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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications:
An Evaluation of Law Enforcement Procedures for Eliciting Eyewitness Information
Anita M. Scotti
Argosy University—Orange County
Forensic Psychology Seminar Special Topics Paper
November 29, 2008
Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
Abstract
“It is estimated that more than 200 people a day are identified as suspects from eyewitness
identification;” more than that same number of people have been imprisoned wrongly on the
evidence of eyewitness identifications (Burton, 2008, p. 6). The year 2008 marks the tenth
anniversary of the technical working group convened by then Attorney General Janet Reno in
1998 to review the issues surrounding eyewitness testimony, its collection, and uses throughout
the legal system. This paper attempts to examine current law enforcement procedures
concerning interviews, interrogations, and identification as they specifically relate to eyewitness
testimony. Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement (U.S. Department Of Justice,
1999) and Eyewitness Evidence: A Trainer’s Manual for Law Enforcement (USDOJ, 2003),
publications which grew out of the technical working group, as well as a large body of
psychological research are the bases for the evaluation and are summarized herein. A review of
relevant literature on eyewitness testimony is provided as an introduction to the topic and then
followed with a discussion of police procedure and practice. Lastly, some comments are
included on the consequences of a failure to fully comply with procedures designed to protect
eyewitness memory along with recommendations for future research and policy direction.
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications:
An Evaluation of Law Enforcement Procedures for Eliciting Eyewitness Information
In this age of “forensic fever,” when television shows like CSI and Law & Order have
given ordinary people a passing familiarity with law enforcement, legal procedure, and scientific
crime solving methods, it is hard to imagine a criminal case being closed without the aid of
fingerprints, DNA, or a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The reality of criminalistics,
however, is that often there is no physical evidence of merit or the cost of testing what little
evidence there might be is prohibitive given the severity of most crimes (which are not murders).
Eyewitness testimony has been the main type of evidence by which suspects have been identified
and brought to justice throughout human history, long before the relatively recent advent of
DNA testing in the 1980s and 90s. The simple act of one person identifying another as the
perpetrator of a crime is regarded as one of the most damning types of evidence (Loftus, 1989).
Whether candidly or maliciously sworn, whether accurate or erroneous, the word of a
witness can send both the innocent and the guilty to prison or to their deaths. But DNA is
helping to prove eyewitness identification of suspects, the preferred mode of establishing guilt
for centuries, is not the infallible crime-solving juggernaut it seems to be. According to
information from the Innocence Project, a group dedicated to “exonerating wrongfully convicted
people” and “reforming the criminal justice system,” in 220 known cases where post-conviction
DNA testing has led to exoneration, mistaken identification by eyewitnesses was implicated in
75% of the original verdicts against those found innocent (n.d.). Wrongful imprisonment and
wrongful execution, in the extreme case, are potential consequences of poor eyewitness
testimony. Because of the gravity of these outcomes, there is interest in investigating the factors
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contributing to mistaken identifications, especially by researchers in the field of psychology, who
have contributed to a young but prolific body of literature dedicated to the subject.
The field of forensic psychology, that is the application of psychological knowledge and
techniques to the practice of law, can be said to have begun with the work of Hermann
Ebbinghaus and Hugo Münsterberg. Both men were experimental psychologists working with
memory in and around the turn of the twentieth century. Ebbinghaus demonstrated, with his now
famous “forgetting curve,” the rapid rate at which memories faded. Münsterberg helped to
forward the cause of eyewitness testimony research and its application to legal matters thanks to
a popular book, On the Witness Stand (1908), and several flamboyant turns as an expert witness
on the subjects of memory fallibility and suggestibility (Wrightsman, & Fulero, 2005). The
same pomposity which made Münsterberg one of the first psychologists to have a household
name contributed to him making exaggerated claims about the ability of psychologists to detect
truth with certainty, the ripple effects of which forensic psychologists still feel to this day in
matters like polygraph use and risk assessment.
In Münsterberg’s wake, forensic psychology and eyewitness identification research was
largely silent until a renaissance in the 1970s. A shift in social psychology from an academic to
a more applied orientation spurred new interest in the potential contributions of psychology to
public policy and law (Wrightsman, & Fulero, 2005). Today, the influence of forensic
psychology is felt in many aspects of the legal system, from juror selection and adjudicative
competency to assessing eyewitness reliability. Currently, over 2000 publications address some
facet of the latter topic—eyewitness testimony (Burton, 2008). Research in this area, just as it
was in the days of Hugo Münsterberg, is primarily undertaken by cognitive and experimental
psychologists rather than social psychologists due to the insurmountable difficulty of performing
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ethically and methodologically sound research on actual participants in the legal system. Issues
surrounding eyewitness testimony must often be approached obliquely. Despite these obstacles,
eyewitness research is flourishing and becoming more specialized as time goes on.
The focus of this paper lies at the intersection of eyewitness research and research into
the form and function of police interview, interrogation, and identification procedures—all of
which are means for law enforcement officers to elicit information from eyewitnesses.
Consequently, the law enforcement procedures of interest within this paper are confined to
activities taking place during the witness questioning portion of an interview/interrogation or
during an identification process (i.e. lineup), despite the wealth of information available on other
salient topics such as false confessions, recovered memories, lie detection, the Miranda warning,
and questioning juveniles. To fully understand how psychological research into eyewitness
testimony is related to interviews, interrogations, and identification procedures, and vice versa, a
basic foundation in the terminology and theory of the two spheres of inquiry is necessary.
Since the public exposure of the deplorable questioning practices colloquially known as
the third degree, including physical abuse akin to torture, law enforcement has constantly sought
to redefine its public image in terms of professionalism and scientific precision (Leo, 2008).
One way of achieving this goal has been to distance law enforcement agencies and officers from
the image of browbeating authoritarianism conjured up by words like interrogation. There has
been a recent trend toward using the more neutral term interview to refer to the practice of
questioning both witnesses and suspects. For purposes of this paper, however, interrogation
shall refer to questioning suspects, accomplices, and hostile witnesses; the person being
questioned is usually under some form of custody (i.e. arrest or imprisonment for a prior crime)
and must be read their Miranda Rights. Interview, on the other hand, shall refer to the non-
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custodial questioning of victims, witnesses, or informants. The purpose of both the interview
and interrogation is to obtain information in furtherance of a criminal investigation, but an
interrogation has the added goal of trying to elicit incriminating statements or confessions.
Police also employ a variety of identification procedures in order to elicit information
from eyewitnesses, including lineups, photoarrays, field identifications, mug books, and
composite drawings. A lineup, or an identity parade, consists of six or more people, including a
suspect and several others of similar appearance (known as foils or fillers), literally lined up sideby-side and viewed by a witness who then selects the person he or she identifies as the culprit or
notes the perpetrator was absent from the lineup. A photoarray, also known as a photospread or
six-pack, is the paper equivalent of a lineup with photographs of a suspect and foils standing in
for real people either in a one page batch of six or as six individual photos. The photoarray is
currently the most popular form of identification procedure, since it is portable. Creation and
administration of a photoarray is also significantly less time consuming than for a lineup
(Burton, 2008). A field identification, or showup, is an identification procedure in which a
witness views only the suspect, at or near the crime scene, usually from the safety of a squad car.
Mug books, or the Rogues Gallery, are collections of booking photographs through which a
witness might wade in an effort to identify a suspect. Lastly, a composite drawing may be
prepared by a sketch artist from the verbal description of a perpetrator’s face or by a witness
using a computer program. None of these identification procedures guarantees the presence of
the suspect or the accurate representation of the subject, a fact which should be told to witnesses.
Cognitive and experimental psychology research extending back to Münsterberg,
Ebbinghaus, and beyond has clearly shown memory to be more fragile and more malleable than
is generally believed. A memory is not like a video recording of an event stored away until
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faultless playback is required; rather a memory is a collection of diverse impressions and sensory
feedback which is rarely complete and sometimes does not survive long (Loftus, 1979). The
information provided by eyewitnesses is further distinguished from memory in that it is memory
testimony, a statement of what is remembered (Wells, 1995 as cited in Wrightsman, & Fulero,
2005). Memory is shaped by the cognitive processes by which information is taken in and
processed, but memory testimony is subject to a slew of additional reasoning and social
processes. In view of this distinction, the sources of misidentifications and other eyewitness
errors are clearly result from those added processes. The following section will present a brief
overview of issues related to memory and eyewitness testimony as borne out by psychological
research, including an explanation of some memory altering effects. Ideally, police interview,
interrogation, and identification procedures should be able to cleanly access the information
contained in a witness’ memory, but these post hoc procedures do exert some effect on the
accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Therefore, an evaluation of how law enforcement techniques
for eliciting eyewitness information contribute or detract from the resilience and integrity of
witness memory is a worthy goal, to be pursued by this paper.
Eyewitness Research Overview
Memory and the Eyewitness
The process of committing something to memory is almost universally described by
psychologists as consisting of three stages: encoding (or acquisition), storage (or retention), and
retrieval (Greene, Heilbrun, Fortune, & Nietzel, 2007; Loftus, 1979; Roediger, &Gallo, 2002).
During encoding, the details of an event or object of attention are perceived by our five senses.
The (often incomplete or misremembered) information gathered by those senses enters into the
neural pathways were it is processed and goes into the memory system. During storage, the
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content of the sensory input as well as information and relationships found during encoding
processes is held in short- or long-term memory until forgotten or recalled during the retrieval
stage. Retrieval is not a straightforward search-and-capture activity; irrelevant memories related
to the target memory can surface or one may feel information is momentarily irretrievable. The
memory which is retrieved may be as accurate as possible given its quality or what is dredged up
may include memory illusion—remembering events and objects differently than how they
actually were or even fabricating details that never were (Roediger, & Gallo, 2002).
Encoding. The three stage conception of memory is also useful for discussing the many
ways in which memory, and hence eyewitness accuracy, can be negatively influenced, with the
encoding stage being of particular importance to the formation of eyewitness memory.
Acquiring memories is a function of sensory input, so any circumstance which might result in
perception being impaired, narrowed, or otherwise altered, can affect the content and quality of
memory. There are two broad classes of factors which can influence eyewitness memory at the
encoding stage: event factors and personal factors (Loftus, 1979; Roediger, & Gallo, 2002).
Event factors are situational variables such as lighting, angle of view, distance to target, weather,
etc, which limit the amount of sensory information available. What a witness cannot sense, they
cannot know or remember accurately. In general, the longer the amount of time spent focused on
a detail, the more frequent the opportunity to observe the detail, and the more salient and unusual
the detail, then the better the recollection of that detail will be (Loftus, 1979).
Salience and unusualness, however, can work against memory completeness and
accuracy, as happens with the phenomenon of weapon focus. Weapon focus is a narrowing of
attention which occurs in the presence of a weapon; a greater amount of the mental resources
available for perception are occupied by attention to that weapon (Greene et al., 2007). With less
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attention to spare, other sensory details may be encoded incompletely, incorrectly, or not at all.
Personal factors, like event factors, can limit eyewitness accuracy, but unlike event factors, they
are inherent in the witness not the situation. The presence of a weapon or other threat of
violence is an event factor closely linked to the personal factor of stress. Psychological research
into the effect subjective stress level has on memory has yielded mixed results. Stress is thought
to be related to perception in a Yerkes-Dodson Law type relationship, represented by an inverted
U or V shape graph. Stress creates emotional arousal, and thereby improved attention, up to a
point of diminishing return; thereafter increased stress causes increased perceptual difficulty
(Loftus, 1979; Cutler, & Penrod, 1995).
Besides stress, personal factors include the static characteristics such as sex, race, age,
and intelligence as well as more dynamic factors like past experience, stereotypes, temporary
biases, and intoxication. Of course, personal factors also include any medical and mental health
issues on the part of the witness which may limit or distort perception and encoding. The
influence of the static personal factors is not as strong as that of the dynamic ones. No strong sex
difference in witness ability to make an accurate identification has been seen in the research
(Cutler, & Penrod, 1995). Female witnesses do show a slightly greater tendency to make correct
identifications, but this is offset by an equally slight elevation in mistaken identifications
(Burton, 2008). Likewise, there is no significant association between racial/ethnic group or level
of intelligence and ability to correctly identify criminal suspects (Cutler, & Penrod, 1995). Age
is the only static personal variable which demonstrates a clear relationship with witness
accuracy. Several studies have shown percentage of correct identifications increases with age
until a drop off among elderly witnesses (Cutler, & Penrod, 1995).
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In contrast to the static personal factors, the dynamic factors listed above all wield
considerable but variable influence on eyewitness memory. Intoxication, be it from alcohol or
drugs, is a common feature of many crimes. When it is the witness or victim who is intoxicated,
the result can be a decrease in the amount of information correctly recalled which manifests
during questioning soon after a crime and continues past the period of intoxication (Yuille, &
Tollestrup, 1990 as cited in Cutler, & Penrod, 1995). This is not surprising since alcohol and
drugs impair a persons’ perceptual functioning. All of the other dynamic personal factors
besides stress and intoxication—past experience, stereotypes, and temporary biases—create
expectations in the mind of the witness. Past experience can distort memories of a current event
through the intrusion of inferences drawn from an earlier event or can cloud perception of details
which do not conform to expectations (Loftus, 1979). Stereotypical expectations work as might
be anticipated. Their particular importance for eyewitness accuracy comes when the witness’
memory lacks details which are subsequently filled in according to stereotypical expectations.
Temporary biases formed from recent activities or thoughts can affect the way ambiguous
stimuli are perceived. In her seminal 1979 book on eyewitness testimony, Loftus illustrates this
quirk of memory with a figure called the “rat-man,” which can be perceived as a rat or a man
depending on whether the observer was primed to see a face or an animal (p. 44).
Storage. Between the encoding of a memory and its eventual retrieval, during the stage
known as storage or retention, the memory is not held in some inviolable state but rather is still
subject to addition, alteration, and distortion. It may also be forgotten entirely. As mentioned
above, forgetting was one of the first concerns of experimental psychologists investigating
memory as well as of the earliest forensic practitioners. What common sense suggests about
memory and forgetting—that the longer a memory goes without being recalled, the more it is
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forgotten—is for the most part true. More specifically, Ebbinghaus’ experiments allowed him to
plot forgetting as a curve with a steep loss of retained information soon after it is initially
committed to memory. Over time, the downward trend levels out and forgetting becomes more
gradual (Roediger, & Gallo, 2002). This model of forgetting portrays the type during which
information which was encoded into memory becomes less sharp and complete over time, but
there is also forgetting of the kind where a memory seems to have just vanished wholly when an
effort is made to recall it. This total blankness is the result of a storage/retention error. The
information encoded during the first stage of memory could have in a sense gotten lost as it was
being moved from short- to long-term storage. Interference is also a likely culprit. Proactive
interference occurs when prior memories block the effective storage of newer ones. More
commonly, retroactive interference occurs when newer memories give the impression of having
overwritten the older ones (Roediger, & Gallo, 2002). Both incarnations of interference are
more likely when the content of the relative old and new memories is similar.
Where there is some inkling that memories of interest exists but are merely inaccessible,
on the other hand, both groups have historically spent considerable effort trying to get at them.
Unfortunately, their labors are of questionable merit; a large body of research casts doubt on the
integrity of “recovered” memories, with greater doubt cast upon them as the intervals between
alleged experiences and the eventual recovery of memory lengthen. Because the vagaries of
forgetting make it difficult to remedy, postevent information is instead the foremost concern of
researchers who investigate the connections between law enforcement interview, interrogation,
and identifications techniques on eyewitness testimony. According to Loftus, (1979, p. 55),
“postevent information can not only enhance existing memories but also change a witness’
memory and even cause nonexistent details to become incorporated into a previously acquired
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memory.” The challenge then for researchers is to draw the line between the postevent
information which aids eyewitness accuracy and that which destroys it; the challenge for police
is to walk that line while completing their primary information gathering objective.
Victims and witnesses of crime rarely experience a vacuum of information after so
serious an experience. They may revisit the scene and notice new features than before and they
may participate in or overhear discussion of the event. If the crime is serious enough, there
could be media coverage. Just as stories are embroidered with each successive telling, each
instance of postevent information may present a witness with different perspective and details
than in their original memory. Experimenters in one accessible example of this used five
different verbs in questionnaires asking for witnesses’ approximations of the speed of the cars
involved in a staged collision: contacted, hit, bumped, collided and smashed (Roediger, & Gallo,
2002). In this respective order, the verbs elicited progressively larger speed estimates. The
subtle differences in the connotations of the five verbs were shown to have influenced witnesses’
retrospective analyses of an event. Postevent information of this sort does not necessarily alter
the fundamental substance of recollections; it can even enhance memory by highlighting the
most critical parts of an event, but the potential clearly exists for postevent information to exert
real change, if minor in the given example, in the relation of that event from memory.
More serious than mere exaggeration of essentially true facets of memory are the results
of exposure to erroneous postevent information. If later questioning or discussion presents a
witness with information contrary to what they remember, what happens? The answer largely
depends on the nature of the conflicting information. When the difference is minor, such as of
color or number, a compromise memory may be created in which future recollections will
include a value midway between what the original memory contained and what was told in the
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inaccurate postevent information (Loftus, 1979). Offender’s clothing remembered as yellow but
described elsewhere as red may be recalled by a victim as orange. When the difference between
the encoded and postevent information concerns a detail central to the understanding of an event
or identity, however, memories of these salient details are more resistant to alteration (Loftus,
1979). Blatant contradiction between witness recollection and postevent information also
produces resistance to memory alteration which, in addition to causing rejection of obvious
errors, acts as a protective factor against incorporating minor detail errors which would otherwise
yield compromise memories (Loftus, 1979). The above examples presuppose the object or event
that is the subject of the descriptive error between recollection and postevent information was
perceived and encoded in the first place. If no information about it was retained at all, then there
is the possibility illusory detail could be incorporated into a new wrong-yet-convincing memory
(Loftus, 1979). This memory may then be recalled with clarity and a feeling of having sensed
the erroneous detail all along (Harley, Carlsen, & Loftus, 2004). Known as hindsight bias, this
tendency is a particular danger to accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
Retrieval. The bounds between each of the three stages of memory—encoding, storage,
and retrieval—are vague and somewhat arbitrary distinctions. In the case of eyewitness
testimony under interview, interrogation, or identification conditions, the division between the
storage and retrieval stages is especially tenuous, as many of the processes, like influence by
postevent information, are taking place as the witness is simultaneously being asked to recall and
recount memory content. For example, people who anticipate being tested on memorized
information (as a witness might expect to be interviewed by police) are more likely to store the
relevant memories in such a way as to make retrieval easier (Cutler, & Penrod, 1995). A testing
effect also exists in which information which is subjected to testing will subsequently be
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remembered better (Roediger, & Gallo, 2002). Another closely related memory effect which
bridges storage and retrieval is the freezing effect. The freezing effect manifests in how
information which has been recalled previously becomes more likely to be recalled in the future
(Loftus, 1979). What has happened is the neural pathway which led to the recounted item of
memory became strengthened by the activation which led to that particular recollection, hence it
will be more quickly accessible and seem more firmly rooted in memory the next time the
pathway is used. Unfortunately, all of these memory enhancement effects of will also strengthen
memories with incorrect elements with the same force as with accurate memories.
The quantity, quality, and content of retrieved memories often depends on situational
factors which improve or inhibit accurate recollection. Sometimes recreating features of the
original memory situation, such as returning to the scene when lighting or weather conditions are
similar, may provide sensory cues to witnesses who subsequently remember more information
than without the benefit of those cues. It is also possible to enhance memory through recreating
a similar level of emotional arousal, an example of state-dependent retrieval (Roediger, & Gallo,
2002). Typically, the more closely the environment during recall approximates that at the time
the target memory was encoded, the easier accurate retrieval. The narrative form taken when
recounting memories also has implications for retrieval. If questions are being asked in an
attempt to elicit information, those questions may improve recall because of the inherent prompts
to memory contained in their language. They may also suffer from postevent information
problems and can cause witnesses to restrict their responses to answers within the scope of the
question (Loftus, 1979). With a freer form of narrative, as with open-ended questions, witnesses
volunteer more spontaneous, potentially useful information. Both methods have drawbacks, but
the use of free recall then question-prompted recall mitigates those (Loftus, 1979).
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One final, but potentially devastating phenomenon associated with the memory retrieval
stage is that of unconscious transference, a form of source monitoring error (Dysart, Lindsay,
Hammond, & Dupuis, 2001). Similar to interference effects, as described above, unconscious
transference results in a memory becoming obscured by new or old information. When
searching for a target memory, a witness will instead retrieve a similar memory but one which is
irrelevant to the current retrieval objective Regardless of the true source of the irrelevant
memory, the information it contains is misattributed to the context of the original target memory
and subsequently remembered as part of it. This effect is seen more during police identification
tasks, and is especially problematic for them, in comparison to interview or interrogation
situations. “Victims sometimes pick from a lineup or photospread the face of a person whom
they have seen before but who is not the actual criminal,” (Greene, et al., 2007, p. 131). Prior
exposure of witnesses to the faces of suspects, through mug books in particular, has been
implicated in misidentification of bystanders, acquaintances, and innocent suspects through
unconscious transference of their faces onto that of the true offender (Dysart, et al., 2001).
Unconscious transference is a problem intrinsic to identifying suspects, but research has
illuminated several other unique challenges to accurate identification in the mechanics of facial
recognition. The same event and personal factors which influence the encoding of incident
memories are also at work in the encoding of identity memories, but additional variables specific
to the perception and recognition of faces may interfere with or limit the amount and accuracy of
the information encoded in those memories. Facial recognition is theorized to be an automatic
and therefore swift process, leading some researchers to hypothesize correct eyewitness
identifications are quicker and can be differentiated from misidentifications according to the time
is took to pick out a subject from a lineup or photoarray; over 3000 studies support this notion
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(Weber, Brewer, Wells, Semmler, & Keast, 2004). Dunning and Perretta (2002, as cited in
Weber, et al., 2004) posited a 10-12 second rule-of-thumb for discriminating between accurate
and erroneous identifications. Other research has since determined the 10-12 second rule is not
useful across many identification procedures because its inflexibility does not account for the
relative difficulty the identification (Weber, et al., 2004). The relative ease of identifying a
particular face lessens the time needed to recognize it; characteristics of that face determine the
relative ease. Distinctiveness is one of those characteristics. An intuitive example of this is how
much easier it is to recall the features of faces on the extreme ends of the attractiveness spectrum
as compared with average faces (Wells, & Olsen, 2003, as cited in Burton, 2008).
Recall from the discussion of personal factors which affect encoding of memories that
witness race did not have any effect on the innate ability to make accurate identifications, but
race does have interesting implications when it comes to facial recognition. One of the most
studied aspects of facial recognition is the cross-race effect, also known as the own-race effect.
Proportionally, more eyewitness misidentifications occur between racial groups rather than
within them (MacLin, MacLin, & Malpass, 2001). A review of research on the cross-race effect
revealed nearly 80% of participants in pertinent studies were “better able to recognize persons of
their own race as compared with those of other races,” (MacLin, et al., 2001, p. 135).
Interestingly, this phenomenon is not related to prejudicial attitudes about race. One of the
contributions of social psychologists to eyewitness research has been to suggest that the crossrace effect is caused by attentional resources which would be employed in distinguishing the
facial features of an own-race/in-group face are distracted by attempts to first categorize an
other-race face as a member of the correct out-group (Greene, et al., 2007). There are also some
genuine difference in physiognomic variability between races (i.e. White faces exhibit greater
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difference in hair color; Black faces have greater variety in skin tone); attention is instinctively
drawn to those features which differentiate members of our own-race, which may not yield the
most profitable details for making cross-race identifications (Greene, et al., 2007).
Law Enforcement and the Eyewitness
Up until this point in the discussion of psychological research on aspects of eyewitness
testimony the great majority of factors identified as having some level of influence on eyewitness
accuracy have been what are called estimator variables. The ways in which estimator variables
affect changes in memory and accuracy are either fixed once the remembered event has passed
or responsibility for them is located within the witness (Wrightsman, & Fulero, 2005). They are
not controllable by the law enforcement or the criminal justice system. System variables, which
can be managed, and their effects prevented, by these organizations are the focus of this next
section. Many research studies have examined the functioning and consequences of certain
elements in police interview, interrogation, and identification procedures. Much of this research
centers on features of the latter, namely lineups, showups, photoarrays, mug books, and
composite drawings. Still other research and theory not originally pertaining to law enforcement
and eyewitnesses have been used to make comment upon these applications as well.
Identification procedures. A lineup consisting of six people, including one suspect,
presents witnesses with seven possible decision outcomes including that the true perpetrator of a
crime is not present in the lineup. This means the probability of choosing any of the subjects at
random is one in seven, approximately 14 percent. In 1974, an NBC affiliate station in New
York conducted an on air six person lineup after screening a staged purse-snatching. Over 2000
people called in with their “testimony” but the rate at which they identified the assailant, who
was in the lineup, was the same as if viewers selected him by chance; ignoring those viewers
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who chose the “not in lineup” option, 61% of participants misidentified innocent people (Loftus,
1979). Field identifications, or showups, have been strongly spoken against as more inherently
unfair than lineups, which is difficult to believe in view of the dismal performance on the
televised lineup activity, especially since there is no significant difference between the number of
misidentifications made in lineups versus showups (Gonzalez, Ellsworth, & Pembroke, 1993).
Lineups remain the ideal law enforcement identification procedure, but their benefits have been
outweighed by the convenience of photoarrays (Burton, 2008). One of the subtler differences
between a lineup and its paper counterpart is the ability for photographs to be simultaneously or
sequentially presented whereas the lineup subjects are seen almost exclusively in simultaneous
fashion. A showup is akin to sequential presentation with a series of one. This seemingly minor
divergence can have major implications for the accuracy of eyewitness testimony because
research evidence points to the fact that these procedures require differing decision styles.
There are two basic memory retrieval types—recall and recognition. Law enforcement
identification procedures make use of recognition memory; interviews and interrogations present
more opportunities to use recall memory. Recognition memory in a showup is “analogous to a
true-false question” and in a lineup or photoarray “to a multiple-choice question,” (Gonzalez, et
al., 1993, p. 527). In both cases, there is the equivalent of an answer or answers available to cue
the retrieval of information. These same answers allow for the retrieved memory to be compared
against them before an identification decision is made. Recall memory requires retrieval of
appropriate information without the benefit of alternative answers, like a fill-in-the-blank
question to complete the analogy. Recall memory also supplies fewer retrieved memories, but
those which it does tend to be more accurate and inspire more confidence in their accuracy than
answers arrived at by recognition (Robinson, & Johnson, 1996). Lineups and simultaneous
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photoarrays, as opposed to showups and sequential photoarrays, also demonstrate another
dichotomy in memory processing, that of relative versus absolute judgment. Showups and
sequential presentation require absolute judgments. Lineups and simultaneous presentation, as
mentioned above, provide alternatives for witnesses to measure their recollection against. Hence
these types of identification procedures are characterized by relative judgment, which is why so
many misidentifications are the result of witnesses choosing the lineup participant who most
closely resembles the absent perpetrator (Gonzalez, et al., 1993).
The issue of simultaneous versus sequential presentation of photoarrays has engendered a
good deal of psychological research. Findings have been almost universally favorable to the
sequential presentation of photographs, and until very recently, their advantage has been thought
to be robust and able generalize across levels of lineup fairness (Carlsen, Gronlund, & Clark,
2008). That advantage lies in decreasing misidentifications rather than in increasing accurate
ones; there is no real difference between simultaneous and sequential presentation on that front
(Stewart, & McAllister, 2001). Sequential presentation is thought to shift witness reliance from
relative to absolute judgment, (Stewart, & McAllister, 2001). “Witnesses also do not know how
many faces they will see when they begin the identification process, which prevents them from
feeling compelled to choose as they come to the end of the series of faces,” (Carlsen, et al., 2008,
p. 118). Interestingly, the sequential presentation advantage in photoarrays does not extend to
the use of mug books, and in fact can result in more false identifications when mug pictures are
organized one per page (Stewart, & McAllister, 2001). This may be because the sheer volume of
faces in a mug book are better culled with a relative judgment process.
When detectives have a witness to a crime, but no suspect, preparation of a composite
drawing can provide leads on the identity of the perpetrator. Composite drawings are a special
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
case identification procedure. There are limitations to what may empirically be discovered about
building facial composite drawings since there is an unknown amount of variability in reliability
within and between forensic artists, computer programs like FACES, the classic build-a-face kits
(i.e. Identi-kit), and the witnesses who use them (Wells, Charman, & Olson, 2005). Building a
composite face requires selection of features singly in a “feature-based approach” at odds with
humans’ natural “holistic” way of perceiving faces (Wells, et al., 2005, p. 147). Selecting
suspect features from batches of like parts also requires the witness to make relative judgments
(Burton, 2008). Unlike with verbal descriptions, features cannot be left off of a composite face if
the witness if unsure, resulting in potentially erroneous information being incorporated into the
composite (Wells, et al., 2005). The general consequences of these factors are that such sketches
tend to be poor likenesses and interfere with performance on subsequent lineup or photoarray
tasks, though morphing together composites created by multiple witnesses, if available, makes
for slight improvement (Bruce, Ness, Hancock, Newman, & Rarity, 2002). Creating a composite
may irrevocably alter, obscure, or compromise original memory of a target face; this is especially
problematic when composites are circulated by the media, since innocent suspects who resemble
them face a higher risk of misidentification due to retroactive interference (Burton, 2008).
After completing an identification procedure, law enforcement officers sometimes
include an assessment of the witness’ confidence in the accuracy of his or her answer. The force
of conviction with which eyewitnesses recount what they are purported to have seen is regularly
seen as an indicator of accuracy and strength of eventual court testimony. Common police
practice and legal precedent (United States v. Wade, 1967; Neil v. Biggers, 1972) have cast
confidence as the second-most important segment of eyewitness testimony after identification of
culprits. Psychologists performing research on the interrelation of witness confidence and
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accuracy are dismayed by the importance laid on the former since it is rarely indicative of the
latter; no matter how sure a witness seems, certainty does not guarantee accuracy. Confidence is
continually represented to juries as being indicative of the probative strength of the identification
in determining guilt (Burton, 2008). “A confident eyewitness tends to make [jurors] ignore the
witnessing conditions themselves and believe the eyewitness at a rate that exceeds the actual rate
of accuracy,” (Wells, & Bradfield, 1998, p. 361). Not all factors affecting confidence are system
variables, but one in particular is cause for concern. Once a witness has made an identification,
they often look for reassurance of accuracy in the form of praise or feedback from investigators.
This feedback, when given, is a type of postevent information which negatively impacts memory
integrity and inflates confidence. Alarmingly, this inflationary effect on confidence is greater
with witnesses who make false identifications (Bradfield, Wells, & Olson, 2002).
Diagnosing Misidentifications. Since confidence is not always a useful tool in
establishing eyewitness accuracy, the burden of determining whether information elicited from
witnesses is appropriate basis for criminal investigation or prosecution falls to other measures of
accuracy. Research has shown witnesses are largely unable to report or control inappropriate
influences acting on their memory and identification processes, so self-report is not a reliable
method of determining accuracy either (Wells, & Bradfield, 1998; Olsson, & Juslin, 1999). That
leaves law enforcement officers themselves as the last bastion against misidentification during
interview, interrogation, and identification procedures. Police manuals and popular conception
hold law enforcement officers with investigation experience to be accomplished lie detectors. A
study of investigators’ ability to detect suspects’ lies in actual interrogation situations by Mann,
Vrij, and Bull (2004) lends rare research-based credence to this assertion. Though police officers
may be reasonable at detecting intentional deception, how do they fare on subtler falsehoods?
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
In the same way as witnesses are not attuned to the external and cognitive factors
manipulating their testimony, so too are law enforcement officers unlikely to be able to monitor
the source and impact of inaccuracy which remain unconscious to the witnesses themselves.
Knowing the capacity of each individual witness to be swayed by those factors, including
postevent information effects and judgment type, is one potential way in which police may
become aware of problematic memory testimony before it impacts innocent lives adversely.
Suggestibility is the term used by researchers to refer to this witness susceptibility. An
assessment tool, called the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 1), originally developed to be
used in conjunction with adjudication of cases in which a confession was retracted or suspected
to have been coerced, identifies several factors affecting suggestibility which apply to witnesses
as well as to confessors (Gudjonsson, 2003). GSS 1 components imply suggestibility is related
in some way to gender, ethnic background, age, intelligence, memory capacity, anxiety,
impulsivity, sleep deprivation, social desirability effects, coping strategies, assertiveness, selfesteem, locus of control, suspiciousness, anger, and more (Gudjonsson, 2003). Note the
presence of many of the same estimator variables which affect eyewitness memory in the list.
Being aware of witness suggestibility is an important step for investigators as they
attempt to reduce misidentifications, yet they must be aware not only of the witnesses’
susceptibility to suggestion but also their own capacity to suggest. When proctoring
identification procedures, detectives typically know which lineup or photoarray member is the
suspect. This foreknowledge often makes itself known through subtle changes in voice
inflection and pacing, duration of eye contact, or other cues to the witness as to who is the
suspect. All other things being equal—foils are fair, photo backgrounds and orientations are the
same, presentation is sequential—even if all recommended steps have been taken to reduce
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misidentification, suggestion by officers can influence a witness’ choice (Burton, 2008).
Double-blind procedures are the obvious remedy. The lineup, photoarray, etc. should be
administered by someone who is not a part of the particular investigation at hand and therefore
does not know which person is the suspect (Bradfield, et al., 2002). Computer administered
photoarrays which allow for randomization are also a technologically viable way of conducting
double-blind procedures (Stewart, & McAllister, 2001). “Despite research findings showing its
benefits, police are resistant to using double-blind testing because they perceive it as a loss of
control and as a suggestion that they cannot conduct fair lineups,” (Haw, & Fisher, 2004, p.
1106). Some reluctant departments have devised alternatives to double-blind identification, but
none has even the reliability of standard procedures (Lindsay, & Bellinger, 1999).
A Closing Note About Eyewitness Research
Psychological research, be it about eyewitness testimony or no, has some insights into
interview, interrogation, and identification procedures which are drawn from methodology
concerns shared by many studies. The way in which police investigators can influence witness
responses is identical to the way in which researchers can influence participant responses
(Bradfield, et al., 2002). This is the effect of the demand characteristics in a situation; witnesses
may experience them as pressures to answer in a particular way or to make their own actions
seem as socially acceptable as possible in the presence of the police authority, both of which can
result in corrupted testimony. Witnesses and investigators also exhibit confirmation bias, which
is a tendency to seek out only that information which agrees with what is already believed,
sometimes to the exclusion of contradictory information (Greene, et al., 2007). Both
psychologists and law enforcement officers ought to be aware of the likely consequences
demand characteristics and confirmation bias have on the usefulness of obtained information.
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The Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence
The legal system and its constituent agencies have historically been indifferent or even
downright hostile to psychology and the potential contributions of the discipline to the practice
of law. It is widely believed daily interaction with people plus a little common sense is enough
to make anyone an expert on human behavior. Psychologists, therefore, are sometimes vilified
as usurpers of the fact-finding role held by jurors thought to be equally capable of coming to
their own conclusions about psychological issues. Ironically, psychology is most useful but most
ignored where research has proven the reality of studied phenomena to be more counterintuitive
than generally believed. Sometimes the friction between the disciplines of law and psychology
is merely an expression of the underlying paradigm differences between them; the law is
concerned with making dichotomous decisions while psychology deals with human behavior as
it falls along a continuum of possible manifestations.
One rare period of cooperation between law enforcement, defense attorneys, prosecuting
attorneys, judges, and psychological experts occurred in the late 1990s after a slew of postconviction DNA exonerations. Members of the listed groups recognized the detriment to justice
(not to mention the waste of resources) posed by misidentification of innocent persons. Then
Attorney General Janet Reno first mandated investigation into the role of DNA testing, but when
it became apparent that faulty eyewitness identifications were the leading grounds for erroneous
conviction, focus shifted from DNA to eyewitness testimony (Burton, 2008). In 1998, Reno
convened the Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence (TWGEYEE). Members of
the multidisciplinary TWGEYEE included representatives from the above groups, who spent
more than a year identifying and discussing the reasons for the problematic nature of eyewitness
evidence. The result of their labors was a set of guidelines—the 1999 report Eyewitness
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Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement—for the improvement of procedures used for eliciting
eyewitness testimony and identifications (Burton, 2008).
Summary of Findings
The content of Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement (hereafter referred to
as the Guide) is organized with each group of guideline suggestions consisting of a statement of
the research principle, a basic policy declaration, a procedural list, and a summary addressing the
usefulness of each technique. The Guide, while not legally binding, encourages all police
agencies to use it as a model for their own legislation and policy, with modifications for the
unique needs and limitations of their respective jurisdictions. All of the information in the
following paragraphs is drawn from the Guide (USDOJ, 1999) except where noted.
Identification procedures. The Guide recognizes and comments on each of the types of
eyewitness identification procedures previously discussed: mug books, composites, showups,
lineups and photoarrays of both the sequential and simultaneous type. The multiple photograph
per page construction scheme for mug books is preferred, with photos of like composition
grouped together, followed by organization by type of crime, then by facial similarity in
increasingly narrow classification by distinguishing features. A note on composite drawings
warns against using the composites as stand alone evidence and reminds investigators of the low
likelihood an identification based on a composite sketch will fulfill probable cause requirements.
Mug book and composite procedures are discussed first despite their lower frequency of use,
compared to lineups and photoarrays, since the Guide is laid out to reflect the probable order in
which the procdeures discussed would be employed during an investigation.
Perhaps in acquiescence to the opinion of researchers, but not police officers, that the
showup is inherently more biased and suggestive than a lineup procedure, the Guide suggests
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
that if multiple witnesses are present, only one perform the field identification so the suspect can
be put into custody while the other sequestered witnesses wait until a proper lineup or photoarray
can be arranged. Instructions are included for performing simultaneous and sequential lineups as
well as photoarrays much as they have already been discussed. A reminder is given to construct
the lineups/photoarrays so the fillers are close approximations of the suspect, not of the
theoretical perpetrator who may not be present or whom the witness may have incorrectly
described. The Guide even goes so far as to suggest artificially faking or concealing features like
tattoos and scars in the pursuit of lineup fairness.
All of the identification procedures in the Guide require “statements of certainty”
(confidence assessments) from witnesses prior to any reports regarding the selected individual
(p. 37). On the one hand, this instruction is likely to limit the effect of administrator
dissemination of postevent information, but on the other hand, since this same instruction is
repeated for all identification procedures, the notion that witness confidence and accuracy are
strongly and directly correlated may be unjustly perpetuated. Useful or not, the results of the
confidence assessment and the identification made by the witness (or not made) must be
zealously documented. The Guide admonishes, “preparing a complete and accurate record of the
outcome of the identification procedure improves the strength and credibility of the identification
or non-identification” in court and provides means for impeaching perjuring witnesses (p. 38).
Interview and interrogation procedures. The Guide is heavily weighted in favor of
presenting protocols for identification rather than interview or interrogation. In its limited
discussion of these law enforcement functions, it assumes witnesses will be cooperative, so
specific suggestions for antagonistic interrogation situations are nonexistent. To its credit,
however, the Guide promotes the principles of good interviewing at the earliest levels of police
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contact by including sections on how 911 dispatchers and first-responding officers should ask
questions in the midst of their hectic duties. The first officer, after ensuring the safety of all
involved persons and apprehending the culprit if possible, should begin locating witnesses and
instituting simple measures (like separation of multiple witnesses) in order to preserve the
integrity of the eyewitnesses’ memories. Warnings at this early stage to avoid discussions,
media reports, and other sourced of postevent information are given as well.
An introductory text on criminal investigation, including interviews and interrogations,
by Swanson et al. (1996), conceives of the interview as a progression through three stages:
establishing a rapport with the witness, acquiring information, and expressing appreciation. At
all stages of eyewitness interviews, the Guide emphasizes rapport building and professional
courtesy, which includes thanking witnesses for their participation. The suggestions for the
questioning portion of an interview are uncomplicated and generally representative of the
research identified concerns prompted by interview situations—witness guessing or hedging;
interviewer leading. A step which suggests asking open-ended questions then “augmenting with
close-ended, specific questions” mirrors the research supported tactic of obtaining a free recall
narrative before prompting clarification and further disclosures through the use of questions (p.
23). Just as with the identification procedures, the Guide is adamant about good documentation.
One final point of note is the inclusion of a step designed to let the witness recreate mentally the
sensory cues and emotional arousal level of the original event to aid in recollection.
The Training Guide
The work begun by TWGEYEE under Janet Reno continued under Attorney General
John Ashcroft with the 2003 publication of Eyewitness Evidence: A Trainer’s Manual for Law
Enforcement (hereafter referred to as the Manual). The following material is drawn from the
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
Manual unless otherwise noted (USDOJ, 2003). Designed as a companion to the Guide
(USDOJ, 1999), the Manual contains almost entirely the same information as its predecessor.
The organization of the latter is a little different, however, with the presentation of topics from
the former according to the timeline of their use in an investigation changed to create a division
between two lesson plans on Interviewing and Identification. These sections may be taught
together as part of a 2-day lecture or independently. All of the materials in the Manual,
including curricula, exercises, and an accompanying CD-ROM containing audio/visual materials,
were designed to be used in conjunction with the Guide. TWGEYEE instigated testing of these
materials in an actual classroom environment with the Baltimore County Police Department
(Maryland) to ensure their viability. The resulting Manual is sort of a teacher’s edition of the
Guide, the students’ required text, and includes special notes on key issues for discussion as well
as cues for a slide presentation included with the A/V supplement. As was true of the Guide, the
Manual encourages law enforcement agencies to adapt its contents to suit their particular needs
or to supplement existing programs on the collection and preservation of eyewitness testimony.
Law Enforcement Practice and Procedure Issues
Education, Training, and Policy
The same aforementioned thrust to professionalize the image of law enforcement, which
resulted in the aversion to terms like interrogation, led to adoption of new interrogation methods
couched in the symbolic, authoritative, and scientific language of psychology to replace
disgraced physically coercive methods (Leo, 2008). Law enforcement agencies are aware of
many of the research findings previously discussed and incorporate the concluding suggestions
of the most representative and recognizable studies into their education and practice, but the
general relationship with psychology is a thorny one. The latent paradigmatic antagonism felt by
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both disciplines is not helped by a tendency for law enforcement to lend the illusion of sanction
as the fruit of modern psychological inquiry to its brand of anecdotal “research,” which has poor
methodological rigor and is characterized more by a compilation of experiential evidence for
certain police-invented techniques than by systematic study of them. In one discussion of talents
useful for interrogators (who usually conduct both interviews and interrogations), psychology
was listed along with “salesmanship and dramatics;” this use of the term psychology reflects its
most manipulative and utilitarian connotations (Swanson, Chamelin, & Territo, 1996, p. 157).
The assumption of the “cultural authority of science” was seen as a way of making police
work into “a profession that, like medicine and the law, the public would come to trust” and as a
way of “furthering the goal of professionalizing interrogation so as to insulate it from outside
review or control,” (Leo, 2008, pp. 107, 109). The latter statement reflects a goal pursued by
Inbau who, with Reid, coauthored one of the most prestigious procedural and training manuals
for police, subsequent editions of which are still in circulation (Leo, 2008). Manuals continue to
be a means for legions of police officers to learn the rudiments of interviewing, interrogation,
and identification; regrettably the pseudo-psychological orientation of early manuals persists in
modern training and certification and is perpetuated through manuals (Leo, 2008). Officers
typically receive only minimal training in interview techniques, enough to be competent at
getting information when on patrol calls in the field, but more in-depth training is rare unless an
officer is assigned to an investigative position, such as a detective bureau. (D. Pearson, personal
communication, November 10, 2008). Even then, the majority of training is provided on-the-job
by mentors who themselves have learned through experience (Burton, 2008).
The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training (POST) is a law
enforcement oversight group which sets minimum recruitment and training standards for
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agencies which participate in its incentive-based programs (POST, 2007). POST is one of the
largest and most imitated organizations of its kind, providing training in leadership and policing
fundamentals as well as certification for proficiency (defined as part of POST standards) in these
areas (POST, 2007). POST is also one of the few formal providers of basic training in interview
and interrogation techniques (POST, 2008). Unfortunately, either the fear of hardened criminals
learning to outsmart their methods or Inbau’s long-standing fear of public intrusion into police
matters has lowered a veil of almost absurd secrecy over the exact content of interrogation
techniques in general and POST training of the subject in specific. Even a conversation with a
retired LAPD lieutenant did not reveal any more information than that POST classes provide
merely an overview of issues as well as brief exposure to some of the techniques employed (D.
Pearson, personal communication, November 10, 2008). POST Interview & Interrogation
courses appear to be taught in a multi-day workshop format; outside companies are engaged to
teach the sessions and they appear to have content leeway provided the minimum requirements
are met for the appropriate police function to which the training is geared (POST, 2008).
Actual Police Practice
Throughout most of the discussion of police procedures for eliciting accurate eyewitness
testimony within this paper, the constituent activities of interviews, interrogations, and
identifications have been described in terms of the relative ideals suggested by psychological
research and TWGEYEE guidelines. Lack of transparency in actual police procedures makes it
unclear just how closely or not practice adheres to policy. Gonzalez, Ellsworth, and Pembroke
aptly comment on the speculative absurdity of “hypotheses about the psychology of police
officers and witnesses” since after “years of intensive research on eyewitness identification,
[psychologists] know next to nothing about actual practice,” (1993, p. 536). From what
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information is available about genuine police practice (D. Pearson, personal communication,
November 10, 2008; Burton 2008; Swanson et al., 1996), the evidence seems to be clear that
identification techniques, particularly lineups, photoarrays, and showups, are conducted almost
exactly as described in the Guide (USDOJ, 1999) except for variations in verbal instructions
across examined jurisdictions. There is less certainty surrounding the position of interview and
interrogation techniques with respect to research and TWGEYEE suggested procedures. One
unique solution to the paucity of detail surrounding actual interviews and interrogations was to
review episodes of The First 48 television series (Kim, 2004-2008), a reality program in which
cameras follow real detectives from cities around the US as they investigate during the first 48
hours after a homicide. There is at least one interrogation in every episode , plus interviews and
photoarrays occur frequently, though it was not thought prudent to base too much of the
following discussion of actual police practice on a TV show, no matter how true-to-life.
Interviews. Burton (2008), himself a Sheriff’s captain and deputy division commander,
notes a disparity in the amount of training certain ranks and functions receive in interview and
interrogation techniques. First-responders and patrol officers are almost exclusively trained in
interviewing—dealing with cooperative witnesses. Detectives on the other hand are poor in
additional training with interviews, but rich in training and experience with interrogation. The
one exception to this generality is the Cognitive Interview (CI) which, although developed by
Fisher and Geiselman for use with cooperative witnesses, is employed more often by detectives
or other follow-up investigators than by patrol officers (Fisher, Brennan, McCauley, (2002). The
CI is a method for enhancing eyewitness memory, but it is not for use during identification tasks.
Instead, the CI elicits descriptive information about events or objects at a greater rate than a
standard police interview with no expense of accuracy (Fisher, et al., 2002). Because the CI is a
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structured interview technique, it can be assumed the practice of law enforcement investigators
using the CI conforms closely to the recommended procedure. There are five phases to a CI:
introduction, narration, probing, review, and close (Fisher, et al., 2002). During the introduction
phase, CI administrators establish rapport with the witness and give instructions for the
procedure. During narration, as the witness recounts an open-ended version of the target event
the investigator plans a strategy for getting the witness to remember more detail with the help of
cognitive tricks (like relaying the sequence of events backwards) administered during the
probing phase (Fisher, et al., 2002). The review stage is a time to check the accuracy of recorded
information; the close phase recalls the appreciation stage of a standard interview (Swanson, et
al., 1996; USDOJ, 1999). This form to the CI confers the benefit of decreased opportunity for
leading questions and postevent disclosures on the part of the administrator (Fisher, et al., 2002).
Interrogations. Because privacy, which law enforcement has enlarged into secrecy, is
thought to be a necessary feature of interrogation, there is little that can be known with certainty
about actual police interrogation practice. Manuals, especially those written by law enforcement
for law enforcement, are therefore the best indicators of what that actual practice might look like.
Assuming the study of training manuals does confer insight into interrogation theory, procedures,
and policy, then practice of interrogation must be diverse indeed between jurisdictions and
between proponents of the sundry techniques extolled in various manuals. Despite the
prevalence of methods, the majority of attributes of the interrogation process are similar across
all of them. The meagerly furnished dismally painted room with table and two chairs on
adjoining sides, which is the stereotypical setting for interrogations in media portrayals, is in fact
the norm. One manual offers this explanation for why; the sparseness of interrogation rooms is
meant to limit the amount of stimuli experienced by the suspect to only those which come from
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investigators (Walters, 2003). The questions they ask and the small comfort items they do or do
not provide are then thought to have heightened emotional impact for the suspect. Reasoning
like this illustrates how the three main themes of interrogation—preparation, control, and
direction—are translated into practical aspects of the procedure.
Another stereotypical conception of interrogation which does not stray too far from the
mark is the idea of interrogators watching the body language of suspects to discover lies and
particularly sensitive topics which can be effectively exploited in reaching a confession or other
desired outcome. The Kinesic Interview and Interrogation Technique is built around the idea
that verbal and non-verbal reactions during the interrogation process provide cues to deception as
well as the ideal approach to use with a particular suspect (Walters, 2003). Kinesic, from the
same root as kinesis meaning motion, refers in this case to communicative motion (Walters,
2003). “Neurolingustic eye movement analysis” whereby the vertical position of the suspect’s
eyes is determinant of a visual, auditory, or touch memory and left-right position is indicative of
veracity or fabrication, is a borderline scientific/pseudo-scientific component of the Kinesic and
other interrogation techniques (Walters, 2003; Zulawski, & Wicklander, 1992). Interestingly, the
naturalistic study of officer lie detection ability conducted by Mann, Vrij, and Bull, described
above, found attention to physical cues to deception, “such as gaze aversion and fidgeting,” was
correlated with poor lie detection performance, possibly because over-much attention was paid to
them at the expense of a holistic appraisal of verbal and physical deception cues (2004, p. 137).
Another method, the Reid Technique, conceptualizes interrogation as consisting of two
main processes: breaking down denials and increasing suspect desire to confess (Gudjonsson,
2003). Because of the manual-based influence of Inbau and Reid, for whom the technique is
named, these two objectives form the basis of many interrogation techniques; the Reid
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Interviews, Interrogations, and Identifications
Technique itself is one of the most commonly used paradigms of interrogation among police.
Leo (as cited in Gudjonsson, 2003, p. 27) likens the subtle manipulation necessary to guide a
suspect from denial to admission of guilt to “the process, sequence, and structure of a confidence
game.” Interrogators, like scam artists and chess players, must be able to read their opponents
and anticipate their responses. Psychology, particularly the psychology of personality is
sometimes a means of “playing several moves ahead” of a suspect as well as of accomplishing
the goals of breaking denials and encouraging confession (D. Pearson, personal communication,
November, 10, 2008). The Kinesic Interview and Interrogation Technique, for example, borrows
from the work of Carl Jung and Hans Eysenck for its suspect classification system, which
includes an introversion/extroversion determination and a hypothesis about whether the suspect
is emotion-, logic-, ego-, or sense-dominant (Walters, 2003).
Understanding the personality of the interrogated suspect is supposed to be a key for
knowing which interrogation approaches, like Good Cop/Bad Cop, are most likely to move the
suspect along that road from denial to admission in the smoothest, quickest way possible.
Sometimes providing incentives is the best way to motivate a suspect to confess or make an
incriminating disclosure. These can be negative or positive. Negative incentives include:
making accusations of definite and more serious offenses, refusing to accept suspect denials,
using an evidence ploy when the “evidence” is nonexistent or less incriminating than
represented, pressure to answer, repetition of questions, and general escalation of intensity (Leo,
2008). Positive incentives include: inducements, which create the hope of relief, favor,
preference, or release if a suspect confesses; small favors or comforts; offers of help within the
limits of the law; and suggestion of minimizing scenarios, also called rationalizations (Leo,
2008). When interrogators suggest to suspects, the crime they committed was an accident, an
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unintended consequence, or the fault of someone else (perhaps even the victim), the natural
instinct to minimize guilt and appear socially acceptable induces the suspect to agree to the
conditions described in the rationalization are true (Zulawski, & Wicklander, 1992). The catch is
a suspect must admit to some involvement in the crime under investigation in order to reap the
benefits of the ego escape offered by an interrogator. Suggesting rationalizations like these are
the fourth most successful interrogation tactic in securing confessions after appeals to
conscience, trapping suspects in lies, and flattery; three of four top approaches (including
rationalization) can be seen as psychologically manipulative (Gudjonsson, 2003).
Conclusions
Admittedly, law enforcement officers must balance deference to protecting eyewitness
memory integrity and accuracy with their primary function of detecting and detaining the guilty.
The long-term goal of limiting the number of innocent people accused on the basis of eyewitness
testimony is the same for police agencies and psychological researchers. That said, in view of
the organizational focus of the former on catching criminals, the empirically suggested means for
accomplishing that long-term goal may be displaced by the realities of short-term crime solving
goals. Law enforcement brass may hand down policies which follow the recommendations of
psychologists and the TWGEYEE; detailed procedures for collecting and protecting accurate
eyewitness testimony may be instituted; but when police officers encounter non-performing
witnesses and suspects who beg to be put away on the length of their rap sheets, such procedures
may be ignored if a superior tactic like using suggestive interrogation techniques will pave the
way for a sought-after identification or confession. The real possibility exists for authentic law
enforcement practice to not match published agency procedures or for policy and procedure both
to vary significantly across jurisdictions given the limited specificity of training requirements set
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by voluntary-participation organizations like POST. Regrettably, the self-imposed lack of
transparency in police interview, interrogation, and identification procedures limits the ability of
researchers and reformers to diagnose and address their attendant issues.
That same lack of transparency and absence of uniformity in practice hampersthe
formation of a final judgment on the success or failure of law enforcement procedures at
preserving the integrity of the eyewitness memories they are meant to draw out. Accurate and
resilient memories are not solely the product or responsibility of legal authorities, but as far as
interviews and identification procedures can conform to suggested guidelines for ensuring
minimal consequences from interaction with police investigators, they appear to do so.
Assuming these functions are performed in accordance with stated policy, current means of
administering interviews, lineups, photoarrays, and showups do provide adequate protection
from memory alteration and ultimately from false attributions of guilt. The case of mug books
and composite drawings is a little more unclear, but only because there is no clear empirically
sound method for administering these as of yet.
The state of interrogation procedures, on the other hand, is particularly concerning.
There are no TWGEYEE guidelines for their content, nor is there much available scientific
research on the efficacy or harm produced by the common use of psychological manipulation.
This dearth of comments on and recommendations for the use of interrogations may be the result
of several factors. The TWGEYEE may not view interrogation as an instance of eyewitness
evidence collection, though interrogators are looking for the suspect to let slip details of a crime
or crime scene known only to the perpetrator, which would have been witnessed as he or she
committed the crime. A reluctance to interfere in (and thereby potentially decrease the closure
rate of) crime solving could also have motivated the relative silence of TWGEYEYE. The
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aforementioned lack of transparency in interrogation practice could also mean researchers are not
privy to the information required to design a suitable test of these procedures. Interrogation is
such a “calculus of personalities” (the suspect’s, the interrogator’s) that there is unlikely to be
uniformity of practice from suspect to suspect. The psychologically manipulative nature of some
of the components of interrogations may cause unwanted changes in eyewitness memory, in fact
it is likely they do, but this cannot be known for sure without proper study. The most successful
interrogation tactics would probably not be psychologically indicated for memory protection, yet
the best procedures for ensuring the accuracy of identifications and recollections of events would
not likely be very useful in convincing a repeat offender to confess or uncooperative witnesses to
relent either. A balance must be achieved.
Psychologists and police officers have differing viewpoints on eyewitness procedures;
while law enforcement is concerned mostly about the utility of such techniques, psychologists
see them through the lens of past research on personality, memory, and compliance (Gudjonsson,
2003). Echoes of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison and Milgram’s obedience experiments as well as
an empirical aversion to the false positive (i.e. mistaken identification, wrongful conviction)
more than the false negative (i.e. true criminal goes undetected), make psychologists wary of
Machiavellian motives for using certain questioning tactics and willing to remedy them.
Research into eyewitness testimony has progressed far and has been to a certain extent heeded,
take the TWGEYEE for example. The problem is that research does not seem to be enough to
affect the magnitude of change necessary. Psychologists should continue to perform more and
better studies of eyewitness procedures, especially in naturalistic settings, but they should also
consider becoming advocated for change through amicus curiae briefs, development of training
programs, and evaluation of current policies.
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Introducing greater transparency to police practices will help to accomplish future
research and policy goals. The creation of a national or state-level standard for all eyewitness
procedures (interview, interrogation, and identification), one which is enforceable unlike the
Guide and POST standards, will also ensure uniformity of practice and ease of evaluation. The
British PEACE program (acronym reflects the five parts of their interview: Plan, Engage,
Account, Close, and Evaluate) is a standardized training program in interview and interrogation
skills, with enumerated procedures and government oversight (Bull, & Milne, 2004). Training is
tiered, with five depths of instruction tailored to the ways officers are likely to use interviews
(Bull, & Milne, 2004). PEACE is a working model of how institutional change in eyewitness
procedures may be accomplished. It also may serve as a source of research data on the effect
such changes have on closure and conviction rates of interest to law enforcement administrators.
Eyewitness policies and procedures are far ahead of where they were just a few decades ago, but
there is still room and need for improvement. The best modifications to current law enforcement
practices will be those which recognize and control the hazards to accuracy and identified by
social science at the same time as they attend to the needs of the police agencies which use them.
With a cooperative effort to devise and implement such strategies, the number of lives destroyed
by wrongful convictions on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony may mercifully decline.
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A. M. Scotti
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