Building a Better Police Lineup
One super funny thing about the classic "police lineup" is how likely it is to get an innocent person convicted of a crime. It's given us so many wacky crime dramas! Alas, a new study says that there is something better than the ol' Usual Suspects method.
You just show the pictures one by one, that's all. Not very cinematic, though, is it? The NYT reports:
The new report, based on actual cases in the field, suggests that photographs presented one by one by a person not directly connected with a case significantly reduced identifications of fillers (people known not to be the suspect) from 18 percent in simultaneous lineups to 12 percent in sequential ones.
So even with the new, boring style, an innocent person will still get nailed about one in eight times. The negative impact this would have on hack TV crime show writers is hardly worth a mere 6% improvement.
