong but we did an innocent innocent right we did an innocence Project episode and under the Innocence Project, Jerry Miller was exonerated through DNA evidence. He, incontrovertibly, did not do this and lost 24 years of his life because of flawed eyewitness testimony.

Yeah. And so, you know, this is all about police lineups and more about, I mean, we'll tell you how they work in a general sense, but this is sort of more about how, you know, it's such an imperfect system, but sort of the takeaway from all of this that we're about to go over with all the studies and the trying different things is kind of like, you know, it's an imperfect system and we can try and craft it the best way we can, but human memory is imperfect, identifying people in lineups is imperfect, and we're just, it's kind of the best we got right now.

Right. Well, a lot of people are like, get rid of eyewitness testimony. Really? All together? Yes. All together. Humans suck at eyewitness testimony.

And there's a lot of reasons why. It's not like people are out there like, I wanna have me a bad guy. Show me a line up, I'm gonna pick one of those guys out. We're not doing that. They're subject to basically the way our brains are wired. We don't walk around videotaping everything that we see. You know, we get constantly bombarded with

sensory information. And under normal circumstances, you know, you see a strange on the street, you just see, there's another human, I've identified him as not a threat and keep walking by it. If that person turned out to be accused of a crime or perpetrated a crime and you were brought in to say was this the person you saw Your brain is going to try to reconstruct what little pieces of memory it formed of that person And there's a lot of things a lot of factors that are involved that can make that really difficult task even harder Yeah, like I am someone who has told myself, Chuck, pay attention, like if you're ever in a situation, like pay attention, try and collect yourself,

and try and remember a few really good details about the car, or the person, so like this is on my mind, and I actually had a situation when I lived in LA happened to me where I had to go through a police line up and I failed. Oh really was the suspect there? No, well, no, here's the quick version is I was in a hit and run this lady, these two lady, these two younger girls, they were probably teenagers, hit me from behind in my car.

Okay. I stopped my car, I started to get out and they take off. So it's a hit and run. Wow. I chased them, which is you should not do. No, were you shooting into the air to get them to slow down trying to shoot out their tires? No, but I did chase them because I was so mad, and your adrenaline just shoots through the roof when something like that happens So immediately you're just not Yourself and like recording details. So I was trying to catch up to get a license plate I saw that they went down the street that I knew was a dead end You like I got him now. It wasn't a cul-de-sac, but it functioned like a cul-de-sac

So I stopped where I was got out of the car sure enough 20 seconds later they come hauling, but back toward me. And the look on their faces was like, you know, oh snap, there's the guy. And they just sped right past me. And I saw their faces as they sped past me in their car. The cops found the car, found the people, and they were like, we didn't do that. And so, who are these girls, these teenagers?

Well, that's the long and short of it is all you have to do, and something like that, I say, didn't do it. And if I can't pick you out, then you get away. And they showed me pictures of like, you know, these were like teenage, young teenage Hispanic women. They showed me probably, probably 15 pictures and said, can you identify them? I was like, no, it was a month ago, they sped past me for a second.

Like I couldn't even hazard a guess and I didn't want to do that, you know. Well, that's very sensible of you actually. Yeah, I just didn't want to take a stab at it. So I was like, no, I have no idea. And they were basically like, sorry. They said they didn't do it. Wow. It's like, of you actually. Yeah, I just didn't want to take a stab at it. So I was like, no, I have no idea. And they were basically like, sorry. They said they didn't do it. Wow.

It's like, but you have the car and it's damaged. And like none of that matters. They're like, no, not if you can't identify. I mean, I could see that I think it'd be like, oh, yeah, that happened some other time. I know. And some other hit and run. I mean, but yeah, the long story short, though,

is I'm someone who has tried to tell myself to react in the right ways and I couldn't tell them much beyond like the color of the car and sort of what it looked like because you were seeing red Because you're mad you're in fighters. Yep, right? That's our that our bodies are not primed to form memories Yeah, it's not where our where our energy goes It's more like getting away or shooting out the tires of a car that just hit and ran, right? But what you did with that lineup is the other side

of the coin, the other problem with lineups is or eyewitness testimony from lineups is that sometimes people pick out people who are innocent and other times people fail to pick out the people who are actually the perpetrators. Yeah. So it's like you said, they're very, they're very, it's a flawed system.

The problem is is the wrong people can go to jail and the people who actually did it can get away with it. So that's an extremely flawed system. And when something that important is on the table, then it needs to be fixed. And there's a lot of people looking into how it can be fixed, but we're not there yet by any stretch. No, and here's a stat you were talking about

the DNA exoneration, 75% of the first 183 exoneration in the US were wrongfully convicted because of eyewitness testimony and police lineups. Say it again. 75% 75% of the first 183. So like the Innocence Project is basically like a pilot study to show through DNA exoneration all the ways that we wrongfully convict people. And what is coming to the front is eyewitness testimony. Yeah, and at the basis of that is the police line up.

Right. And one other thing that's problematic with the eyewitness testimony is if you want to wow a jury, bring out an eyewitness who seems totally sure what they saw or that they saw the person they're pointing to and the defendant's table. Yeah, or that dramatic moment, it's like a movie trope now, you know, is the person in this room. Right, let the record show that the witness is pointing at the defendant, right?

Yeah, so the problem is it has a huge impact, but it's also really cruddy, with really cruddy evidence. There's this guy here, he had a great quote. He says that eyewitness testimony is a very unusual, complex kind of trace evidence. And it's difficult to recover, easy to contaminate, and very hard to handle.

And there's no better description of eyewitness testimony. If I was ever in court and someone identified me from the witness stand, I would do that thing where you look at behind you, when they pointed at you, you just be like, I think they're talking about it. Yeah. That guy behind me. I get out of it. And they would say, no, and they would point again, and I would move a little bit more and be like, this witness is clearly disturbed. And then if that didn't work, you would escalate

to I'm rubber and you're glue. Yeah, that usually works. So there's a couple of other things that makes eye witness testimony problematic, Chuck. In addition to not being like human video recorders, there are human VCRs. Right. There are circumstances, especially surrounding a crime that can make it really difficult to

remember. If you're in a fight or flight situation, you're not forming memories. If there's a weapon, there are people tend to focus on the weapon. Sure. Um, Yumi was mugged once and the opposite happened to her. She remembered what the person looked like, but she didn't even remember that there was a weapon and her friends were like, yeah, there was a gun. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. And she went to a lineup and like pick the guy out and. But Yumi's bulletproof, so she is. She's like, take your gun and shove it. I'm not even going to recognize it. No, but that makes sense. If someone pulls a gun on you or has a switch plate or some other kind of creepy weapon, the human instinct is to focus your attention on that thing pointed at you. Yeah, and apparently people can really describe

the gun. The weapon, yeah. But you're focusing on the weapon. You're not focused on the person who's holding the weapon typically. Which helps a little bit, but not as much as the face. Right. And then another problem is if you are, say, an Hispanic dude and you're a witness to a crime and it's a white guy who's the perpetrator, you're going to have a tremendous amount of difficulty picking that white guy out. Is sad as it is to say from a lineup of other white guys. Yeah, because eyewitness testimony that crosses race or ethnicities is is known to be very unreliable. Yeah, because it's just more difficult for somebody of an ethnicity or race to Separate or identify people of another ethnicity or race. Yeah, and I don't think it's the case where people are like Oh white people look the same to me.

It's just weird brain science. Right. You know? Right. You just have a harder time. From way back when we were basically tuk tuk. Yeah. And tuk tuk live with 15 other people that look just like them

because they'd all been inbreeding for generations and generations and they had to be on the lookout for another group of people who've been in breeding for generations and generations that wanted their jackfruit tree that they live by. What's jackfruit? Oh, that word. Jackfruit, something amazing. That's a big huge thing. The big huge one, it actually makes a killer barbecue vehicle. Like shredded pork vegan stand-in.

Oh, okay. It's really good. Gotcha, gotcha. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about the fundamentals of the Run of the Mill Police line up right up to this. From I Heart Podcasts, Whitney Hill is going on here. Everyone has their limits.

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Be sure to truly be myself. And now, I'm the executive producer of a new show, the history of the world's greatest nightclubs. I wanted a show that represented freedom, joy, and hope. And there is no one better to host than someone who has inspired me for so many years with her musical talent. I'm alternate Aay and I've been in the music industry for three decades. I'm a singer, songwriter, and musician. And now, I'm inviting you to join me

on this global nightclub journey. We'll dive into the origins of genres that broke the industry and uncover the stories of legendary DJs, all through the eyes of the people who partied at the height of club culture. Listen to the history of the world's greatest nightclubs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, so run of the Mill Police lineups. I mentioned that before we left. Everyone's seen movies and TV shows and it's not too far off actually. I mean, there are a couple of ways you can do it. There are lineups where you look at someone in front of your face and then there are

lineups like I had an L.A. where I look at photographs. The ones, you know, it's way more sexy for a TV show or a movie to line them up in the traditional way. Right. It's extraordinarily sexy, like a live-place lineup like you see on TV. Sure. And then there are the simultaneous or sequential. There's a lot of debate, which we'll get into in a minute, about which is best. Right. To me, it's pretty obvious that sequential is best. Simultaneous is the one that you see on TV. They line up six or seven dudes or ladies and you identify them.

Usually, well, it depends. We'll get into the fillers or the foils. But usually only one of those people is a suspect. In the best ideal version of it. Right. Then there's sequential, and that's when they bring out one person at a time and bring out like seven guys just wanted a time and you'd say, you know, let me know at the

end of this, which one you think it was. Or if it's a photo lineup, they show you one photo at a time. Exactly. Yeah, I agree with you. I think sequential is head and shoulders the better one of the two. Yeah.

And here's the final little piece of how it can vary is whether or not the administrator, the person that's in charge of administrating the lineup, knows who the perp is or not. Yeah, that's a big one, man. So it's either double blind, which means that they don't even know. And to me, it seems obvious that that's always the best way, because there are many, many circumstances where you would actually, even if you don't want to or mean to lead a witness and one example they gave here in this article is if they say, and if they identify a filler or a foil, a.k.a. a person that was paid 10 bucks, say, that's the person the administrator

might say, take your time. Yeah. Are you sure? Like, you really need to take your time. Yeah. Are you sure? Like, you really need to take your time. Which is basically like saying wrong. Right. Pretty much. They should try again.

Try again. Yeah. Or conversely, if, um, when they're doing it sequentially, when they get to like number four, they're like, whoa, whoa, go to the load of this guy, huh? Jeez, look at that. Bag character. He's guilty a guy, huh? Geez, look at that. Bag character. He's guilty of something. But they can, like, even just a smile or something like that.

Cough like a nonverbal cue you don't even mean to do. Right, or you may mean to do. Sure. Because you know that that's the guy and you know it in your bones that that guy did it. Right. And you're leading the witness, right? It can be some sort of nonverbal gesture.

The problem is is that most people, I can't say most people, but it's been shown that some people, when they're brought in as a witness for a police line-up, feel like it's their role, it's their job to pick somebody for the cops. Right. So they're more than happy to be lied by the cops because then they're fulfilling their role

and they did what they were supposed to do. Right. So another technique or way to administer a good lineup is to say, here's the lineup whether it's sequential, one at a time or all at once. Simultaneous, yeah. The suspect may or may not be in this lineup. Yeah, that seems like I think they found that reduced mistaken identity rates were lower when they did this. So you would think just always do that. Right, right?

Because it says to the witness, like the person may not be in here. It's like a none of the above, the dreaded letter E, none of the above, you're like, oh God, does that mean that the answer's not here? And so you may say, I don't see them, where if they don't say that,

you're going to presume that the suspect is in that lineup. And it's your job to find that person and you have to pick somebody. Yeah. Most people aren't going to think like, I can't say so I'm just not going to. They're going to be like, hmm, three. Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a crime against you. Most a lot of times when you're like picking out this perp. Sure. Yeah. So you want them to be, you know, found or whatever. Yeah, that's a really good

point too. You don't want them to get away with it. And the other thing too is I think there's a natural human instinct. When given a test to not want to say, I can't like, you might feel like you have failed. Right. That's why I admire you saying that like with the phone lineup, you know, not, not being, not just being like this is to right. Well, these two, yeah. But if it, that wouldn't have mattered in my case, because if I would have said these two,

and if they're like, nah, that's not the lady whose car it was. But a lot of people still would have. Right, right, right. And they probably wouldn't say, no, that's wrong. They would have been like, okay, thanks a lot for your time or whatever. And then you would have left and been like, God, he was so close.

Some other research, it's interesting that suggests when there is an offender in the line-up that young children and elderly perform about as well as just regular young adults, but when the line-up does not have the actual offender, then they commit mistakes a lot higher. And to me, that's just because I think kids and elderly might not fully understand, like, think they have to pick somebody. Okay. Yeah. I agree. I think that's exactly what it is, too. But the research bears that out. It looks like. Right. So there's, there is some, like you, you talked about research, there's a lot of

research in this, but it's become ambiguous, right? If you step back and you listen to all of the different things that you can do with a lineup, it becomes very clear that a sequential double blind lineup where either one photo of a suspect is shown to the person at a time or one live suspect is brought out to be looked at, one person at a time. And is administered by a cop or a time, or one live suspect is brought out to be looked at, one person at a time, and is administered by a cop or a worker, somebody who doesn't know who the suspect is, that that's going to reduce the chance of a misidentification or a failure of an identification, and that the person who's being presented with these people is not going to be able to guess.

And if they actually do remember who the perpetrator was, they're going to recognize them. It's just obvious that that's the best way to do it, right? The thing is, is there was a study in Illinois that just completely rocked that idea, that that's the case because there was a three or five year study in Illinois that looked at different types of lineups and compared them side by side and found that actually know that a double blind sequential lineup actually produces worse results

than a simultaneous, non-double blind one. Right. But then again, not so fast with that, because other people since then have questioned the methodology. They used in that program and kind of said, you know, I don't even know if we can take this research and take these statistics seriously. Right. Because methodologically, it was a screwed up study. Like they really dropped the ball on the study. Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned the two judgments either. During simultaneous lineups, when everyone's standing there together,

you use what's called relative judgment. In other words, you compare all the dudes standing up there against one another. Right. And with the ones where they try to mount one at a time, they use something called absolute judgment, which is supposedly means that they're comparing it to only their memory and not to the people that came before or after. Right. That's, that's the hope. That's the ideal, right?

Right. But with this research in the study, I kind of didn't even know what to think because it sort of went against the grain and the findings, but then they said, I don't even know if we can trust these findings, because the methodology was no good. Right. So, we ended up sort of back at square one with the Illinois pilot program. It seems like. Yeah, the reason why the methodology was so terrible, they used the double blind procedure

for sequential lineups, but they didn double blind procedure for sequential lineups, but they didn't use it for simultaneous lineups. So if cops were inadvertently or inadvertently leading people with simultaneous lineups, then of course those are going to produce correct choices with suspects better than the one that the double blind sequential one. They compare it apples to oranges in the study. It's almost like a sixth grader came up with how to actually conduct the study, but the Illinois legislature said, Illinois State Police, go figure this out.

Do a three-year study on this, and they came back and said, huh? And it's terrible. And the problem is, is if it is true that a sequential double blind study is the way to go, that it is just smarter and works better, that study set that back by years. Because now all the cops all over the country heard, they did the study and it's actually worse. Not and the design of the study

was flawed methodologically, just it's actually worse. Not and the design of the study was flawed methodologically, just it doesn't work. Yeah, they even went to the cops at the Illinois Public Program, talked to them and they said the majority of the officers said they didn't think that it was superior and said that witnesses who can identify the offender can do so under either procedure

and officers express concerns that using a blind administrator disrupts the relationship and investigator has tries to build with a witness. So I interpret all that as it's cop saying can we just keep doing it the way we've always done it? Yeah, because it gets results, right? But the thing is they have some pretty good points in that if you are running a lineup or whatever, you put together like a six pack is what it's called in the US, where you've got three and three of mug shots of people.

And, or I think in Canada, they usually use 12. But you put this thing together, then you have to find like a patrol officer or a sergeant or somebody who has no idea what's going on with your case. If you want to do a double blind, yeah. And then those, that person has to go to the house, record the, what the person did, and then come back and tell you, it's just an extra thing that cops are like, come on,

dude, this is just making it way too hard. Yeah, I mean, they said in here that sometimes even have trouble coming up with the blind administrator and maybe it's a, it probably has everything to do with budgets. My thought is like, why isn't there one person that does only this? Oh, that's a great question. It just is called the administrator. Right. It's a line of administrator.

And goes to the people's houses or runs them in the precinct or whatever. And this is the only thing that they do. Right. I'll do it. Bring in the administrator. Yeah, that's a TV show. Wait, you know what I'm saying?

I'm sure. Yeah, I don't know. It's probably budgetary. It's gotta be. They also found with a lot of these when there's multiple perps, it just goes haywire. Yeah. Because sometimes they'll put two of the perps in the same lineup. Right, right.

It's just super confusing. That actually falls in line with like how to build like a decent lineup the right way. And we'll cover that and where they get people to stand in as suspects right after this. From I Heart Podcasts. What in the hell is going on here? Everyone has their limits. I had never confronted a situation like this. I just thought it was just a really terrible moral thing.

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Listen to it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Chuck. So you were just talking about how if you have a lineup and you put two suspects that you've got, say there are two guys who rob some lady, and you have five people in the lineup, but two of them are your suspects. That actually is totally unfair for the suspects. Because what you've done just then is increase the chance that somebody could guess, just guess randomly at the suspect, right? Yeah. If you have five

people in a lineup, and one of them are the suspect, then that If you have five people in a lineup, and one of them are the suspect, then that person has a one in five chance of being chosen by random chance. But if there's two suspects in a five person lineup, they have a two out of five chance, which is way more than a one in five chance, some people might even say double the chance, right?

And so it's just less fair. So one of the standards that you want to fulfill if you're putting together a lineup and you're a cop is that you have one suspect per lineup, which is tougher to do than you would think. Yeah, and it seems like a lot of the problem with this is, and they even say so in the Nij articles that lab studies are one thing,

but actually implementing this in the NIJ articles that lab studies are one thing, but actually implementing this in the field, they get different results. And people are doing lab research on one end, cops are out in the field, sometimes they're in people's homes, sometimes they're in the precinct. And it seems like the two heads aren't talking very much. And there are people, you know, they did like a live web chat at some point to bring together all these experts from around the world. And they kind of all around me were like, this is a big mess and we need to all combine forces to try and do the right thing. And the feeling I get is that a lot of these police precincts just kind of want to be left

alone. Sure. I mean, they know what works and it works, you know? But does it? Well, that's the question. Right. So, they fing's the question. Right. So they finger to collar. Right.

Is that the right? The gum she finger to collar. Yeah. Then it's all in a good day's work. Right. But if they finger the wrong collar, then it's no good. It's still all in the day's work. So one of the reasons it's somebody

a cop would put a two suspects in a line up, it's not just to like increase the chances that one of those suspects gets picked by an eyewitness, it's because sometimes it can be hard to come up with people for a line up. Yeah, this was hard to believe, like just they can't find people sometimes. Right. Well, and the reason why is because let's say you have multiple witnesses and each witness gives you a different description of the perpetrator, right? Right. Ideally, you're going to find a

different lineup for each witness. Yeah, like if there's three witnesses, you should run three lineups, right? Because their descriptions are probably somewhat different. Right. That can be difficult. Sure. And there's a couple of ways to handle a lineup. You can do a suspect matched lineup where you've got a suspect and to keep your suspect from standing out, you make all the other people in the lineup look like, you know, your

suspect. Yeah. That's one way to do it. Another is to do the perpetrator description match strategy, which is you've got, and that's when you have no suspect, right? Just by witness accounts. You can have a suspect, but you're creating your lineup based on what the witness has described the perpetrator to look like.

And then just throw the suspect in there. Right, which can be bad for the suspect because if the suspect, the person you actually think did it, doesn't look anything like the eyewitness said. And there's going to be four redheads in the one blonde guy who's actually the suspect, he's going to stand out like a sore thumb. So there's a lot of different things that have to be massaged here to try to make everybody in the lineup basically look all like the

perpetrator. Yeah, the eyewitness described right or all like the suspect that you've got because you don't want the suspect to stand out And there's a lot of techniques that they use to try to make everybody look the same. Yeah, one of the I mean they like you said They dress people it was funny that when the article said in the Bronx precinct they usually usually put them in Yankees hats. Right. Just line up a bunch of guys in Yankees hats. Right. That means that they have like five Yankees hats hanging

outside of that room where they walk them into. What in Kramer in line up when he was, yeah. A suspect totally. Serial killer suspect. Yes. I don't remember. It was a serial killer. I remember he was in line.

I've been kept turning the wrong way. Yeah. I think he was misidentified on that when they went to LA to pitch the TV show. Creamer got caught up in some like serial killer thing. I think of that. And I think of the great line up scene in the usual suspects. With let's address that real quick when they have to say something. So well, we can't repeat it here because there's bad words. Right. No, what I was gonna say is that that lineup would never happen because not only do you have

two suspects in there, all five people in the lineup are your suspects. And they're not dressed the same. Yep. Yeah, it's a total movie lineup. It would never happen. No. Or are you gonna say about them saying something?

Well, they had to recite a line. I don't know how typical that is though. You meet when she did her lineup. She remembered what the guy was saying. Oh, and they all had to say that. Oh, okay. So that's the thing. And she was like, wait a minute. Can I, do they have to say whatever I say they said? And the cop was like, yeah, and she's like, hmm, really? What I want him to say. Yeah. He's like, no, you have to say what they actually said oh yeah How did that result did she get the guy? Oh she picked him out of media. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, I got busted nice Yeah, and you know muggy me. I'll tell you that buddy. You hear that perps

Right you start quaking in your boots The one thing to that caught me sort of off guard is that I never thought about is the The part about whether or not they're clean shaven like There could be details of omission like if a eyewitness Doesn't remember or doesn't mention that they either were clean shaven or not Then I think they default To something that may not be accurate and so all of a sudden you're line up Well, your lineup should have all clean shaven dudes.

You should just assume that if they didn't say they got out of beard, that doesn't mean that the guy had a beard and they just didn't say it. You should just assume it means that they're clean shaven. And they should all be clean shaven in lineup because if you have five clean shaven guys and one filler or one foil with a big beard like me, I might get picked out just because I look different.

Right, exactly. Or if the one guy's clean shaven and you're like, well, they didn't say that the person had a beard, but they also didn't say they didn't have a beard. Right. So I can put this clean shaven suspect in with four other guys who all have beards and make them stand out.

That's the opposite. And apparently, there's this New York Times article from years back about a guy named... Oh, that dude. What is his name? Casting agent, basically, Robert Weston. Yeah, Robert Weston. It's a pretty interesting little article.

But in the article, it says that the Bronx cops that use this guy to help fill lineups, which we'll talk about in a second That that when they give the perpetrators like the Yankees hats or whatever for the lineup Yeah, like the perpetrators always the one who pulls it down over his eyes Right, you have to be like dude put put see how everybody else is wearing their hat Make it is exactly like that or else they're gonna pick you out So they actually are trying to help the perpetrator at least not stand up and be like me. Yeah, you know, yeah, instead just keep it on the on the level. At least as far

as the Yankees hat, brooms go. I so want to be a filler. I'm sure you could do it. I want to get around. I just have to hang around long enough until I do do looks like you come into crime. Would you not, Lanna? I'm sure there's a lot of hipsters running around for sure. I don't look like a hipster. Yeah, I don't know. I look like a hipster gone bad. Oh yeah. I'm not neat enough to be a hipster. You look like a hit and run hipster.

Hipsters are super well-quaffed in like squared away. Oh, I know it to me. Yeah. Yeah. Your jeans aren't pegged. No, I look like a hipster who slept in So back to robber Weston this guy in New York at the time at least I can't believe how little money he made he only got $10 for putting together a complete lineup

Yeah, and they said sometimes he does as many as four in a day Yeah, and sometimes not at all. I'm, so a good day for him is 40 bucks. That's what it sounds like. Hand, maybe that's the problem is they need to, well again, it's budgetary probably. He's gonna say, pay a little bit more, get a casting agent in there. Get some of those college educated fillers in there, right?

I guess, and also it made it sound like, I don't know, he's gonna pull in people off the street. Sometimes they're homeless people. Sometimes they're like drug addicts. Well, yeah. I mean, I guess it depends on who the perp is. Sometimes they get other cops that aren't busy to stand in.

Right. I mean, these are people. But there's a real need. People will go to a police station and stand in the lineup for $10, right? They get paid as much as the guy who organized the party. Right. But if Robert Weston stands in himself, he'll get an extra 20 bucks on top of putting the thing together, right?

I wonder how many times he tries to do that. But he even said like, if they want white guys, I don't know any white guys, so they go to homeless shelters for that. And that's very much what cops do. Cops will go find people on the street, they will go to homeless shelters, they will have casting agents like Robert Weston on their speed dial. And what they'll

say is I've got a middle aged white guy with a graying beard and he's about six feet tall. Give me four other people that match that description. Right. And ideally, four other people that match that description will show up and not three and then one other total outlier or something like that. Well, the one cop was complaining about his work. It was kind of funny. Right. Complaining about Robert Weston.

He was like, yeah, he'd bring in good people. He always like, right, fludges the ages and the races and stuff. But the reason why they keep using this guy is because he answers his fun. It doesn't matter what time you call him, he can put a lineup together for you. And if you have a very limited amount of time, you can only hold the suspect for so long without charging them, but you want to put them in a lineup for what's called an investigatory lineup to where you just want see, maybe bring in one witness, just to see if you're on the right track,

you've got a very limited amount of time and you need people like that, which means that you may have a lower quality one. Fortunately, that would just be for an investigatory one. If it were for a confirmatory one, that's the one that you see on TV where it's like, you bring in a witness and you've got your suspect and they're sitting in jail and you bring them out, that is the one where

all the T should be crossed and the I should be dotted. Because a good court will hear, and will wanna know the details of how that lineup went. And if anything sounds hinky, they'll toss that lineup right out. That eyewitness testimony out. The worst possible version of all of this is something called a show up. And this is something and this is also a movie trope that you see.

And that's when an officer brings a witness to a place to show the witness the suspect that's been apprehended. So like they're in the back of a car or here's what happens in the movie. There's a guy in the back of a police car handcuffed. They'll bring the person who was robbed or whatever they're to the scene. They'll yank him out of the back of the car and say, it's just the dirt bag who did it. Like just one guy.

And that's clearly the worst possible version of all of this. Yeah, and the guy's like, any more pace they pay. I'm coming down. So one of the, here's the reason why that show up is so terrible Chuck. Well, there's no other people that they're comparing them to. That's one, but they're also in handcuffs.

In the back of a cop car. Something like that, they're in police custody. And so the eyewitness is going to assume that in addition to their testimony, the cops obviously have something on this person. And so that must mean that the cops know it's that person and this is just a formality. So I'll be like, yeah, sure, that was that person. Right.

That's the first problem with it. The second problem is that from that point on, that person that they've just seen now becomes the star of their memory of that crime. Right. It's like they photoshopped this person's face into that vague shadowy face that's holding the gun that they were actually focused on.

And for that moment on, they just get more and more certain that that was the person, because that person's not starring in their memories. And it's not just the problem with the show up, but with any misidentification, when they see that person and that person becomes seared in their brain, right? They're positive from that point on and they can seem very confident in court Which again juries by yeah, though it's garbage Well in weeks and months can go by right between the point that you have experienced a crime and

When you may be identifying someone or a court for sure as months and months and months later. So, man, part of me does think like, get rid of all this. A lot of people say that, or at the very least say, this is Iowa and it's testimony, it's actually terrible testimony. It's terrible evidence. But let's do it anyway. But if they did say that, if they basically lowered what how much weight eyewitness testimony held in court, then those cases that were built entirely on eyewitness testimony wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

They have to go build a bigger case. Yeah, but like in Yumi's case, it worked. It did. So like that guy might have walked, you know? Right, that's the problem is that, you know, if 25% of the time is wrong, right. 75% of the time is right. We think. So, I mean, it's not, it's not like arson investigation, which we're going to do one on one day, where it's just totally made up. Like, it does have some veracity, but there's a lot of flaws with it. And the lives are at stake though. It's really dicey.

Right. They need to figure it out because of that. Yeah. So they need to go do that now. I mean, can you imagine anything worse than being misidentified and serving two decades in prison for something you really didn't do? No, I really can't. I mean, I remember how I've said I got when we did the Innocence Project. It's just, you hear these stories and then they get out and they're like, man, here's 400,000 bucks, we feel pretty bad. Go get yourself something nice. Try to forget

about all this. Right. Yeah. You ever see that movie, an innocent man with Tom Selik? It scared the bejesus out of me. Same thing happened to him when he was framed. Oh wait, that's high road to China. Oh right. I got my stuff mixed. No, that's quickly down under that. Oh right. You got anything else?

Nope. All right, well that's it for police lineups for now. We'll do an update whenever they get it figured out. We did one on police sketches, right? Yeah. OK. Is this it? Are we done? No, we still got arson investigation. Oh, sure. We've got a lot. All right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. If you want to know more about police lineups, then I don't know. Go hang around a police station. See if you can stand in one. Learn firsthand. Okay. Get a little sign. This is and see if you can stand in one, learn first hand. Okay?

Get a little sign that says, I will be your foil. $10. Yep. And since I said $10, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this youngest fan. This is a very cute email. Hey guys, love the podcast. You're doing it right.

It's not, this email is not episode specific, but I had to tell you about this. My husband and I welcomed our baby boy into the world a couple of months ago. When I was pregnant, we joked that the baby would think that one of you was his dad, because he heard your voice is so often. Oh. That's a very funny joke in a family, you know? Joke about the paternity of your child.

Sure. Now that he's here, I've been playing music in the car instead of the podcast, thinking music helps calm him. Well, one day he was crying and crying in the car. I couldn't get him to calm down. She was like, what's wrong with Dockin? Why isn't Dockin working? I couldn't get him to calm down with any of the usual tricks, so I decided to heck with

it. I'm going to put on the podcast, and I kid you not. As soon as you guys started talking, he stopped crying. My husband says it was coincidence. Jealous. I say stuff you should know magic. Yeah. Now we're back to always listening to you guys in the car.

There you go. Keep up the great work and thanks for soothing my baby boy. And that is from Sarah Strance and our youngest fan, Frank, from beautiful Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. That's awesome. Thank you so much for the email, Frank. Go to sleep quite now. They named their baby after our chair.

Yeah, it's great. It's pretty, wouldn't that be amazing if they actually did? What an honor. And thank you also to unnamed husband for being in good sport. Agreed. If you want to send us a great email about how word magic, you can hang out with us on social

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