There were two witnesses, one Black, one White. So we asked 21 White people and 20 Black people on the campus at UTEP to make the same judgment you just made. Expected ID rate is 3.33 per lineup member. Here are the results:
White Participants Black Participants
21 |
0 |
0 |
18 |
0 |
0 |
|
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
The defendant in this case is in position #1. Obviously the lineup is biased towards the defendant, because he stands out from the fillers in the lineup.
Note that the 5 lowest frequency lineup members taken together do not add up to the number of choices expected for one lineup member. They may as well not be there. This is effectively a 1 person lineup, and the risk of false identification for an innocent suspect is nearly 100%. The fillers in this lineup are a totally ineffective safeguard against false identification.
Go to the next page for another lineup.