Eyewitness identification refers to a process in which an eyewitness to a crime claims to recognize someone as being the culprit. Commonly, the identification is made from a lineup (photographic or live) constructed by police investigators in which someone who is suspected of being the culprit is embedded among known-innocent fillers. In other cases, the identification is based on a showup, which is a one-on-one confrontation between the suspect and the eyewitness arranged by police. Positive identifications made by eyewitnesses can be very powerful evidence against a defendant in a court of law.

Research: Estimator and System Variables

Although eyewitness identification has long been a staple of evidence used to convict criminal suspects, psychological scientists have conducted hundreds of staged-crime experiments since the late 1970s that ...

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