The ‘Brady Bunch’ lineup: Comparing video and photographic simultaneous and sequential lineups

In recent years considerable empirical and legislative effort has been made to ensure that identification procedures by witnesses are both sensitive and fair. High sensitivity increases the likelihood of offender identification, whereas a fair method reduces the likelihood of an innocent suspect identification. In the UK, the preferred method of lineup presentation requires the witness to sequentially view the suspect and eight foils in 15-sec video clips. The entire sequence of videos is viewed twice. A first experiment was designed to examine whether viewing the second video ‘lap’ induces a response bias by comparing outcomes when the sequence was shown twice with those when it was shown once. A second experiment was designed to contribute to the debate in the literature as to the relative fairness and sensitivity of sequential and simultaneous lineups in which all members are displayed at the same time. This research has primarily employed photographs. However, videos should provide more identity cues than photographs and this issue was examined by comparing outcomes of simultaneous photo and sequential photo and video lineups, as well as what is believed to be the first empirical test of simultaneous video lineups. The theoretical implications are discussed in terms of best practice for real identification procedures