Journal of Applied Psychology1983, Vol 68, No 3, 347-362

Copyright 1983 by theAmerican Psychological Association, Inc

What Can Psychology Say About the Neil v. BiggersCriteria for Judging Eyewitness Accuracy?

Gary L. Wells and Donna M. MurrayUniversity of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

In an influential case (Neil v Biggers, 1972), the U S Supreme Court identifiedfive catena to be considered m judging eyewitness identification evidence TheCourt's intuitions may need reassessment m light of recent psychological researchevidence Especially in need of review is the assumption that eyewitness certaintyand eyewitness identification accuracy are usefully related Under a variety ofprocedures that mimic the real-world environment, experiments have found therelationship between eyewitness accuracy and confidence to be of little or nopractical use In addition, the Court's assumption that the degree of the eye-witness's attention is cntical to judging the accuracy of the eyewitness can berefined for the trier of fact. Psychological research can also bear directly on refiningthe Court's reference to the witness's opportunity to view the criminal, especiallywith regard to systematic biases in witnesses' estimations of temporal durationThe Court's reference to an eyewitness's accuracy of prior description as a cueto accuracy of identification is questionable Finally, the Court's reference todecay of memory across time should be refined to include concepts of interference(1 e , consideration of retention interval events rather than time, per se) Althoughthe Court's intuitions about eyewitness identification are not unreasonable, therecent growth of a literature using forensically relevant procedures has increasedthe gap between experimental evidence and the Biggers criteria

"Identifying the defendant as the wrongdoer presents an issue, and often the sole onefor determination, in every criminal trial"(Woocher, 1977, p. 969). Among the mostpersuasive ways to establish the defendant'sguilt is eyewitness identification evidenceEyewitness identification is direct evidence,rather than circumstantial, and undoubtedlyhas accounted for innumerable convictionsof guilty persons who would not have beensuccessfully prosecuted without such evi-dence Conversely, many authors have com-piled case histories of miscarriages of justiceresulting from mistaken identification (e.g,Block, 1963; Borchard, 1932; Frankfurter,1927; Gardner, 1952), and recently experi-mental psychologists have taken systematicapproaches to delineating problems in thepsychology of eyewitness testimony (e.g., see

The authors thank John Bngham, Kenneth Deffen-bacher, Elizabeth Loftus and Leendert Mos for helpfulcomments on a manuscript version of this article

Requests for reprints should be sent to Gary L Wells,Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Ed-monton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E9

Loftus, 1979) The courts are not obliviousto the issue The U.S Supreme Court, forexample, has noted that "the vagaries ofeyewitness identification are well-known, theannals of criminal law are rife with instancesof mistaken identification" (United States vWade1)

Although the courts are aware of the gen-eral problem of mistaken identification, thereis some confusion over how to deal with theissue Recent years have seen an increasedpresence of psychologists in court who pro-vide expert testimony regarding eyewitnessevidence But the courts are inconsistent inallowing such testimony, and some psychol-ogists have argued that allowing expert tes-timony at individual tnals might not be thelevel at which the issues should be handled(e g , Egeth & McCloskey, 1983; Wells, 1978).Furthermore, expert testimony in individualtnals is a costly and time-consuming processSomething on a larger scale might prove moreefficient, such as instructions to juries deliv-

1 United States \ Wade, 388 U S 218 (1967)

347

348 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

ered routinely by judges. Expert testimonymight still be used, of course, in particularlydifficult cases

This article begins with a background ofthe current legal position on eyewitness evi-dence, followed by a discussion of each of thecriteria, which the Court has identified, forevaluating eyewitness accuracy Currently,there are five criteria set forth by the U.S.Supreme Court that seem to guide mostlower courts

Legal Background

The official position of the U.S. Judiciarywith respect to eyewitness identifications isderived from a 1972 U S Supreme Courtdecision (Neil v Biggers2) In this case theCourt discussed the factors to be consideredin determining whether the pretnal eyewit-ness identification has violated due process.The due process rule as a sanction is appli-cable to many areas of criminal law and isderived, of course, from the FourteenthAmendment. Prior to Biggers, the generalstandard for the due process rule in eyewit-ness identifications concerned the suggestive-ness of the identification procedure (Stovallv Denno3) The Neil v Biggers case, however,shifted the emphasis from suggestiveness toaccuracy. Previously, overly suggestive iden-tification procedures meant that the courtmust suppress evidence of the pretrial iden-tification. For example, a "show-up" (one-to-one confrontation between an eyewitness anda suspect) is generally considered overlysuggestive; and, under the old guidelines, ifthere was reasonable opportunity to use alineup, a show-up violated due process Inthe Neil v Biggers case (wherein a show-upwas at issue), however, the Court argued that"it is the likelihood of misidentification whichviolates the defendant's right to due process"and that the crucial issue is whether "theidentification procedure was reliable eventhough the confrontation procedure wassuggestive" (p. 198-199). (Note- The Courtuses the word reliability to refer to what re-searchers would call validity or accuracy inthis context.)

The Court listed five factors m the Neil vBiggers case to be considered in determiningaccuracy-

la] The opportunity of the witness to view the criminal,at the time of the crime, [b] the witness' degree of at-tention, [c] the accuracy of the witness' prior descriptionof the criminal, [d] the level of certainty demonstratedby the witness at the time of confrontation, [e] the lengthof time between the crime and the confrontation(P 199)

Thus, the Court went beyond the issue of dueprocess as it had been treated previously andspecified that the true issue is one of accuracySome confusion has resulted from this assome legal experts have been unable to seehow these five factors constitute due processconsiderations (e.g , State v McManus4; So-bel & Pndgen, 1981) It could be said thatthe Court has offered an intuitive theory ofeyewitness identification or at least a set offive hypotheses

Since 1972, lower courts appear to haveadopted the Biggers standards of eyewitnessaccuracy to the point of even rejecting dueprocess concerns (e g , the suggestibility of theidentification procedure, see, e.g., State vHenderson,5 State v Bono,6 United States vAnderson,1 Haberstrok v Montanye,8 Kirbyv Sturges,9 Israel v Odom,i0 and UnitedStates v Rodriguez11). These courts have op-erated as though such factors as certainty,opportunity to view the criminal at the timeof the crime, accuracy of prior description,attention by the witness, and/or the temporalduration between crime and confrontationare compelling criteria that can overcometraditional concerns about due process (e g.,suggestiveness of the identification proce-dure). Indeed, this is what the Court meantwhen it rejected a per se exclusionary rule inthe case of Manson v Braithwaite n This case

2 Neil v Biggers, 409 U S 188 (1972)1 Stovall v Denno, 388 U S 293 (1967)4 State v McManus, 263 N W 2d 556, 559 (Iowa,

1977)5 State v Henderson. 285 N C 1, 203 SE 2d 10

(1974)6 State v Bono, 128 NJ Super 254, 319 A 2d 762

(1974)7 United States v Anderson. 490 F2d 785 (D C Cir

1974)8 Haberstrok v Montanye, 493 F2d 483 (2d Or 1974)9 Kirby v Sturges, 510 F2d 397 (7th Or 1975)10 Israel v Odom, 521 F2d 1370 (7th Cir 1975)" United States v Rodnquez, 510 F2d 1 (5th Cir

1975)12 Manson v Braithwaite, 432 U S 98, 97 S Ct 2243

(1977)

NEIL v BIGGERS 349

revolved around a narcotics agent's identifi-cation of Braithwaite from a single photo-graph (1 e., there were no alternative photo-graphs), a procedure which the prosecutionadmitted was both suggestive and unneces-sary. The Supreme Court approved the useof the Biggers's criteria, in doing so, however,the Court made the suggestive identificationprocedure irrelevant The Court pointed tothe fact that the agent was exposed to theperson in question for 2 to 3 minutes at thetime of the drug deal, the agent was a trainedobserver who was therefore likely to attendto detail, the agent's verbal description wasdetailed, the agent was certain about the iden-tification, and only 2 days elapsed betweenthe incident and the identification

The impact of the Biggers case raises anumber of questions about the adequacy ofthe five criteria The Court has relied on in-tuition to specify some factors that it believesare correlated with eyewitness identificationaccuracy Except for a dissenting opinion byJustices Brennan and Marshall in Watkinsv Sowders,13 the Court has not made use ofexperimental psychology in dealing with mat-ters of eyewitness testimony It could be ar-gued that it was unwise of the Court to failto make use of research in experimental psy-chology. After all, psychologists have beenstudying memory in a scientific way fornearly 100 years (eg., Ebbinghaus, 1885/1964). This is especially true today, as thereis an empirical literature specifically on thepsychology of eyewitness testimony that islarge enough to justify five recent book-length volumes (Clifford & Bull, 1978, Dav-les, Ellis, & Shepherd, 1981, Loftus, 1979,Wells & Loftus, 1983, Yarmey, 1979), a spe-cial issue of Law and Human Behavior (Vol.4, 1980) devoted to empirical studies of eye-witness testimony, and a recent conferencedevoted entirely to the psychology of eye-witness testimony (Alberta Conference onthe Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony,1980). Thus, advice to the Court regardingeyewitness matters would seem to be muchmore viable on the basis of empirical evi-dence today than it was m 1972.

Each of the factors identified by the Courtin Neil v Biggers (hereafter called the Biggerscriteria) is addressed with regard to modernevidence in the experimental psychology of

eyewitness testimony. It is not the case thateach of these five factors has been equallyresearched and none have been plenarily re-searched Indeed, one of the purposes of thisarticle is to point out weaknesses in currentpsychological evidence on these issues so thatpsychology will be prepared to provide usefulinformation to the Court should they ask forsuch in a future case A second purpose is tohelp draw attention to any discrepancies be-tween legal opinion and current empiricalevidence in psychology

Eyewitness CertaintyPsychological Evidence

Eyewitness identification certainty, definedas the degree to which an eyewitness believesthat his or her identification is accurate, hasreceived considerable experimental attentionin recent years Prior to the mid-1970s therewas little in the published psychological lit-erature that would lead one to suspect thateyewitness certainty would be a poor or mis-leading cue to eyewitness accuracy. Why thequestion was not put to empirical test priorto that time is not clear. Perhaps it stemmedfrom an assumption that accuracy-confi-dence relationships in other tasks and settings(e g.. Brown & McNeill, 1966; Kozlowski &Bryant, 1977) would generalize to eyewitnessidentifications. Perhaps the intuition (thataccuracy and confidence are related in eye-witness identifications) is so compelling thatempirical tests had no a priori interest value.Whatever the explanation, relevant experi-ments have now been conducted and they donot support the intuition that eyewitness cer-tainty should be considered a good index toeyewitness accuracy

The experiments bearing on this issue haveinvolved a number of different laboratories,subject populations, and procedures. Somestudies required identification from facialphotographs (e g , Brown, Deffenbacher, &Sturgill, 1977), whereas others required iden-tification from live lineups (e.g, Malpass &Devme, 1981a, 1981b) In some studies theoriginal encounter with the perpetrator oc-curred via videotaped or slide scenarios (e.g.,

13 Watkins v Sowders, 101 US 654(1981)

350 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

Clifford & Scott, 1978; Loftus, Miller, &Burns, 1978), whereas in other studies theoriginal encounter occurred during a stagedcrime (e.g., Leippe, Wells, & Ostrom, 1978;Sanders & Warnick, 1981). Some studieshave led the witness to believe the confron-tation is real and that identification has se-nous consequences for the accused (e.g.,Malpass & Devine, 1980, Sanders & War-nick, 1981; Murray & Wells, 1982), whereasothers have informed the eyewitness (after theoriginal incident) that the identification ispart of an experiment (e.g, Buckhout, Alper,Chern, Silverberg, & Slomovits, 1974; Buck-hout, Figueroa, & Hoff, 1975; Lindsay &Wells, 1980, Wells & Leippe, 1981). Some ofthe studies measured eyewitness certainty atthe time of identification with Likert-typescales (e.g., Clifford & Scott, 1978; Davies,Ellis, & Shepard, 1978; Leippe et al., 1978),whereas other studies have measured open-ended statements of certainty (e.g., Murray& Wells, 1982) Finally, some studies havemeasured certainty-related phenomenon,such as willingness to undergo cross exami-nation (e.g , Lindsay, Wells, & Rumpel, 1981,Wells, Lindsay, & Ferguson, 1979) and per-suasive impact of testimony (e.g , Wells, Fer-guson, & Lindsay, 1981), to see their rela-tionship to eyewitness accuracy

With rare exceptions, these studies showthat the certainty of those eyewitnesses whomake an identification accounts for no morethan 4% or 5% of the variation in their ac-curacy; most of the studies show the rela-tionship to be statistically nonsignificantUnder some conditions, such as perpetrator-absent lineups or misleading postevent in-formation, the accuracy-confidence corre-lation is actually negative (e g, Malpass &Devine, 1981a; Loftus et al, 1978). Thestrength and direction of the confidence-ac-curacy relationship has been shown to beaffected by three variables: the presence/ab-sence of the perpetrator m the lineup, thepresence/absence of variables that affect onlyone member of the confidence-accuracy pair,and the consequences of the identificationEach of these are discussed in turn.

Malpass and Devine (1981a) exposed un-suspecting eyewitnesses to a staged vandalismfollowed by a live lineup. By varying thelineup so that it included or did not include

the vandal, Malpass and Devine were able toshow that eyewitness certainty was relatedprimarily to the act of making an identifi-cation choice, rather than the accuracy of thechoice. When the perpetrator was absentfrom the lineup, for example, those whomade a choice were more certain that theywere correct than were those who did notmake a choice (even though all of the formerwere inaccurate and all of the latter were ac-curate) The negative correlation betweencertainty and accuracy in the perpetrator-ab-sent conditions was as robust as was the pos-itive correlation in the perpetrator-presentconditions, as a result the overall correlationwas functionally zero Because we cannotassume m the real world that a given lineupcontains the true criminal, the Malpass andDevine study suggests that the certainty mea-sure may be useless as a predictor of accuracyand calls into question those confidence-ac-curacy correlations that were obtained fromstudies that used only perpetrator-presentlineups (e.g., Bngham, Mass, Snyder, &Spaulding, 1982, Malpass & Devine, 1981b).

There are theoretical reasons to believethat various events can affect identificationaccuracy without affecting identification con-fidence and vice versa (see Leippe, 1980)These theoretical expectations are supportedby several eyewitness expenments that showthat accuracy can be altered without any cor-responding modification of confidence (e.g ,Lindsay & Wells, 1980, Lindsay et al, 1981,Loftus et al, 1978) The Lindsay and Wellsstudy varied the physical similarity of lmeupmembers to each other and found strong ef-fects on the identification accuracy of eyewit-nesses to a staged crime There were no ef-fects, however, on the eyewitnesses' certainty(and no accuracy-certainty correlation inany of the conditions) Lindsay et al variedthe conditions under which a staged theft waswitnessed and found strong effects on eyewit-ness accuracy Conditions of poorest accu-racy, however, did not differ from conditionsof best accuracy m terms of eyewitness cer-tainty Loftus et al. varied the presence/ab-sence of misleading postevent informationand found that the presence of misleadinginformation greatly reduced memory accu-racy but increased, rather than decreased,certainty on the part of the eyewitnesses that

NEIL v BIGGERS 351

their memories were accurate. Thus, somethings affect accuracy without correspondingeffects on certainty. As a result, accuracy andcertainty lose calibration with each other.

In addition to evidence that accuracy canbe affected without corresponding changes incertainty, a recent study by Wells et al (1981)showed that certainty can be affected bythings that do not affect accuracy. In thisstudy, eyewitnesses to a staged theft made anattempt to identify the thief from a six-personphoto lineup and were then either warned ornot warned to prepare themselves for testi-mony and cross-examination. The warnedeyewitnesses later exhibited higher levels ofcertainty that their identification was accu-rate than did unwarned eyewitnesses Thiseffect was independent of true accuracyThus, eyewitness certainty can be affected byfactors that do not affect eyewitness accuracy,which further contributes to the noncorre-spondence between certainty and accuracy.

A final study that is particularly infor-mative regarding the accuracy-certainty is-sue was conducted by Murray and Wells(1982). Unsuspecting eyewitnesses were ex-posed to a staged theft and later attemptedidentifications of the thief from a six-personphoto array. Half of the eyewitnesses wereinformed after the incident, but before theidentification, that the theft was simulated.The other half of the witnesses were ledthroughout the identification task to believethat the event was real. Eyewitnesses who hadknowledge that the theft was simulatedshowed a strong confidence-accuracy corre-lation when a multiple regression techniquewas used. However, this relationship waseliminated (and made slightly negative) in theconditions where the eyewitnesses thoughtthat the theft was real. Thus, believing thatthe identification has real consequences forthe accused seems to interfere with the con-fidence-accuracy relationship owing, per-haps, to the extra anxiety created m theserealistic conditions.

Interestingly, the number of years experi-ence for judges does not relate to their beliefsabout the relationship between eyewitnessconfidence and accuracy, lineup conductors,however, are more likely to be aware of thenoncorrespondence between eyewitness con-fidence and accuracy the more years expe-

rience that they have (Bngham & Wolfskiel,Note 1) Presumably this is due to the factthat lineup conductors experience situationsover the years in which eyewitnesses identifypolice detectives (or other known innocentfoils) from a lineup with high levels of con-fidence Judges, however, have no opportu-nity to observe such occurrences

Conclusion

The experimental literature does not sup-port the Court's assumption about the utilityof eyewitness certainty. It is true that thereare conditions under which accuracy and cer-tainty in eyewitness identifications may berelated (such as with perpetrator-present line-ups). However, because many factors that in-fluence accuracy do not affect certainty andbecause certainty is influenced by factors thatdo not relate to accuracy, eyewitness cer-tainty can be misleading Under some con-ditions (such as perpetrator-absent lineups,misleading postevent information, or re-hearsal of false memories), high levels ofeyewitness certainty have been associatedwith inaccuracy rather than accuracy (seeMalpass & Devme, 1981a,Loftusetal., 1978,Wells et al., 1981, respectively, on thesepoints) Studies that mimic the anxiety as-sociated with confrontations experienced byeyewitnesses seem especially likely to guar-antee noncorrespondence between accuracyand certainty (e.g., Murray & Wells, 1982;Sanders & Warmck, 1981) There have beenthree reviews of the accuracy-certainty issuein eyewitness testimony; all three reached theconclusion that the courts should not rely oncertainty to infer accuracy (Deffenbacher,1980, Leippe, 1980. Wells & Murray, 1983).Although Deffenbacher argued that theremay be certain optimal conditions in whichconfidence-accuracy relationships may hold,what constitutes an "optimal condition" isunclear. More research is needed to see ifsuch conditions exist and, if so, whether theseconditions apply to real-world eyewitnessing.In addition, research on confidence-accu-racy relationships in eyewitnessing has pri-marily focused on between-subjects compar-isons (e.g., Is a confident eyewitness moreaccurate than a nonconfident eyewitness?)rather than withm-subjects comparisons (e.g.,

352 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

Is a witness more likely to be accurate whenconfident than that same witness is when notconfident?). Although between-subjects com-parisons may be more relevant to the forensicissue as it typically is encountered, within-subjects analyses may also have forensic rel-evance and should be assessed m further re-search

Degree of Attention

It is not clear what the Court means pre-cisely by the term "degree of attention." Ifby it the Court means how long the witnesslooked at the perpetrator, then it would seemto be too narrowly defined Clearly, exposuretime is one of the most important factors in-fluencing memory. However, during the lastdecade there have been impressive demon-strations in the experimental memory liter-ature showing that the amount of time spentattending to visual information can be muchless critical than the type of attention. Amodern framework for understanding mem-ory processes in this regard is Craik andLockhart's (1972) levels of processing con-ceptualization Studies consistently find thatthe accuracy of memory retrieval depends onwhat Craik and Lockhart have called the"depth" to which the original event was pro-cessed Depth is determined by a number ofthings such as the purpose for attending tothe information Thus, a person who exam-ines words in order to make a superficialjudgment (e.g , number of syllables) will notfind these words to be as accessible in mem-ory as would a person who judged the wordsfor their meaning (eg., Arbuckle & Katz,1976; Craik & Tulvmg, 1975).

The type of attention, rather than time perse, plays a critical role in memory for facesas well (e.g., Bower & Karlin, 1974; Mueller,Baihs & Goldstein, 1979, Strnad & Mueller,1977). Attention to specific facial features,for example, requires a considerable amountof time but is not as effective for memory asis a task that requires deeper processing, suchas making a personality trait judgment (e.g.,Patterson & Baddeley, 1977; Warnngton &Ackroyd, 1975, Winograd, 1976) How thetrier of fact determines the type of attentionpaid by the eyewitness is an open question

However, as discussed m the next section, thesame problem exists for assessing the amountof time that the eyewitness attended to theperpetrator In both cases it seems that onemust rely on the eyewitness's report. Thiscould be problematic because the witnesseasily could err in such reports

Recent research indicates that it might beimportant to clarify another aspect of atten-tion for the trier of fact Specifically, humanshave a limited capacity for processing infor-mation. Therefore, attention to one stimuluswill result in a reduction of the available pro-cessing capacity for other stimuli (Kahne-man, 1973) Although "holistic processing"can occur under certain circumstances (e.g.,see Navon & Gopher, 1979), negative cor-relations can exist between performance oncentral versus peripheral tasks (e g., Hagen,Meacham & Mesibov, 1970). Regarding thelatter, recent research using staged theftsshows that the accuracy of eyewitnesses'memories for trivial, peripheral details (e g.,whether there was a window in the roomwhere the theft occurred) can be negativelycorrelated with the eyewitnesses' accuracy midentifying the thief from a photo lineup(Wells & Leippe, 1981). Subject/jurors in theWells and Leippe study, however, behaved asthough the correlation was positive. That is,they were more likely to believe that theeyewitness had correctly identified the thiefif the eyewitness had accurately recalled theperipheral details surrounding the event.Thus, triers of fact seem to approach theeyewitness issue as though perceptual pro-cessing were holistic m settings where eyewit-nesses are not using holistic processing Thegeneral notion of degree of attention doesnothing to caution triers of fact against a sup-position of holistic processing. Yet, as Wellsand Leippe demonstrated, such a supposi-tion, in conjunction with attorneys' normalattempts to discredit eyewitnesses for failingto notice such peripheral details, producesconsiderable errors on the part of triers offact

Conclusion

Although the Court is not mistaken in sug-gesting that the degree of attention is a factor

NEIL i BIGGERS 353

in accuracy of memory, theoretical and em-pirical evidence points to the type of atten-tion or level of processing as being more cru-cial for memory. Unfortunately, research hasnot yet been conducted that directly ad-dresses this issue in a forensically valid man-ner. The courts need to know whether aneyewitness's self-report of degree of attentionor of type of attention is more diagnostic ofaccuracy. After all, the levels of processingresearch manipulates the type of processingto find its effects whereas the courts can onlymeasure self-reports of this factor We cannot assume a priori that self-reports of typeof processing will have predictive utility Theempirical test seems to rest on whether aquestion such as "What were you thinkingabout while viewing the perpetrator's face?"is more diagnostic of accuracy than is a ques-tion such as "Did you attend to the perpe-trator's face?"

Attorneys who cross-examine eyewitnessesgenerally try to discredit the eyewitness byshowing that he or she does not recall ac-curately some trivial, peripheral detail of theevent m question Research shows that suchdiscrediting attempts are successful but pro-mote errors on the part of the triers of fact(Wells & Leippe, 1981). If and when theCourt reassesses the Biggers's criteria, itshould consider a caveat to the attention cri-terion that makes salient the limitations ofprocessing in general and divided attentionin particular

Opportunity to View the Assailant

An eyewitness's opportunity to view theassailant at the original encounter is ob-viously important for memory There is cer-tainly nothing m experimental psychologythat would contradict this global statement.There is good experimental evidence, how-ever, that could refine this general statement

It is particularly important to note that thetner of fact's understanding of the eyewit-ness's opportunity to view the assailant oftendepends on the eyewitness description of hisor her viewing opportunity For example, theeyewitness is the one who estimates his or herdistance from the assailant, the eyewitness isthe one who estimates how long the assailant

was in view, and the eyewitness must be theone who describes temporary occlusions ofhis or her visual contact with the assailant atthe time of witnessing

What is meant by opportunity to view theassailant9 The courts seem to include a mixof factors, some of which seem to actually beattention variables, as discussed in the pre-vious section One of the most common fac-tors, however, is time That is, the amountof time that a witness had to observe thecriminal seems to play a central role m theopportunity issue as discussed by courts.Variance in time across cases is quite large-for example, People v Miller^ (10 minutes),United States v Coppola15 (1 hour), Peoplev Hahn16 (2 sec), United States v Lustigi7

(30-60 sec), People v Gnswold1* (1 minute),Gov of Canal Zone v Waldron19 (twice for2-3 sec), Tate v State20 (30 sec) There is alsotremendous variance in the interpretation ofwhat these amounts of time mean for theopportunity issue In one of the more pro-tracted discussions of the time variable, Jus-tice Blackmun argued that 10 sec of viewingsomeone's face is plenanly sufficient to leavean "indelible impression . one need onlyobserve another person's face for 10 secondsby the clock to know this" (Moore v Illi-nois,21 p 234)

Facial recognition research does not con-flict with Justice Blackmun's hypothesisLaughery, Alexander, and Lane (1971), forexample, presented subjects with four slidesof faces for a total of 10 sec or 32 sec. Theseslides were then mixed into a set of 150 slidesof faces, and subjects correctly identified theoriginal faces 47% of the time with the 10-sec exposure and 58% of the time with the32-sec exposure Thus, short exposures canyield reasonable levels of memory for faces

14 People % Miller, 43 A D 2d 605. 348 N Y S 2d 584(1973)

15 United States v Coppola, 486 F2d 882 (1974)16 People v Hahn, 39 111 App 3d 969 (1976)17 United States v Lustig. 555 F2d 737 (1977)18 People v Gnswold, 54 111 App 3d 246, 369 N E

2d 392 (1977)" Gov of Canal Zone v Waldron, 574, F2d 283

(1978)20 Tate v State. 265 S E 2d 818 (1980)21 M o o r e v Illinois, 434 U S 220 (1977)

354 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

if the circumstances are good. Longer expo-sures, of course, are usually superior toshorter exposures What Justice Blackmunand other people may fail to appreciate, how-ever, is the fact that the temporal length ofevents is generally overestimated by witnesses(e.g., Buckhout et al., 1974, Marshall, 1966;Shiftman & Bobko, 1974) This finding is oneof the earliest reliable findings to be docu-mented in the psychology of eyewitness tes-timony (Munsterberg, 1908) The overesti-mation tendency is even more pronouncedwhen the witness is feeling stress or anxiety(Sarason & Stroops, 1978) One should,therefore, question whether a witness's 10-secestimate is accurate because in general theonly way estimates of time can be obtainedis by asking the witness.

Thus, although eyewitness research cannotpm down precisely an amount of exposuretime that is sufficient for good memory (itdepends on too many other factors), there issolid evidence that exposure time estimatesfrom eyewitnesses should be scaled downExceptions would apply, of course, in caseswhere the witness had external validators oftemporal duration to which he or she wasattending (e.g., a clock)

A study that we recently conducted indi-cates that witnesses also tend to underesti-mate the proportion of time that their visualcontact with a person is occluded by anotherobject In this experiment, 80 persons indi-vidually viewed a videotaped scenario lasting5 minutes They were asked to attend to aspecific person in a crowded room whose im-age was fully occluded for 20%, 50%, or 80%of the total 5 minutes The observers werelater asked to estimate the percentage totaltime that the target person was not in clearview Although the observers were sensitiveto occlusion time, their mean estimates in thethree conditions were 10 6%, 213%, and53.5%, respectively The estimations of oc-clusion time were statistically lower (p < .05)than were actual occlusion times in all threeconditions Also, the average estimate forlength of the videotape scenario was 9 2 min-utes (cf the actual time of 5 minutes) Thus,in addition to overestimating total time forthe scenario, subjects underestimated occlu-sion times, as a result, the 80% occlusion con-

dition (1 minute of actual exposure to target)was estimated to be almost 4lh minutes ofexposure to the target.

Conclusion

The critical point of this issue is that in-formation regarding a witness's opportunityto view the assailant is generally obtainableonly via reports of the very witness whosereliability is yet to be assessed This state ofaffairs is not hopelessly circular, however, be-cause there are some aspects of opportunityfor viewing reports (e.g., temporal durations)that are associated with systematic biasesThe types of errors that eyewitnesses makein describing their witnessing conditions needsconsiderably more research. Representativeresearch on this matter is as yet too narrowto be of much use in helping the Court refineits judgments about the notion of opportu-nity to view the assailant In particular, moreresearch will have to be conducted on thequestion of how well people's self-reports ofwitnessing conditions predicts their real wit-nessing conditions, since self-report is theonly information available to triers of fact

Accuracy of Prior Description

In Neil v Biggers the Court listed "accu-racy of the witness' prior description of thecriminal" as one of the five factors that in-dicate the accuracy of subsequent identifi-cation In practice, of course, one cannot as-sess the accuracy of the witness's prior de-scription of the criminal unless one assumesthat the defendant is guilty What the Courtreally meant to focus on was the degree ofsimilarity between the witness's prior de-scription of the criminal and the defendant'sphysical characteristics. If the defendant isguilty, of course, the two statements (I e., ac-curacy in prior description of criminal andsimilarity between prior description and sus-pect characteristics) are identical However,the guilt or innocence of the defendant is thequestion under consideration and cannot bepresumed Thus, the prior description crite-rion should be rephrased so that it refers tosimilarity between prior description and de-fendant characteristics.

It might not be adequate to simply clear

NEIL v BIGGERS 355

up this logical anomaly regarding the priordescription criterion. Specifically, it is notclear how much diagnostic value there is inthe match between an eyewitness's prior ver-bal description of the criminal and the eye-witness's choice of a lineup member. First,a number of studies have shown that peoplewho are superior at naming details of facesor verbally describing them from memory arenot appreciably better at recognizing faces(e.g., Goldstein, Johnson, & Chance, 1979,Howells, 1938; Wolfskiel & Bngham, Note2). Another factor that must be consideredhere is the fact that verbal descriptions andrecognition of faces can be correlated for spu-rious reasons (i.e., other than accuracy). Astudy by Loftus and Greene (1980), for ex-ample, led witnesses in some conditions toincorrectly remember an assailant as havinga moustache or curly hair. Subsequent testingshowed that these witnesses incorporated themoustache or curly hair into their verbal de-scriptions and that the witnesses chose some-one from a photo array who had such fea-tures Thus, errors in the witnesses' priordescriptions also earned over to errors intheir identifications The point is that a priordescription and a subsequent recognition cancorroborate each other when in fact both thedescription and recognition are in error Inaddition, an individual's prior description tosome extent determines the content of thelineup, thereby providing a route throughwhich errors in the original description canreoccur in the lineup identification. Ob-viously, this becomes increasingly importantas the lineup becomes increasingly sugges-tive

The Court's reference to the eyewitness'saccuracy of prior description as a clue to theeyewitness's accuracy of identification alsorelates to a long-standing issue in memoryresearch, namely recognition versus recall.The fact is that recall and recognition oftenyield different results. Usually recognitionseems to be superior to recall. Apparentlythis is due to the fact that the presence of thetarget item facilitates access to the stored in-formation via activating retrieval cues (Brown,1976). On the other hand, there are situationsin which recognition can fail in spite of anindividual's ability to recall (Tulving & Wat-

kins, 1977) The latter phenomenon is likelyto occur whenever the retrieval information(context) provided at recall is better than thatprovided by the recognition test. Perhapsmost relevant to the current concern is recentevidence that retrieval information used inrecall is uncorrelated with that used in rec-ognition (Broadbent & Broadbent, 1977;Flexser & Tulving, 1978) It appears tiiat inrecall some aspect of the context is providedand the individual must retrieve the targetinformation, whereas m recognition the tar-get information is provided and the individ-ual must retneve contextual aspects of theoriginal episode.

The finding that recognition probabilityfor a word is unaffected by whether or nota word is recallable (Flexser & Tulving, 1978)portends poorly for using recall to predictrecognition. Unfortunately, this research hasnot been conducted with faces, owing m partto the difficulty in operationally defining ac-curacy of face recall. Nevertheless, currentdata and theory do not lend much credibilityto the Court's emphasis on accuracy of priordescription as a criterion for judging accuracyof criminal identification by eyewitnesses.

Conclusion

It is true, unfortunately, that the issue ofsimilarity between prior description and sub-sequent recognition is, and will remain, adifficult question to address empirically. Themain reason for this is that a suspect is placedin a lineup, at least in part, because he or shematches the prior description. This createsa curious situation of unknown and varyingcontingencies for generating suspects thatmay be difficult to simulate in controlled re-search settings. In addition, the current lit-erature on recall and recognition memorysuggests that independent processes are in-volved. Finally, three experiments have failedto find any appreciable relationship betweena person's prior description of a face and theperson's accuracy in identifying the face(Goldstein et al., 1979; Howells, 1938; Wolf-skiel & Bngham, Note 2). Nevertheless, fur-ther research specifically directed at factorsthat might produce correspondence/noncor-respondence between eyewitnesses' pnor de-

356 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

scnptions and subsequent identificationscould help clarify the issue.

Time Between Witnessed Event and TestIt is a well-established fact that forgetting

increases with time This general principle isone of the oldest in experimental psychology(Ebbinghaus, 1885/1964), and it made goodintuitive sense for the Court to mention it inthe Biggers case as one of the catena foreyewitness accuracy. Yet, the mentioning oftime per se can be misleading to those whomust use it as a criterion. There are two rea-sons why the Court may wish to refine itsstatement about time First, there may be astrong tendency for people to use their ownmemory for faces of familiar others as anappropriate comparison In this regard,memory for faces is extremely stable overtime for familiar faces. Bahnck, Bahnck, andWittlmger (1975), for example, found thatpeople could identify up to 90% of the facesof their high school classmates as many as 35years after graduation. If a trier of fact thinksof his or her memory for familiar faces whenjudging the effects of time, he or she is likelyto believe that the decay over time of aneyewitness's memory for the criminal's faceis trivial.

A setting that is more forensically relevantinvolves the rate at which memory decays forthe face of a person seen only once beforeA recent study by Shepherd, Davies, and Ellis(Note 3) bears on this issue. In this studyunsuspecting eyewitnesses observed a stagedincident enacted by one of four target per-sons. Identification parades using nine per-sons (one of which was the target person)were administered at delays of 1 week, 1month, 3 months, and 12 months. Accuracyof identification was highly stable over the 1-month period (about 10%) but dropped toa level expected by chance by the 12-monthperiod.

Although most studies testing recognitionmemory for faces seen only once before ap-pear to show that the level of recognition ac-curacy declines very little over periods up to30 days (e.g., Chance, Goldstein, & McBnde,1975; Davies et al., 1978; Egan, Pittner, &Goldstein, 1977; Laughery, Fessler, Lenorov-itz, & Yobhck, 1974; Shepherd & Ellis, 1973),

these studies may be testing the nearlyasymptotic portion of the forgetting curve.Indeed, a study by Shepherd and Ellis (1973)found that under optimal laboratory condi-tions 11% of the information was forgottenjust 3 minutes after exposure.

It is well known in psychology that timeper se may not be nearly so critical to mem-ory retention as is what occurs during theretention interval A common factor that canoccur during the witness-test interval andthat is known to affect the accuracy of iden-tification is the viewing of mugshots (e g.,Davies. Shepherd. & Ellis, 1979; Gorenstein& Ellsworth, 1980; Laughery et al, 1971) Inaddition, a great deal of eyewitness researchhas been conducted showing that informa-tion acquired between a witnessed event anda subsequent memory test can be incorpo-rated into the witness's memory report (seeLoftus, 1979, Chapter 4 for a review). A re-cent study by Loftus and Greene (1980) il-lustrates this point. In this study subjectsviewed a person in a photograph (Experiment2), a film (Experiment 1), or live (Experiment3) and subsequently encountered a descrip-tion ostensibly given by another witnessWhenever this other witness referred incor-rectly to a feature (e.g., mentioning a mous-tache when in fact the person had no mous-tache), nearly 70% of the subjects subse-quently identified a person from a 12-personlineup who had that feature (cf 13% in thecontrol group) Research indicates that thereare numerous events that can occur betweena witnessed event and subsequent memorytesting that can have profound effects onmemory reports (e.g , see Loftus, 1975, 1977,1981, Loftus & Palmer, 1974, Loftus &Zanm, 1975).

Conclusion

There is nothing incorrect, technically,about the Court's listing of the witness-testinterval as a factor in accuracy. However,some further guidance for the trier of factmay be in order For example, the trier of factshould not judge the effects of time by in-tuiting what happens with familiar faces,which show robust retention over long peri-ods of time. Evidence regarding memory for

NEIL \ BJGGERS 357

faces seen only once before shows little de-cline up to 30 days but almost total loss by12 months Also, the Court should considerevents that occur during the witness-test in-terval rather than emphasizing time per seThere is now considerable evidence that otherpeople's (e g., the interrogator or other wit-nesses) verbally conveyed assumptions dur-ing the witness-test interval can affect theeyewitness's memory and that mugshot view-ing decreases the accuracy of subsequentidentifications.

Other Factors

Some courts have refused to consider re-liability factors not mentioned in Neil v Big-gers (e.g., State v McManus, see Footnote 4)Other courts have been willing to add otherfactors to the list. In one case (Davis v Jen-nings22), for example, the fact that some wit-nesses were not able to identify the defendantin a lineup was considered to be evidence thatthe lineup was not overly biased In the Davisv Jennings case the court used nomdentifi-cations by other witnesses to boost the cred-ibility of an identification by a given witnessIn effect, the Davis v Jennings case presentsan anomalous argument wherein the non-identifications served as incriminating evi-dence As Wells and Lindsay's (1980) math-ematical analysis of lineup diagnosticityshows, however, the mathematics of uncer-tainty reduction as well as empirical datashould lead one to conclude that nonidenti-fications are diagnostic of the suspect's in-nocence. In addition, recent studies usingstaged crimes show that biased lineups do notaffect the no-identification rate Instead thelineup biases affect the distribution of iden-tifications so that the probability of identi-fying the suspect is increased (Lindsay &Wells, 1980). In general, the evidence doesnot support a reliance on multiple-witnesspatterns for inferring fairness of the lineup.

In other cases in recent years the courtshave considered such factors as the eyewit-ness's intelligence (e.g., State v St Onge23)and the eyewitness's occupation (e.g , Roycev Moore24). Studies showing null and evennegative relationships between eyewitness in-telligence and eyewitness testimony accuracy

date back as far as the Aussage researchersas reported by Whipple (1909). As for oc-cupation, police officers are considered bymany courts to be more credible as eyewit-nesses than are civilians (e.g., see UnitedStates v Bothwell25 United States v Flick-inger2b). Yet, experimental studies typicallyyield no differences in the accuracy of policeversus civilians as eyewitnesses (e.g., Clifford,1976, Clifford & Richards, 1977; Tickner& Poulton, 1975; Vennis & Walker, 1970),nor do there appear to be any effects for thelength of time an individual has been in-volved in relevant police work (Bilhg & Mill-ner. 1976) Although the courts might be jus-tified in considering prior eyewitness trainingfor a given police officer, the effectiveness ofsuch training is yet to be determined In gen-eral, it seems that training and experiencemake police more likely to perceive crimi-nality or potential criminality in ambiguousscenes but does not make police better at re-porting accurately about people and actions(Tickner & Poulton. 1975).

Suggestiveness

The Biggers criteria had the effect of drop-ping the lower courts' concerns with thesuggestiveness of pretnal identification pro-cedures on the argument that the real concernshould be one of eyewitness accuracy (seeFootnotes 5-11) Although the Court was wiseto emphasize accuracy as the critical concern,it does not seem wise to drop suggestivenessas an important factor Indeed, there is nowample evidence to show that the suggestivenessof identification procedures has profound ef-fects on eyewitness accuracy (Lindsay & Wells,1980, Loftus & Greene, 1980, Malpass & De-vine, 1981a; Fanselow & Buckhout, Note 4).Prior to the Biggers case, suggestiveness wasconsidered of paramount importance and was

22 United States ex rel Davis v Jennings, 414 F Supp544 (ED Pa 1976)

21 State v St Onge, 392 A2d 47, 51 (Me 1978)24 Royce v Moore, 469 F2d 808 (1st Or 1972)25 United States \ Bothwell, 465 F2d 217 (9th Cir

1972)26 United States v Flickinger, 573 F2d 1349 (9th Cir),

cert denied, 439 US 836(1978)

358 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

most often typified by the use of show-ups(i.e., what is functionally a one-person lineup)A staged-theft study by Wells and Lindsay(1980) shows how this type of suggestivenessaffects eyewitness identification accuracy.Lindsay and Wells found that the likelihoodof mistaken identification from lineups whosefunctional size approached a value of 1.0 pro-duced over twice the rate of false identificationsas that obtained from lineups whose functionalsize approached a value of 3.0 Obviously, thiseffect occurs because the true perpetrator isnot always in the lineup and because the lineupdetractors are known to be innocent. Thus,both logic and experimental data tell us thatthe suggestiveness of show-ups or low func-tional size lineups is not independent of theaccuracy issue

Fanselow and Buckhout (Note 4) opera-tionalized suggestiveness by manipulatingnonverbal cues to eyewitnesses as they viewedmugshot arrays. After viewing a filmed mug-ging, eyewitnesses were shown an array of sixfacial pictures. The "identification officer"leaned forward and smiled when the eyewit-ness viewed certain pictures, for other pic-tures he leaned backward and frowned; andfor other pictures he acted neutrally. Theleaning cues enhanced false identifications onthe pictures with which the cues were asso-ciated.

Loftus and Greene (1980) conducted astudy in which eyewitnesses were given cuesby another person that falsely suggested thepresence of a facial characteristic (e.g., mous-tache) on an actor who had been observedpreviously Significant percentages of eyewit-nesses who were recipients of such a sugges-tion incorporated that characteristic mtosubsequent descriptions of the actor andfalsely identified a person from a set of pic-tures who had such a characteristic

Finally, suggestiveness has been investi-gated with regard to the instructions givento eyewitnesses at the time of identification.Malpass and Devine (1981a) staged a van-dalism for a large number of unsuspectingeyewitnesses who then viewed a lmeup thatdid or did not contain the vandal. Some wit-nesses were told that the vandal may or maynot be present, whereas it was suggested toothers that the vandal was present. The

suggestive instructions produced an averageerror rate of 51.5%, whereas the error ratewas only 25.0% with the nonsuggestive in-structions

Conclusion

The Biggers criteria have left lower courtswith the impression that the suggestivenessof pretrial identification procedures is of littleconcern. In fact, suggestiveness has robusteffects on accuracy, which is what the Big-gers's criteria were designed to addressSuggestiveness is an important factor to con-sider when judging the accuracy of eyewitnessidentification evidence and it is importantlydistinct from the five criteria outlined in Neilv Biggers It is particularly important to notethat none of the five Biggers criteria concernthemselves with conditions of retrieval.Memory researchers have long known thattesting or retrieval conditions have strong ef-fects on the accuracy of memory judgments.If and when the Court reconsiders the Biggerscriteria, it should reestablish the importanceof retneval/testmg conditions in general andstress the importance of suggestiveness inparticular

Prospectus

No general form of advice to triers of factwill allow them to make perfect judgmentsabout the accuracy of a given eyewitness'saccount Recently eyewitness research hasinvolved staging crimes for unsuspectingeyewitnesses and then cross-examining thosewitnesses (e.g, Wells et al., 1979) It is clearfrom this research that the task of discerningtruth is extremely difficult. Most of the timethere is little or no information that can bediscerned from testimony that allows for dis-crimination between accurate and inaccuratetestimony; the principal difficulty resultsfrom the high certainty of inaccurate eyewit-nesses (see Wells et al., 1981). Yet, it is alsoclear that the courts can improve on the ad-vice/critena used currently in judging theaccuracy of eyewitness identification evi-dence. If the courts are to have formal criteriaat all, a serious review of empirical researchon eyewitness testimony should be under-

NEIL v B1GGERS 359

taken. The Supreme Court should not befaulted for the criteria outlined m Neil v Big-gers, however, because there was little eyewit-ness research from which to draw in 1972.

As outlined in this article, future consid-erations for revising the criteria set forth inNeil v Biggers must include a reworking ofthe eyewitness certainty question. Simplydropping eyewitness certainty as a criterionmay not be sufficient; research shows thattriers of fact naturally base a great deal oftheir judgments on eyewitness certainty (e g.,see Wells et al., 1981). Thus, in order to han-dle adequately the issue of eyewitness con-fidence, some cautions regarding the limitedutility of eyewitness certainty may be in or-der This may seem peculiar to the courts,but it can be as important to note factors thatare not useful for judging eyewitness accu-racy as it is to note factors that are usefulThe Court should also consider some elab-orations on the degree of attention criterionas outlined herein as well as on the delay cri-terion The witness's opportunity to view theassailant might also be better explained totriers of fact, especially with regard to thematter of duration of exposure. The Courtshould acknowledge that "accuracy of priordescription" really means agreement be-tween the prior description and the identifiedsuspect and that such agreement can exist fornumerous reasons that do not necessarily im-ply accuracy Finally, the Court should re-establish the concern with suggestiveness,possibly by including it as one of the centralcriteria, because of its strong influence oneyewitness accuracy

Meanwhile, eyewitness researchers shouldcontinue to research features of eyewitnesstestimony that can yield results that are use-ful to the true needs of police investigatorsand courts (see Clifford, 1979 on this point)Although we have considerable knowledge toimpart to the courts to help revise and refinetheir criteria for accepting and rejecting eye-witness accounts, there remain many areasm which we can improve on existing knowl-edge. Particularly salient in this regard is thefact that most of our current research tendsto yield results that tell the courts what notto do (e.g., don't rely on eyewitness certainty,rely less on witness's prior descriptions of the

assailant as indicants of accuracy, be reluc-tant to accept witnesses' estimations of shorttemporal durations). More research shouldbe devoted to discovering things that thecourts can do

The majority of eyewitness research stud-ies also make the common mistake of failingto consider the practical realities of how crim-inal justice personnel must obtain informa-tion Consider the following hypothetical ex-ample An eyewitness researcher stages theftsunder one of two conditions. In one condi-tion the confederate/thief looks directly at theeyewitness throughout the theft, whereas inthe other condition he or she varies betweena three-quarters profile and a direct profileThe latter condition is generally superior forsubsequent facial recognition (Krouse, 1981).However, it could be misleading to concludethat real-world eyewitnesses who claim tohave had a profile view of the criminal aremore accurate than those witnesses whoclaim to have only had a frontal view Spe-cifically, the experimenter has obtained pre-dictive utility from profile information be-cause he or she knows the actual conditionsof encounter. Courts, however, must obtainsuch information from the eyewitness's self-report Our research, for example, indicatesthat eyewitnesses almost invariably reporthaving viewed every possible profile (straighton, left three quarters, right three quarters)regardless of the actual witnessing conditionsand that such reports have no relationshipto eyewitness identification accuracy. Thus,profile information might be a diagnosticpredictor of eyewitness accuracy when actualprofile exposures are known by the predictorbut a poor predictor when obtained via self-reports by the eyewitness The general pointhere is that an eyewitness's self-report is oftenthe only means available to courts for dis-cerning the accuracy of the eyewitness; thusresearch should not only show that actualwitnessing conditions can be used to predicteyewitness accuracy, but that self-reports ofthose conditions also have predictive value.

Eyewitness testimony could be one of thenext major issues in which the SupremeCourt looks to the psychological sciences foradvice. It is important, therefore, that exper-imental research focus on the issues in a

360 GARY L WELLS AND DONNA M MURRAY

manner that will prove useful to the Court.This article, which characterizes the Neil vBiggers criteria as a set of hypotheses thatcurrently guide U.S courts, is one frameworkaround which useful empirical research canbe built. By considering a framework of thistype (1 e., one based on formal court catena),eyewitness experiments can be designed thatmight have high forensic relevance.

Reference Notes1 Bngham, J C , & Wolfskiel, M P Opinions of attor-

neys and law enforcement personnel on the accuracyof eyewitness identifications Unpublished manu-script, Florida State University, 1982

2 Wolfskiel, M P, &. Bngham J C The relationshipbetween accuracy of prior description and facial rec-ognition Unpublished manuscript, Florida State Uni-versity, 1982

3 Shepherd. J W, Davies, G M , & Ellis, H D Iden-tification after delay (Final report to the Home OfficeResearch Unit) London, England 1980

4 Fanselow, M S , & Buckhout, R Nonverbal cueingas a source of basing information in eyewitness iden-tification testing Unpublished manuscript, BrooklynCollege, 1976

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Received August 30, 1982Revision received January 24, 1983

Third Edition of the Publication Manual

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