6. Identification Evidence

Chapter 6 first considers the three categories of factors which may contribute to the mistaken identification of the defendant as the perpetrator of the offence: witness factors, event factors, and post-event factors. It then turns to R v Turnbull in 1976, where the Court of Appeal laid down the famous ‘Turnbull guidelines’ on judicial warnings to the jury about visual identification evidence. This is followed by discussions of discretionary exclusion of identification evidence and the use of photographs and video recordings.

Lineups

Lineups are conducted in the course of police investigations when a crime has been witnessed by one or more people. A lineup typically consists of a person whom the police believe committed the crime (i.e., the suspect) and some number of people who are known to be innocent of the crime (i.e., fillers). When the police have developed a suspect, they show witnesses a lineup to test whether they will claim that the suspect is the person who committed the crime (i.e., the perpetrator). If so, the witness is said to have made a positive identification of the suspect. What is not clear, at least in real-world investigations, is whether that identification is correct, because sometimes suspects are guilty and sometimes they are innocent. Since the late 1970s, psychologists have conducted experiments to find lineup procedures that decrease the likelihood that witnesses will mistakenly identify innocent suspects. These experiments are typically conducted in laboratory settings in which researchers expose participants to a simulated crime, often on videotape. After the participant-witnesses have viewed the crime, they are asked to attempt an identification from a lineup. In the laboratory, researchers can vary whether the perpetrator appears in that lineup. When the perpetrator is present in the lineup (i.e., a target-present lineup), the witness can identify the suspect (a correct identification), identify a filler, or say that the perpetrator is not there (an incorrect rejection of the lineup). When the perpetrator is not present (i.e., a target-absent lineup), the witness can make a mistaken identification of the suspect, identify a filler, or correctly reject the lineup. Using this method, researchers have identified lineup procedures that decrease mistaken identifications, which are the leading cause of wrongful convictions among those who have been exonerated by DNA tests conducted after trial. This article contains sections describing comprehensive General Overviews of research on lineups, research demonstrating that Live Lineups Are Equivalent to Photo Lineups, and Policy Recommendations and Best Practice Guidelines. The remaining sections describe many of these policy recommendations, including how Lineups Are Superior to Showups, having an Evidence-Based Suspicion for placing a suspect in a lineup, unbiased Lineup Composition, Double-Blind Administration, proper Lineup Instructions, collecting witnesses’ Confidence Statements in the accuracy of their identification immediately after the initial identification, Video Recording Identification Procedures, and avoiding Repeated Lineups. An additional section addresses special issues that need to be considered when Conducting Lineups with Children.

Quasi-Dependence

Quasi-realists aim to account for many of the trappings of metanormative realism within an expressivist framework. Chief among these is the realist way of responding to the Euthyphro dilemma: quasi-realists want to join realists in being able to say, “It’s not the case that kicking dogs is wrong because we disapprove of it. Rather, we disapprove of kicking dogs because it’s wrong.” However, the standard quasi-realist way of explaining what we are up to when we assert the first of these two sentences rests on a mistaken identification of metaphysical dependence (or grounding) with counterfactual covariation. This chapter proposes a better way for expressivists to understand such sentences, on which they serve to express complex states of mind in which an attitude bears a relation of psychological dependence (or basing) to another state of mind. It is argued that this proposal is a natural, versatile, and fruitful approach for expressivists to take that helps them secure the first half of the Euthyphro contrast—but at the cost of making it difficult to see how expressivists can make sense of that contrast’s second half.

The Management of Criminal Justice

This chapter examines the role of Home Office officials around the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly upgraded by the Northcote-Trevelyan (Civil Service) reforms, in dealing with petitions against wrongful conviction. The authors exemplify the harmful role of civil servants through the paradigm case of Adolph Beck wrongly convicted twice on the basis of mistaken identification evidence. While Beck’s initial wrongful conviction was contributed to by mistakes made by prosecuting counsel, it traces his continued incarceration to incompetence and inertia by officials in the Home Office working within an institutional environment that continued to privilege hierarchy, precedent, and routine over discernment, judgment, and individual responsibility. Senior civil servants in the Home Office failed to properly oversee their juniors, magnified their failings, and sought to evade responsibility through a combination of laxity and moral cowardice. Unreformed, those failings, involving the same officials, carried forward and heavily influenced the regulation of policing and the subsequent development of the Judges’ Rules.

9. Visual and voice identification

This chapter considers the risk of mistaken identification, and the law and procedure relating to evidence of visual and voice identification. In respect of evidence of visual identification, the chapter addresses: the Turnbull guidelines, including when a judge should stop a case and the direction to be given to the jury; visual recognition, including recognition by the jury themselves from a film, photograph, or other image; evidence of analysis of films, photographs, or other images; pre-trial procedure, including procedure relating to recognition by a witness from viewing films, photographs, either formally or informally; and admissibility where there have been breaches of pre-trial procedure. In respect of evidence of voice identification, the chapter addresses: pre -trial procedure; voice comparison by the jury with the assistance of experts or lay listeners; and the warning to be given to the jury (essentially an adaption of the Turnbull warning, but with particular focus on the factors which might affect the reliability of voice identification).

Selection of highly-accreting quasars

Context. The quasar class of extreme Population A (xA) (also known as super-Eddington accreting massive black holes, SEAMBHs) has been hailed as potential distance indicators for cosmology. Aims. The aim of this paper is to define tight criteria for their proper identification, starting from the main selection criterion RFeII > 1, and to identify potential intruders that do not meet the selection criteria, which nonetheless have been selected as xA because of the coarseness of automatic searches. The inclusion of the spurious xA sources may dramatically increase the dispersion in the Hubble diagram of quasars, which were obtained from virial luminosity estimates. Methods. We studied a sample of 32 low-z quasars that were originally selected from the seventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as xA or SEAMBHs, which have been proved to be almost certainly misclassified sources. All of them show moderate to strong Fe II emission and the large majority show strong absorption features in their spectra which are typical of fairly evolved stellar populations. We performed a simultaneous fit of a host galaxy spectrum, active galactic nucleus (AGN) continuum, FeII template, and emission lines to spectra, using the fitting technique based on ULySS, the full spectrum fitting package. We derived the main accretion parameters (i.e., luminosity, black hole mass, and Eddington ratio) and investigate the relation between host galaxy properties and AGN. Results. For sources in our sample with spectral types that correspond to a relatively low Eddington ratio, we find an overall consistency between HβNC, [O III]λλ4959,5007 line shifts, and the mean stellar velocity obtained from the host galaxy fit (within ≲|60| km s−1). Only one source in our sample qualifies as a xA source. Conclusions. The correct classification of spectra that were contaminated by heavy absorption requires careful determination of the host galaxy spectrum. Contamination and misclassification are not usual in the identification of the xAs, nor at low z or at high z. We find a high fraction of host galaxy spectrum; in half of the sample this is even higher than 40%. When absorption lines are prominent, and the fraction of the host galaxy is high, host galaxy spectrum mimics FeII, which may result in a mistaken identification of FeII spectral features. We have identified several stellar absorption lines that, along with the continuum shape, may lead to an overestimate of RFeII, and therefore to the misclassification of sources as xA sources.

9. Visual and voice identification

This chapter considers the risk of mistaken identification, and the law and procedure relating to evidence of visual and voice identification. In respect of evidence of visual identification, the chapter addresses: the Turnbull guidelines, including when a judge should stop a case and the direction to be given to the jury; visual recognition, including recognition by the jury themselves from a film, photograph or other image; evidence of analysis of films, photographs or other images; pre-trial procedure, including procedure relating to recognition by a witness from viewing films, photographs, either formally or informally; and admissibility where there have been breaches of pre-trial procedure. In respect of evidence of voice identification, the chapter addresses: pre -trial procedure; voice comparison by the jury with the assistance of experts or lay listeners’; and the warning to be given to the jury (essentially an adaption of the Turnbull warning, but with particular focus on the factors which might affect the reliability of voice identification).

Identification of the Incapacitated Patient in Mass Casualty Events: An Exploration of Challenges, Solutions, and Barriers

Increasing scrutiny of the role and actions of emergency responders in the aftermath of mass casualty events has led to improvements and advances in terms of treatment and care. However, despite these improvements, the authors have identified a growing concern relating to the identification of incapacitated patients and those unable to provide any identifying details, such as pediatric patients. The use of visual identification and the reliance on personal effects within the vicinity of a victim, either living or deceased, has resulted in mistaken identification in a number of major international incidents. The purpose of this article is to consider whether commonly used scientific methods for identification of the deceased could and should be broadened to include victims who are incapacitated and unable to confirm their own identity. The medicolegal questions that may arise when applying identification methods established for deceased patients to the living casualty will also be examined. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:338–344)

6. Identification Evidence

Chapter 6 first considers the three categories of factors which may contribute to the mistaken identification of the defendant as the perpetrator of the offence: witness factors, event factors, and post-event factors. It then turns to R v Turnbull in 1976, where the Court of Appeal laid down the famous ‘Turnbull guidelines’ on judicial warnings to the jury about visual identification evidence. This is followed by discussions of discretionary exclusion of identification evidence and the use of photographs and video recordings.