Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
Speaker 1: chosen our twenty eighteen episode how police Lineups Work. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you just kind of know
Speaker 1: about and then you find out about it and you
Speaker 1: say to yourself, how are we doing this. It's a
Speaker 1: great episode. I think you'll enjoy it. So sit back, relax,
Speaker 1: and get ready for police Lineups.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry out there outside the fishbowl,
Speaker 1: and also there's guest producer Noel and our pal Ben.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm in the room this time, man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: on the mic. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: This is way better than that time you have me
Speaker 2: on the April Fools episode.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because I may
Speaker 1: remember Ben from that. I think it was two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen or fifteen something, ungodly time ago.
Speaker 4: It's my replacement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was an April Fool's joke for the three
Speaker 1: D printing episode. So this is your second time on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Internet shredg you Ben was it were they
Speaker 5: were you like a target of abuse.
Speaker 2: I want to thank everybody for the very polite emails,
Speaker 2: and as we could tell, thankfully, Chuck is fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they took it easy on them. Okay, we have
Speaker 1: very nice listeners, you know. And then Nol, this might
Speaker 1: be the first time you're ever speaking on the podcast,
Speaker 1: even though you've guest produced it like a million times.
Speaker 3: I think I may have mumbled something in the background
Speaker 3: the time. It really wow wow, Josh. So we're having
Speaker 3: you two on.
Speaker 1: Let's cut, let's get down of business, because you two
Speaker 1: have a podcast together, right, Uh, Noel, you also run
Speaker 1: mini Crush movie Crush.
Speaker 3: It's true. Yeah, you're also in a real world's colliding
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: Right, there's a lot I'm going over them all. You're
Speaker 1: on stuff they don't want you to know. But you
Speaker 1: two Ben and Knowl have come together and made ridiculous history,
Speaker 1: which is awesome.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: We're just missing God.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to sweat. But you guys are on ridiculous
Speaker 1: history together. We are, Yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Uh So history is full of these cartoonish bizarre events
Speaker 2: often not covered in your typical history class.
Speaker 3: Sounds familiar, right.
Speaker 2: Because for one reason or another, people thought, that's no way,
Speaker 2: that didn't really happen. The first recorded instance of a
Speaker 2: mooning did not result in the death of hundreds of people.
Speaker 3: It's surely not, surely not, but it did.
Speaker 5: It did, It did, And surely the US government did
Speaker 5: not have a plan to shoot a nuclear missile at
Speaker 5: the moon.
Speaker 3: Right, that was just a Mister Shows sketch. Surely not,
Speaker 3: but she also was. It was kind of parallel thinking.
Speaker 5: Is the Mister Show sketch happened before this story became declassified?
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 4: Nine yep.
Speaker 2: So our continuing mission with ridiculous history, not to sound.
Speaker 3: Too star treky about it.
Speaker 2: Is to find those moments, the bizarre people, places, and
Speaker 2: things throughout the span of human civilization that at least
Speaker 2: crack the both of us up on.
Speaker 3: A continual basis.
Speaker 2: And sometimes we do have to stop recording just for
Speaker 2: a second because we're so tickled.
Speaker 1: Do you really, Yeah, Wow, that's that's actually high quality,
Speaker 1: mainly because we tickle each other.
Speaker 3: I got to physically. Yeah, that's cheating, man. You're making
Speaker 3: it sound so serious. It's actually a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: It's a fun show. Right, Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean I'm giving been a hard time, but yeah,
Speaker 5: that's definitely like we touch on from time to time.
Speaker 3: It it'll go into a heavier territory.
Speaker 5: Like, for example, we did an episode about how women
Speaker 5: in Kansas in the nineteen twenties were imprisoned in labor
Speaker 5: camps for having STDs. What that certainly falls under ridiculous
Speaker 5: not exactly fun or funny.
Speaker 3: Right haha, ridiculous. So it's it's it's all of those things.
Speaker 5: Some of them are you know, crack you up hilarious
Speaker 5: moments like Napoleon Bonaparte getting attacked by bunnies or you know,
Speaker 5: the aforementioned SDT labor camps, or.
Speaker 2: The racist special Olympics that were held here in the States.
Speaker 2: And we're a complete, well to borrow phrase we use
Speaker 2: on the show, a complete ship show.
Speaker 1: So so wait a minute, I think you are, like,
Speaker 1: you need to name the state that hosted that.
Speaker 3: Oh it was Saint Louis. Yeah, Saint Louis.
Speaker 5: And it's because the World's Fair was happening in Saint
Speaker 5: Louis and they were going to have it in Chicago.
Speaker 5: But the people hosting the World's Fair said, if you
Speaker 5: don't do your Olympics as part of the World's Fair,
Speaker 5: we're going to totally blow you out of the water
Speaker 5: with how awesome our World's Fair is.
Speaker 3: And no one's going to come to your Olympics.
Speaker 5: And scared them in the early days of like, you know,
Speaker 5: not the earliest days of the Olympics, when they brought
Speaker 5: it back like in the you know, it was not
Speaker 5: ancient Rome.
Speaker 3: It was not in fact ancient Rome.
Speaker 2: And it was also it was not a good example
Speaker 2: of the Olympics either, because the white supremacists who were
Speaker 2: in charge of the whole shebang decided that this would
Speaker 2: be the perfect time to prove their cockamamie ideas.
Speaker 5: Of like eugenics, ideas of kind of like white superiority,
Speaker 5: and like they would have indigenous people competing in these
Speaker 5: Olympic events. Of course, they didn't teach them how to
Speaker 5: you know, do the events, so they didn't just automatically
Speaker 5: know how to pull vault or throw a javelin or whatever.
Speaker 1: And when supremacists can ruin anything, anything they put their
Speaker 1: hands on, they really can't just turns to poop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are doing an episode on flatulence later, so
Speaker 2: stay tuned with you that there.
Speaker 1: So before we give everything away, you guys, tell everyone
Speaker 1: where they can find ridiculous history and win.
Speaker 2: You can find ridiculous history at our website.
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous History show.
Speaker 5: I think so the website, guys definitely can't prepared for this.
Speaker 3: I've got a stack of notes right here here, yeah.
Speaker 1: Rolling back.
Speaker 2: So you can find us on Apple Podcast, you find
Speaker 2: us on Spotify. You can find us wherever you find
Speaker 2: your favorite shows, like stuff you should know or stuff
Speaker 2: they'll want you to know, or I should I list
Speaker 2: the entire pantheon of all the shows we have. It's
Speaker 2: too many at this point, but but yes, you can
Speaker 2: find us in all of those places. We also have
Speaker 2: a community page that we're really proud of and really
Speaker 2: happy with, called Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
Speaker 3: Taking a total cue from the cisk army. Yeah nice.
Speaker 1: Well, First of all, thank you for all of the
Speaker 1: flattery that you've been heaping on us for the last
Speaker 1: few minutes. It's much appreciated. But also thank you for
Speaker 1: coming by. Appreciate it, guys.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys for having yes yank so much.
Speaker 1: Let's do this every week.
Speaker 3: That might be a let me check the sketch.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I love those guys, but I'm
Speaker 1: glad to get out of that that new studio box.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like a Fema trailer man. It's formaldehyde
Speaker 1: wafting off slowly poisoning us. It is still off gassing.
Speaker 1: It feels like, yeah, big time. It's in my hair, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is now falling out.
Speaker 4: We're in bad shape. Well before, I like what you're wearing.
Speaker 4: By the way, thank you.
Speaker 1: I spilled a tremendous amount of coffee on myself and
Speaker 1: luckily I had a bunch of samples of our new
Speaker 1: T shirt.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is not a just to plug everyone.
Speaker 6: Josh is literally wearing a Lewis the Child Skeptic T
Speaker 6: shirt from the Stuff you Should Know store. Yeah, because
Speaker 6: they sent us every shirt. I'm like, oh, great, to
Speaker 6: the guy who has one hundred T shirts, here's twenty more.
Speaker 1: But they are pretty cool. I'm pretty happy with.
Speaker 4: This, Like, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3: The size of it.
Speaker 1: Look at the size. It's a perfect size. It's not
Speaker 1: so big that it wraps around and gets all mangled
Speaker 1: by my love handles. But it's also not so small
Speaker 1: that it looks like, you know, a caved in chest.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I didn't remember that reference though.
Speaker 1: I didn't either like they listened to the Pie Piper episode.
Speaker 1: Oh there you go.
Speaker 4: That sounds like a you thing, Yeah, Josh, But.
Speaker 1: It was just an offhanded comment I made. Now it's
Speaker 1: a T shirt I'm wearing, which is I love. It
Speaker 1: makes a pretty great time to be alive.
Speaker 6: By the way, I need to give a shout out
Speaker 6: to Brittany Schiff. Brittany Schiff sent this idea to us.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, great, And the reason, you know, we don't
Speaker 6: often take well that's not true. We kind of keep
Speaker 6: a kitty of listener suggestions, but we don't often like
Speaker 6: do one the next week and then shout out the person. Sure,
Speaker 6: but I thought we had fully exhausted our Crime and
Speaker 6: Punishment series.
Speaker 1: Nope.
Speaker 6: So I was delighted that Brittany Shiff sent this in
Speaker 6: and I was like, why haven't we done police line up?
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a great question.
Speaker 4: Was just sitting there, yeah, waiting.
Speaker 1: Yep. The only other one that's left is what kind
Speaker 1: of shoes detectives wear?
Speaker 3: That is?
Speaker 1: That's the last one? You know what means is this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gum shoe or crape sold I think.
Speaker 4: You knew that, yeah, but I don't know how it
Speaker 4: relates to cops.
Speaker 1: I guess they wore those because they were so comfortable.
Speaker 1: Cops are always walking around walking, yeah, you know, but
Speaker 1: sometimes when they're walking, they're actually out on the street
Speaker 1: looking for people who resemble a suspect that they have
Speaker 1: in the jailhouse. And they say, hey, you come on
Speaker 1: over here, how'd you like to make ten bucks? And
Speaker 1: the person says exactly how copper and the cop says,
Speaker 1: by standing in is what we call a filler in
Speaker 1: a police lineup.
Speaker 6: Or they do like Emer Simpson and when they're like
Speaker 6: a boat raffle that they said he had to come
Speaker 6: down to the police station.
Speaker 1: Yeah he won a boat. Yeah, and then they beat
Speaker 1: him merciless for like parking unpaid parking tickets.
Speaker 6: Also shout out to Beth at Shuster, who wrote this
Speaker 6: article in the NIJ Journal the National Institute of Justice.
Speaker 1: I believe so, is that right? Yeah, they're pretty much
Speaker 1: committed to keeping people from being wrongly convicted. So I
Speaker 1: would guess the JAY stands for justice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is a good start. And we had
Speaker 6: some other stuff we added to it. But thank you Ms. Schuster,
Speaker 6: yeah for your work.
Speaker 1: Yep. Well, I already led into the episode and it
Speaker 1: didn't take, So let me try again. This nij article
Speaker 1: you sent calls out a dude named Jerry Miller, who
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty one was twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: I believe, and Jerry Miller had a particularly bad day
Speaker 1: when he was arrested and he was charged with robbing, kidnapping,
Speaker 1: and raping a woman. Yeah, and he got convicted. He
Speaker 1: was convicted because two people, two eyewitnesses, saw him in
Speaker 1: a lineup picked him out, and then later at trial
Speaker 1: the victim said, maybe that's him, maybe it's not, but
Speaker 1: who cares. There's two eyewitnesses that picked the schmoe out
Speaker 1: of a lineup. He's done. Yeah, he did twenty four
Speaker 1: years in prison. And you may notice from the tone
Speaker 1: that I'm using here he was wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He actually got out of prison and was living life
Speaker 1: for leased on parole, wearing an ankle bracelet, a monitor constantly.
Speaker 4: As a registered sex offender.
Speaker 1: Right, and then finally I think, oh, I'm not quite sure. Oh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven. In two thousand and seven, as
Speaker 1: part of the Innocence Project, Yeah, which we've done an
Speaker 1: episode on with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that lady what is her name?
Speaker 1: Oh, Hauleen.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say Laurville, but it's definitely not
Speaker 4: Paula is on.
Speaker 3: Paula is on.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Jerry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to say Pauli Shore so bad. I
Speaker 1: just knew it was wrong. But we did Incent right,
Speaker 1: we did it Innocence Project episode And under the Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: Jerry Miller was exonerated through DNA evidence. He incontrovertibly did
Speaker 1: not do this and lost twenty four years of his
Speaker 1: life because of flawed eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so you know, this is all about police
Speaker 6: lineups and more about I mean, we'll tell you how
Speaker 6: they work in a general sense, but this is sort
Speaker 6: of more about how you know, it's such an imperfect system.
Speaker 6: But sort of the takeaway from all of this that
Speaker 6: we're about to go over with all the studies and
Speaker 6: the trying different things, is kind of like, you know,
Speaker 6: it's an imperfect system and we can try and craft
Speaker 6: it the best way we can, but human memory is imperfect.
Speaker 6: Identifying people in lineups is imperfect, right, and we're just
Speaker 6: it's kind of the best we got right now.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, a lot of people are like, get rid
Speaker 1: of eyewitness testimony really all together, yes, all together. Humans
Speaker 1: suck at eyewitness testimony. And there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why it's not like people are out there like I
Speaker 1: want to have me a bad guy, show me a lineup.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pick one of those guys out. They're not
Speaker 1: doing that. They're subject to basically the way our brains
Speaker 1: are wired. We don't walk around videotaping everything that we see,
Speaker 1: you know, we get constantly bombarded with sensory information, and
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances, you see a stranger on the street,
Speaker 1: you just see there's another human. I've identified them as
Speaker 1: not a threat and keep walking by it. If that
Speaker 1: person turned out to be accused of a crime or
Speaker 1: perpetrated a crime, and you were brought in to say
Speaker 1: was this the person you saw? Your brain is going
Speaker 1: to try to reconstruct what little pieces of memory it
Speaker 1: formed of that person. And there's a lot of things,
Speaker 1: a lot of factors that are involved that can make
Speaker 1: that really difficult task even harder.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like I am someone who has told myself Chuck
Speaker 6: pay attention. Like, if you're ever in a situation like
Speaker 6: pay attention, try and collect yourself and try and remember
Speaker 6: a few really good details about the car or the person.
Speaker 4: So like this is on my mind.
Speaker 6: And I actually had a situation when I lived in
Speaker 6: LA happened to me where I had to go through
Speaker 6: a police lineup and I failed.
Speaker 1: Oh really, was the suspect there?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: Well no, here's here's the quick version. Is I was
Speaker 6: in a hit and run. This lady, these two lady,
Speaker 6: these two younger girls, they were probably teenagers, hit me
Speaker 6: from behind.
Speaker 4: In my car.
Speaker 6: I stopped my car starting to get out, and they
Speaker 6: take off, so it's a hit and run. I chase them,
Speaker 6: which is you should not do.
Speaker 1: No. Were you shooting into the air again to slow down,
Speaker 1: trying to shoot out their tires?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: But I did chase them because I was so mad
Speaker 6: and you're adrenaline just shoots through the roof when something
Speaker 6: like that happens, so immediately you're just not yourself and
Speaker 6: like recording details. So I was trying to catch up
Speaker 6: to get a license plate. I saw that they went
Speaker 6: down the street that I knew was a dead end.
Speaker 3: Like I got them now.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a cul de sac, but it functioned like
Speaker 6: a cul de sac. So I stopped where I was
Speaker 6: got out of the car. Sure enough, twenty seconds later,
Speaker 6: they come houling but back toward me, and the look
Speaker 6: on their faces was like you know, oh, snap, there's
Speaker 6: the guy. And they just sped right past me. And
Speaker 6: I saw their faces as they sped past me in
Speaker 6: their car. The cops found the car, found the people,
Speaker 6: and they're like, we didn't do that, and so.
Speaker 3: Who are these girls? These teenagers?
Speaker 4: Well that's the long and short of it. Is all
Speaker 4: you have to do and something like that.
Speaker 6: I say, didn't do it, and if I can't pick
Speaker 6: you out, then you get away.
Speaker 4: And they showed me pictures.
Speaker 6: Of like, you know, these were like teenage young teenage
Speaker 6: Hispanic women. They showed me probably probably fifteen pictures and
Speaker 6: said can you identify them? I was like no, it
Speaker 6: was a month ago. They sped past me for a second,
Speaker 6: like I couldn't even hazard a guess, and I didn't
Speaker 6: want to do that.
Speaker 1: You know, well that's very sensible of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just didn't want to take a stab at it.
Speaker 6: So I was like, no, I have no idea, and
Speaker 6: they're basically like sorry, They said they didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: It's like, but you have the car.
Speaker 6: And it's damaged, and like none of that matters. They're like, no,
Speaker 6: not if you can't identify.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could see that. They could be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that happened some other times, I know, and some other
Speaker 1: hit and run.
Speaker 4: I mean, but yeah.
Speaker 6: The long story short though, is I'm someone who has
Speaker 6: tried to tell myself to react in the right ways,
Speaker 6: and I couldn't tell them much beyond like the color
Speaker 6: of the car and sort of what it looked.
Speaker 3: Like because you were seeing red.
Speaker 1: Because you're right, that's that our bodies are not prime
Speaker 1: to form memories. It's not where our energy. It's more
Speaker 1: like getting away or shooting out the tires of a
Speaker 1: car that just hit and ran. Right, But what you
Speaker 1: did with that lineup is the other side of the coin.
Speaker 1: The other problem with lineups is or eyewitness testimony from lineups,
Speaker 1: is that sometimes people pick out people who are innocent,
Speaker 1: and other times people fail to pick out the people
Speaker 1: who are actually the perpetrators.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like you said, they're very They're very flawed.
Speaker 1: It's a flawed system. The problem is is the wrong
Speaker 1: people can go to jail and the people who actually
Speaker 1: did it can get away with it. So that's an
Speaker 1: extremely flawed system. And when something that important is on
Speaker 1: the table, then it needs to be fixed. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people looking into how it can be fixed,
Speaker 1: but we're not there yet by any stretch.
Speaker 6: No, And here's a stat you were talking about the
Speaker 6: DNA exoneration, seventy five percent of the first one and
Speaker 6: eighty three exonerations in the US were wrongfully convicted because
Speaker 6: of eyewitness testimony and police lineups.
Speaker 4: Say it again, seventy.
Speaker 1: Five seventy five percent of the first one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty three. So, like, the Innocence Project is basically like
Speaker 1: a pilot study to show through DNA exoneration all the
Speaker 1: ways that we wrongfully convict people. And what is coming
Speaker 1: to the front is eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and at the basis of that is the police lineup, right.
Speaker 1: And one other thing that's that's problematic with the eyewitness
Speaker 1: testimony is if you want to wow a jury, bring
Speaker 1: out an eyewitness who seems totally sure that what they
Speaker 1: saw or that they saw the person they're pointing to
Speaker 1: and the defendants.
Speaker 6: Table yeah, or that that dramatic moment it's like a
Speaker 6: movie trope. Now, you know, is the person in this room.
Speaker 1: Right, Let the record show that this witness is pointing
Speaker 1: at the defendant, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the problem is it has a huge impact, but
Speaker 1: it's also so really cruddy wit, really cruddy evidence. There's
Speaker 1: this guy he he had a great quote.
Speaker 3: He says that.
Speaker 1: Eyewitness testimony is a very unusual, complex kind of trace evidence,
Speaker 1: and it's difficult to recover, easy to contaminate, and very
Speaker 1: hard to handle. Yeah, and that just there's no better
Speaker 1: description of eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 6: If I was ever in court and someone identified me
Speaker 6: from the witness stand, I would do that thing where
Speaker 6: you look at behind you when they pointed at you,
Speaker 6: just be like, I think they're talking about that guy
Speaker 6: behind me, and they would say no, and they would
Speaker 6: point again, and I would move a little bit more and.
Speaker 4: Be like, this is this witness is clearly disturbed.
Speaker 1: And then if that, if that didn't work, you would
Speaker 1: escalate to I'm rubber and you're glued.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that usually works, right.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of other things that makes eyewitness
Speaker 1: testimony problematic, Chuck. In addition to not being like human
Speaker 1: video recorders.
Speaker 4: There are human vs.
Speaker 1: There are. There are circumstances, especially surrounding a crime, that
Speaker 1: can make it really difficult to remember. If you're in
Speaker 1: a fight or flight situation, yeah, you're not forming memories.
Speaker 1: If there's a weapon, there are people tend to focus
Speaker 1: on the weapon.
Speaker 4: Sure you.
Speaker 1: Me was mugged once and the opposite happened to her.
Speaker 1: She remember what the person looked like, but she didn't
Speaker 1: even remember that there was a weapon. And her friends
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, there was a gun. Interesting, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she went to a lineup and like picked the guy
Speaker 1: out and yummy's bulletproof, so she is, So she's like,
Speaker 1: take your gun and shove it. I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to recognize it.
Speaker 4: No, but that makes sense.
Speaker 6: If someone pulls a gun on you, or has a
Speaker 6: switchblade or some other kind of creepy weapon, the human
Speaker 6: instinct is to focus your attention on that thing pointed
Speaker 6: at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and apparently people can really describe the weapon, right,
Speaker 1: But you're focusing on the weapon. You're not focused on
Speaker 1: the person who is holding the weapon typically.
Speaker 4: Which helps a little bit, but not as much as
Speaker 4: the face.
Speaker 1: Right. And then another problem is if you are say
Speaker 1: an Hispanic dude, and you're a witness to a crime,
Speaker 1: and it's a white guy who's the perpetrator, You're going
Speaker 1: to have a tremendous amount of difficulty picking that white
Speaker 1: guy out, as sad as it is to say, from
Speaker 1: a lineup of other white guys. Yeah, because eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: that crosses race or ethnicities is known to be very
Speaker 1: unreliable because it's just more difficult for somebody of an
Speaker 1: ethnicity or a race to separate or identify people of
Speaker 1: another ethnicity or race.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I don't think it's the case where people
Speaker 6: are like, all white people look the same to me,
Speaker 6: it's just weird brain science, right, you know, right, you
Speaker 6: just have a harder time.
Speaker 1: From way back when we were basically tuktook and Tuktok
Speaker 1: lived with fifteen other people that look just like him
Speaker 1: because they'd all been inbreeding for generations and generations, and
Speaker 1: they had to be on the lookout for another group
Speaker 1: of people who've been inbreeding for generations and generations that
Speaker 1: wanted their jackfruit tree that they live by.
Speaker 4: What's jack fruit? Oh?
Speaker 1: That word jack fruits, the big huge thing, the big
Speaker 1: huge one. Yeah, it actually makes a killer barbecue vehicle.
Speaker 1: Uhreded like shredded pork vegan stand in.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, it's really good. Gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 6: All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about
Speaker 6: the fundamentals of the run of the mill police lineup.
Speaker 4: Right after this.
Speaker 6: All right, so, run of the mill police lineups. I
Speaker 6: mentioned that before we left. Everyone's seen movies and TV shows,
Speaker 6: and it's not too far off. Actually, I mean, there
Speaker 6: are a couple of ways you can do it. There
Speaker 6: are lineups where you'd look at someone in front of
Speaker 6: your face, and then there are lineups like I had
Speaker 6: in La where I look at photographs the ones. You know,
Speaker 6: it's way more sexy for a TV show or a
Speaker 6: movie to line them up in the traditional.
Speaker 1: Way, right, it's extraordinarily sexy, like a live police lineup
Speaker 1: like you see on TV.
Speaker 6: Sure, and then they're the simultaneous or sequential. There's a
Speaker 6: lot of debate, which we'll get into in a minute,
Speaker 6: about which is best. To me, it's pretty obvious that
Speaker 6: sequential is best. Simultaneous is the one that you see
Speaker 6: on TV. They line up six or seven dudes or
Speaker 6: ladies and you identify them usually, well, it depends. We'll
Speaker 6: get into the fillers or the foils, but only usually
Speaker 6: only one of those people is a suspect.
Speaker 1: In like the best ideal version of it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: Then there's sequential, and that's when they bring out one
Speaker 6: person at a time and bring out like seven guys,
Speaker 6: just one at a time, and you say, you know,
Speaker 6: let me know at the end of this which one
Speaker 6: you think it was, or.
Speaker 3: If it's a photo lineup, they show you one photo
Speaker 3: at a time.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you. I think sequential is head
Speaker 1: and shoulders the better one of the of the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And here's the final little piece of how it can
Speaker 6: vary is whether or not the administrator, that the person
Speaker 6: that's in charge of administrating the lineup knows who the
Speaker 6: purp is or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big one, man.
Speaker 6: So it's either double blind, which means that they don't
Speaker 6: even know. And to me, it seems obvious that that's
Speaker 6: always the best way, because there are many many circumstances
Speaker 6: where you would actually even if you don't want to
Speaker 6: or mean to lead a witness. And one example they
Speaker 6: gave here in this article is if they say, and
Speaker 6: if they identify a filler or a foil aka a
Speaker 6: person that was paid ten bucks say that's the person.
Speaker 6: The administrator might.
Speaker 4: Say take your time, Yeah, are you sure like you
Speaker 4: really need to take.
Speaker 1: Your time, which is basically like saying row.
Speaker 4: Pretty much, they just.
Speaker 1: Or conversely, if when they're doing it sequentially, when they
Speaker 1: get to like number four, they're like, whoa, get a
Speaker 1: load of this guy. Huh geez, look at that bag character.
Speaker 4: He's guilty of something.
Speaker 1: But they can't like even just a smile or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: Off like a nonverbal que you don't even mean to.
Speaker 1: Do, right, or you may mean to do because you
Speaker 1: know that that's the guy, and you know it in
Speaker 1: your bones that that guy did it, and you're leading
Speaker 1: the witness, right, it can be some some sort of
Speaker 1: nonverbal gesture. The problem is is that most people, I
Speaker 1: can't say most people, but it's been shown that some people,
Speaker 1: when they're brought in as a witness for a police lineup,
Speaker 1: feel like it's their role. It's their job to pick
Speaker 1: somebody for the cops. So they're more than happy to
Speaker 1: be led by the cops because then they're fulfilling their
Speaker 1: role and they did what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1: So another another technique or way to administer a good
Speaker 1: lineup is to say, here, here's the lineup, whether it's sequential,
Speaker 1: one at a time or.
Speaker 4: All at once simultaneous.
Speaker 1: Yet right, the suspect may or may not be in
Speaker 1: this lineup.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that seems like I think they found that reduced
Speaker 6: mistaken identity rates were lower when they did this, So
Speaker 6: you would think just always do that right, right.
Speaker 1: Because it says to the witness like the person may
Speaker 1: not be in here. It's like a none of the above,
Speaker 1: the dreaded letter e none of the above. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh God, does that? Does that mean that they're that
Speaker 1: the answer is not here? And so you may you
Speaker 1: may say I don't I don't see them where. If
Speaker 1: they don't say that, you're going to presume that the
Speaker 1: suspect is in that lineup, right, and it's your job
Speaker 1: to find that person and you have to pick somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most people aren't going to think like, I can't say so,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to They're gonna be like three.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, first of all, it's a crime against you
Speaker 6: most a lot of times when you're like picking out
Speaker 6: this purp.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you want them to be you know, found
Speaker 6: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point too.
Speaker 6: You want you don't want them to get away with it.
Speaker 6: And the other thing too, is I think there's a
Speaker 6: natural human instinct when given a test to not want
Speaker 6: to say I can't like you might feel like you
Speaker 6: have failed.
Speaker 1: Right. That's why I admire you saying that, like with
Speaker 1: the phone lineup, you know, not not being not just
Speaker 1: being like.
Speaker 4: This these two right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But if it that wouldn't matter to my case,
Speaker 6: because if I would have said these two and if
Speaker 6: they're like, na, that's not the lady whose car it was.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people still would have right, right, right,
Speaker 3: And they probably.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't say no, that's wrong. They would have been like, Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for your time or whatever, and then
Speaker 1: you would have left and they'd.
Speaker 3: Been like, god, he was so close.
Speaker 6: Some other research, it's interesting that suggests when there is
Speaker 6: a defender in the lineup that young children and elderly
Speaker 6: perform about as well as just regularly young adults. But
Speaker 6: when the lineup does not have the actual offender, then
Speaker 6: they commit mistakes a lot higher. And to me, that's
Speaker 6: just because I think kids and elderly might not fully understand.
Speaker 4: I think they have to pick.
Speaker 1: Somebody, Okay, yeah, I agree. I think that's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is too.
Speaker 4: But the research bears that out. It looks like.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's there is some like you talked about research,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research in this, but it's become ambiguous.
Speaker 1: Right If you step back and you listen to all
Speaker 1: of the different different things that you can do with
Speaker 1: a lineup, it becomes very clear that a sequential double
Speaker 1: blind lineup where either one photo of a suspect is
Speaker 1: shown to the person at a time, or one live
Speaker 1: suspect is brought out to be looked at one person
Speaker 1: at a time, yeah, and is administered by a cop
Speaker 1: or a worker or somebody who doesn't know who the
Speaker 1: suspect is. That that's going to reduce the chance of
Speaker 1: a misidentification or a failure of an identification, and that
Speaker 1: the person who's being presented with these people is not
Speaker 1: going to be able to guess and if they actually
Speaker 1: do remember who the perpetrator was, they're going to recognize them.
Speaker 1: It's just obvious that that's the best way to do it, right.
Speaker 1: The thing is is there was a study in Illinois
Speaker 1: that just completely rocked that idea that that's the case,
Speaker 1: because there was a three or five year study in
Speaker 1: Illinois that looked at different types of lineups and compared
Speaker 1: them side by side and found that actually know that
Speaker 1: a double blind sequential lineup actually produces worse results than
Speaker 1: a simultaneous, non double blind one.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: But and then again not so fast with that, because
Speaker 6: other people since then have questioned the methodology they used
Speaker 6: in that program and kind of said, you know, I
Speaker 6: don't even know if we can take this research and
Speaker 6: take these statistics seriously.
Speaker 1: Right, because methodologically it was a screwed up study, Like
Speaker 1: they really dropped the ball on the study.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I don't think we mentioned the two judgments either.
Speaker 6: During simultaneous lineups, when everyone's standing there together, use what's
Speaker 6: called relative judgment. In other words, you compare all the
Speaker 6: dudes standing up there against one another, and with the
Speaker 6: ones where they trot them out one at a time,
Speaker 6: they use something called absolute judgment, which is supposedly means
Speaker 6: that they're comparing it to only their memory and not
Speaker 6: to the people that came before or after.
Speaker 1: Right, that's the hope, that's the ideal, right.
Speaker 6: Right, But with this reasearch in research and the study,
Speaker 6: I kind of didn't even know what to think because
Speaker 6: it sort of went against the grain and the findings.
Speaker 6: But then they said, I don't even know if we
Speaker 6: can trust these findings because the methodology was no good, right,
Speaker 6: So we ended up sort of back at square one
Speaker 6: with the Illinois pilot program.
Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, the reason why the method methodology
Speaker 1: was so terrible. They used the double blind procedure for
Speaker 1: sequential lineups, but they didn't use it for simultaneous lineups.
Speaker 1: So if cops were advertently or inadvertently leading people with
Speaker 1: simultaneous lineups, then of course those are going to produce
Speaker 1: correct choices with suspects better than the one that's a
Speaker 1: double blind sequential one. They compared apples to oranges in
Speaker 1: this study. It's almost like a sixth grader came up
Speaker 1: with how to actually conduct this study that the Illinois
Speaker 1: legislature said, Illinois State Police, go go figure this out.
Speaker 1: Do a three year study on this, and they came
Speaker 1: back and said, huh yeah, and it was. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: And the problem is is if it is true that
Speaker 1: a sequential double blind study is the way to go,
Speaker 1: that it is just smarter and works better, that study
Speaker 1: set that back by years because now all the cops
Speaker 1: all over the country heardh they did the study and
Speaker 1: it's actually worse not and the design of the study
Speaker 1: was flawed methodologically, just it doesn't work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: They even went to the cops at the Illinois pilot program,
Speaker 6: talked to them, and they said the majority of the
Speaker 6: officers said they didn't think that it was superior and
Speaker 6: said that witnesses who can identify the offender can do
Speaker 6: so under either procedure, and officers express concerns that using
Speaker 6: a blind administrator disrupts the relationship an investigator has tries
Speaker 6: to build with a witness. So I interpret all that
Speaker 6: as it's cops saying, can we just keep doing it
Speaker 6: the way we've always done it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it gets results right. But the thing is
Speaker 1: is they have some pretty good points in that if
Speaker 1: you are running a lineup or whatever, you put together
Speaker 1: like a six pack is what it's called in the US,
Speaker 1: where you've got three and three mugshots of people and
Speaker 1: or I think in Canada they usually use twelve. But
Speaker 1: you put this thing together, then you have to find
Speaker 1: like a patrol officer or a sergeant or somebody who
Speaker 1: has no idea what's going on with your kids?
Speaker 4: You want to do a double blind, right.
Speaker 1: And then those that person has to go to the house,
Speaker 1: record the the what the person did, and then come
Speaker 1: back and tell you. It's just an extra thing that
Speaker 1: cops are like, come on, dude, this is just making
Speaker 1: it way too hard.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean they said in here that sometimes they
Speaker 6: even have trouble coming up with the blind administrator, and
Speaker 6: maybe it's a It probably has everything to do with budgets.
Speaker 6: My thought is like, why isn't there one person that
Speaker 6: does only this.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 4: That just is called the administrator.
Speaker 6: Right, and then so the line of administrator and goes
Speaker 6: to the people's houses or runs them in the precinct
Speaker 6: or whatever, and this is the only thing that they do, right,
Speaker 6: I'll do.
Speaker 1: It, bring in the administrator.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a TV show waiting to have it. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's probably budgetary.
Speaker 1: Its got to be.
Speaker 6: They also found with a lot of these when there's
Speaker 6: multiple purpse, it just goes haywire. Yeah, because sometimes they'll
Speaker 6: put two of the purpose in the same lineup right, right,
Speaker 6: just super confusing.
Speaker 1: That actually falls in line with like how to build
Speaker 1: like a decent line up the right way and we'll
Speaker 1: cover that and where they get people to stand in
Speaker 1: as suspects right after this. All right, Chuck, So you
Speaker 1: were just talking about how if you have lineup and
Speaker 1: you put two suspects that you've got, say, there are
Speaker 1: two guys who rob some lady, and you have five
Speaker 1: people in the lineup, but two of them are your suspects.
Speaker 1: That actually is totally unfair for the suspects because what
Speaker 1: you've done just then is increase the chance that somebody
Speaker 1: could guess, just guess randomly at the suspect. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, If you have five.
Speaker 1: People in a lineup and one of them are the suspect,
Speaker 1: then that person has a one in five chance of
Speaker 1: being chosen by random chance. But if there's two suspects
Speaker 1: in a five person lineup, they have a two out
Speaker 1: of five chance, which is way more than a one
Speaker 1: in five chance. Some people might even say double the chance, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's just less fair. So one of the
Speaker 1: standards that you want to fulfill if you're putting together
Speaker 1: a lineup in your cop is that you have one
Speaker 1: suspect per lineup, which is tougher to do than you
Speaker 1: would think.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it seems like a lot of The problem
Speaker 6: with this is, and they even say so in the
Speaker 6: NIJ articles, that lab studies are one thing, but actually
Speaker 6: implementing this in the field they get different results. And
Speaker 6: people are doing lab research on one end, cops are
Speaker 6: out in the field, sometimes they're in people's home, sometimes
Speaker 6: they're in the precinct. And it seems like the two
Speaker 6: heads aren't talking very much, right, And there are people,
Speaker 6: you know, they did like a live web chat at
Speaker 6: some point to bring together all these experts from around
Speaker 6: the world, and they kind of all around me were like,
Speaker 6: this is a big mess and we need to all
Speaker 6: combine forces to try and do the right thing. And
Speaker 6: the feeling I get is that a lot of these
Speaker 6: police precincts just kind of want to be left alone.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, they know what works, and it works,
Speaker 1: you know, but does it well, that's the question.
Speaker 4: Right. So they fingered a collar, right, is that the.
Speaker 1: Right the gumsh you finger to call it?
Speaker 6: Yeah, then it's all in a good day's work. They
Speaker 6: finger the wrong collar, then it's no good.
Speaker 1: It's still all in. So one of the reasons it's
Speaker 1: that somebody cop would put a two suspects in a lineup.
Speaker 1: It's not just to increase the chances that one of
Speaker 1: those suspects gets picked by an eyewitness. It's because sometimes
Speaker 1: it can be hard to come up with people for
Speaker 1: a lineup.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this was hard to believe, Like, just they can't
Speaker 6: find people sometimes.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, and the reason why is because let's say
Speaker 1: you have multiple witnesses, and each witness gives you a
Speaker 1: different description of the perpetrator, right, right, Ideally you're going
Speaker 1: to find a different lineup for each witness.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like, if there's three witnesses, you should run three lineups, right,
Speaker 6: because their descriptions are probably somewhat different.
Speaker 1: Right. That can be difficult, right, And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways to handle a lineup. You can do a
Speaker 1: suspect matched lineup, where you've got a suspect and to
Speaker 1: keep your suspect from standing out, you make all the
Speaker 1: other people in the lineup look like you know your suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one way to do it. Another is to do
Speaker 1: the perpetrator description match strategy, which is you've got.
Speaker 4: And that's when you have no suspect, right, just witness accounts.
Speaker 1: You can have a suspect, but you're creating your lineup
Speaker 1: based on what the what the witness has described the perpetrator.
Speaker 4: To look like, and then just throw the suspect in there, right.
Speaker 1: Which can be bad for the suspect because if the suspect,
Speaker 1: the person you actually think did it, doesn't look anything
Speaker 1: like the eyewitness said. There's going to be four redheads
Speaker 1: and the one blonde guy who's actually the suspect, and
Speaker 1: he's going to stand out like a sore throum. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things that have to be
Speaker 1: massaged here to try to make everybody in the lineup
Speaker 1: basically look all like the perpetrator, yeah the eyewitness described,
Speaker 1: or all like the suspect that you've got, because you
Speaker 1: don't want the suspect to stand out. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of techniques that they use to try to make
Speaker 1: everybody look the same.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: One of the I mean they like you said they
Speaker 6: dressed people. It was funny that one article said in
Speaker 6: the Bronx precinct, they usually.
Speaker 4: Put them in Yankees hats. Right, Just line up a
Speaker 4: bunch of guys in Yankees right.
Speaker 1: That means that they have like five Yankees hats hanging
Speaker 1: outside of the you know that room where they.
Speaker 6: Walk them into wasn' Kramer in a lineup when he
Speaker 6: was a suspect, a totally serial killer suspect.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't remember it was a serial killer, but
Speaker 1: I remember he was in the line I he kept
Speaker 1: turning the wrong way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think he was misidentified on the when they
Speaker 6: went to LA to pitch the TV show. Huh, Kramer
Speaker 6: got caught up in some like serial killer things. I
Speaker 6: think of that, and I think of the great lineup
Speaker 6: scene in the Usual Suspects.
Speaker 1: Let's address that real quick.
Speaker 6: When they have to say something so well, we can't
Speaker 6: repeat it here because there's bad words.
Speaker 1: Right. No, what I was going to say is that
Speaker 1: that lineup would never happen because not only do you
Speaker 1: have two suspects in there, all five people in the
Speaker 1: lineup are your.
Speaker 4: And they're not dressed the same.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a total movie lineup.
Speaker 1: It would never happen. No, Or are you going to
Speaker 1: say about them saying something.
Speaker 6: Well, they had to recite a line. I don't know
Speaker 6: how typical that is, though.
Speaker 3: Uh, you me.
Speaker 1: When she did her line up, she remembered what the
Speaker 1: guy was saying.
Speaker 4: Oh, and they say that, okay, so that's the thing.
Speaker 1: And she was like, wait a minute, can I do
Speaker 1: they have to say whatever I say they said? And
Speaker 1: the cop was like yeah, and she's like, really, what
Speaker 1: I want him to say? Yeah, he's like, no, you
Speaker 1: have to say what they actually said.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, how did that result? Did she get the guy?
Speaker 1: Oh? She picked him out immediately? Oh okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I got busted.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, you don't mug you me. I'll tell you that, buddy.
Speaker 4: You hear that, purpose.
Speaker 1: Right, you started quaking in your boots.
Speaker 6: The one thing too, that caught me, uh sort of
Speaker 6: off guard, is that I never thought about is the uh,
Speaker 6: the part about whether or not they're clean shaven, Like
Speaker 6: there could be details of omission, Like if an eyewitness
Speaker 6: doesn't remember or doesn't mention that they either were clean
Speaker 6: shaven or not, then I think they default to something
Speaker 6: that may not be accurate. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: your lineup, well, your lineup should have all clean shaven dudes.
Speaker 1: You should just assume that if they didn't say the
Speaker 1: guy had a beard, that that doesn't that that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the guy had a beard and they just
Speaker 1: didn't say it. You should just assume it means that
Speaker 1: they're clean shaven.
Speaker 6: And they should all be clean shaven in a lineup,
Speaker 6: because if you have five clean shaven guys in one
Speaker 6: filler or one foil with a big beard like.
Speaker 4: Me, right, I might get picked out just because I
Speaker 4: look different.
Speaker 3: Right exactly?
Speaker 1: Or if the one guy's clean shaven, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: they didn't say that the person had a beard, but
Speaker 1: they also didn't say they didn't have a beard, right,
Speaker 1: so I can put this clean shaven suspect in with
Speaker 1: four other guys who all have beards and make them
Speaker 1: stand out. That's the opposite. And apparently there was this
Speaker 1: New York Times article from years back about a guy
Speaker 1: named that dude, what was his.
Speaker 4: Name, casting agent, basically Robert Weston.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert or western It's it's a pretty interesting little article.
Speaker 1: But in the article it says that the Bronx cops
Speaker 1: that use this guy to help fill lineups, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a second, that that when they give
Speaker 1: the perpetrators like the Yankees hats or whatever for the lineup,
Speaker 1: like the perpetrator is always the one who pulls it
Speaker 1: down over his eyes, and they have to be like, dude,
Speaker 1: see how everybody else to wear in their hat makes
Speaker 1: us exactly like that, or else they're going to pick
Speaker 1: you out. So they actually are trying to help the
Speaker 1: perpetrator at least not stand up and be like me,
Speaker 1: you know, and instead just keep it on the on
Speaker 1: the level, at least as far as the Yankees hat
Speaker 1: brooms go.
Speaker 4: I so want to be a filler.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you could do it. I want you just
Speaker 1: have to hang around long enough until a dude who
Speaker 1: looks like you commits a crime, which in Atlanta's a
Speaker 1: lot of hipsters running around. For sure.
Speaker 4: I don't look like a hipster.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I.
Speaker 4: Look like it the hipster gone bad.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, need enough to be h. You look like
Speaker 1: a hit and run hipster.
Speaker 4: Hipsters are super well coffed and like squared away.
Speaker 1: Oh I know it to me, you know, Yeah, your
Speaker 1: jeenes aren't pegged.
Speaker 4: No, I look like a hipster who slept in.
Speaker 6: So back to Robert Weston, this guy in New York
Speaker 6: at the time, at least, I can't believe how little
Speaker 6: money he made. He only got ten dollars for putting
Speaker 6: together a complete lineup. Yeah, and they said sometimes he
Speaker 6: does as many as four in a day, and sometimes
Speaker 6: not at all.
Speaker 4: I'm like, so a good day for him is forty bucks,
Speaker 4: that's what it sounds like. Man, Maybe that's the problem
Speaker 4: is they need to Well again, it's budgetary. Probably it's
Speaker 4: going to say pay a little bit more, get a
Speaker 4: casting agent in there, get.
Speaker 1: Some of those college educated fillers in there, right.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 6: And also it made it sound like, I don't know,
Speaker 6: he's kind of pulling people off the street. Sometimes they're
Speaker 6: homeless people. Sometimes they're like drug addicts. Well yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean I guess it depends on who the purp is.
Speaker 6: Sometimes they get other cops that are busy to stand in.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, these are people need people will go
Speaker 1: to a police station and stand in the lineup for
Speaker 1: ten dollars.
Speaker 4: Right, They get paid as much as the guy who
Speaker 4: organized the party.
Speaker 1: Right, But if Robert Weston stands in himself, he'll get
Speaker 1: an extra twenty bucks on top of putting the thing together.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: How many times he tries to do that.
Speaker 1: But he even said, like if they want white guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know any white guys. So they go to
Speaker 1: homeless shelters for that. And that's very much what cops do.
Speaker 1: Cops will go find people on the street. They will
Speaker 1: go to homeless shelters. They will have casting agents like
Speaker 1: Robert Weston on their speed dial, and what they'll say is,
Speaker 1: I've got a middle aged white guy with a graying
Speaker 1: beard and he's about six feet tall. Give me four
Speaker 1: other people that match that description, and ideally four other
Speaker 1: people that match that description will show up, and not
Speaker 1: three and then one another total outlier or something like that.
Speaker 6: One cop was complaining about his work. It was kind
Speaker 6: of funny, right, complaining about Robert Wesson. He was like,
Speaker 6: he didn't bring in good people. He always like right.
Speaker 4: Budges, the ages and the races and stuff.
Speaker 1: But the reason why they keep using this guy is
Speaker 1: because he answers his phone, doesn't matter what time you
Speaker 1: call him. He can put a lineup together for you.
Speaker 1: And if you have a very limited amount of time,
Speaker 1: you can only hold a suspect for so long without
Speaker 1: charging them, but you want to put them in a
Speaker 1: lineup for what's called an investigatory lineup, to where you
Speaker 1: just want to see maybe bringing one witness just to
Speaker 1: see if you're on the right track. You've got a
Speaker 1: very limited amount of time and you need people like that,
Speaker 1: which means that you may have a lower quality one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fortunately that would just be for an investigatory one. If
Speaker 1: it were for a confirmatory one, that's the one that
Speaker 1: you see on TV where it's like you bring in
Speaker 1: a witness and you've got your suspect and they're sitting
Speaker 1: in jail, and you bring them out. That is the
Speaker 1: one where like, all the t should be crossed and
Speaker 1: the eyes should be dotted, because a good court will
Speaker 1: here and we'll want to know the details of how
Speaker 1: that lineup went, and if anything sounds hinky, they'll toss
Speaker 1: that lineup right out, that eyewitness testimony out.
Speaker 6: The worst possible version of all of this is something
Speaker 6: called a show up. And this is something this is
Speaker 6: also a movie trope that you see, and that's when
Speaker 6: an officer brings a witness to a place to show
Speaker 6: the witness the suspect that's been apprehended. So like they're
Speaker 6: in the back of a car, or here's what happens
Speaker 6: in the movie. There's a guy in the back of
Speaker 6: a police car handcuffed. They'll bring the person who was
Speaker 6: robbed or whatever they're to the scene. They'll yank him
Speaker 6: out of the back of the car and say, is
Speaker 6: this the dirt bag who did it?
Speaker 4: Like just one guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's clearly the worst possible version of.
Speaker 4: All of this.
Speaker 1: And the guy's like, I need more pace, a pay,
Speaker 1: I'm coming down. So one of the here's the reason
Speaker 1: why that show up is so terrible, Chuck.
Speaker 4: Well, there's no other people that they're comparing them to.
Speaker 1: That's one. But they're also in handcuffs, in the back
Speaker 1: of a cop car or something like that. They're in
Speaker 1: place custody, and so the eyewitness is going to assume that,
Speaker 1: in addition to their testimony, the cops obviously have something
Speaker 1: on this person, and so that must mean that the
Speaker 1: cops know it's that person, and this is just a formality,
Speaker 1: so I'll be like, yeah, sure, that was that person.
Speaker 1: That's the first problem with it. The second problem is
Speaker 1: is that from that point on, that person that they've
Speaker 1: just seen now becomes the star of their memory of
Speaker 1: that crime. It's like they photoshop this person's face into
Speaker 1: that vague, shadowy face that's holding the gun that they
Speaker 1: were actually focused on, and from that moment on they
Speaker 1: just get more and more certain that that was the
Speaker 1: person because that person's not starring in their memories and
Speaker 1: it's not just the problem with the show up, but
Speaker 1: with any misidentification. When they see that person and that
Speaker 1: person becomes seared in their brain, they're positive from that
Speaker 1: point on and they can seem very confident in court,
Speaker 1: which again he's buy even though it's garbage.
Speaker 4: Well, in weeks and months can go by, right between
Speaker 4: the point that you have experienced a crime and when
Speaker 4: you may be identifying someone or a court for sure
Speaker 4: as months and months and months later. So man, part
Speaker 4: of me does think, like, get rid of all this.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say that, or at the very
Speaker 1: least say this is eyewitness testimony. It's actually terrible testimony.
Speaker 1: Actually it's terrible evidence.
Speaker 4: But let's do it anyway.
Speaker 1: Right. But and if they did say that, if they
Speaker 1: basically lowered what how much weight eyewitness testimony held in court,
Speaker 1: then those cases that were built entirely on eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a leg to stand on it. They have
Speaker 1: to go build a bigger case.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But like in Yumi's case, it worked, it did. No,
Speaker 6: it was like that guy might have walked, you know, right, That's.
Speaker 1: The problem is that, you know, if if twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of the time is wrong, right, seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of the time, is right, we think. So, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not it's not like Arson investigation, which we're going
Speaker 1: to do one on one day, Yeah, where it's just
Speaker 1: totally made up. Like it does have some veracity, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of flaws with it, and.
Speaker 4: The lives are at stake though it's really dicey.
Speaker 1: They need to figure it out because of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they need to go do that now.
Speaker 6: I mean, can you imagine anything worse than being misidentified
Speaker 6: and serving no, two decades in prison for something you
Speaker 6: really didn't do?
Speaker 1: No, I really can't.
Speaker 6: I mean I remember how up said I got when
Speaker 6: we did the Innocence Project. It's just, yeah, you hear
Speaker 6: these stories and then they get out and they're like,
Speaker 6: well here's here's four hundred thousand bucks.
Speaker 4: We feel pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Right, go get yourself something nice. Try to forget about
Speaker 1: all this, right. Yeah, did you ever see that movie
Speaker 1: An Innocent Man with Tom Selleck. It scared the Bejesus
Speaker 1: out of me. The same thing happened to him when
Speaker 1: he was when he was he was framed.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, that's high Road to China.
Speaker 1: Oh right, I got my stuff? Makes it? No that's
Speaker 1: down under that. Oh right, Uh, you got anything else?
Speaker 4: Nope?
Speaker 3: All right, Well that's it for police.
Speaker 1: Lineups for now. We'll do an update whenever they get
Speaker 1: it figured out.
Speaker 4: We did one on police sketches, right, yeah, okay, is
Speaker 4: this it?
Speaker 1: Are we done?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: We still got Arson investigation. We've got a lot all right, yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about police lineups, then
Speaker 1: I don't know, go hang around a police station. See
Speaker 1: if you can stand in one learn firsthand.
Speaker 6: Okay, get a little sign that says I will be
Speaker 6: your foil ten dollars.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And since I said ten dollars, it's time for listener.
Speaker 4: Now, I'm gonna call this youngest fan. This very cute email. Hey, guys,
Speaker 4: love the podcast.
Speaker 6: You're doing it right, It's not this email is not
Speaker 6: episode specific, but I had to tell you about this.
Speaker 6: My husband and I welcomed our baby boy into the
Speaker 6: world a couple of months ago. When I was pregnant,
Speaker 6: we joked that the baby would think that one of
Speaker 6: you was his dad because he heard your voices so often.
Speaker 6: That's a very funny joke in a family, you know,
Speaker 6: joke about the paternity of your child. Now that he's here,
Speaker 6: I've been playing music in the car instead of the podcast,
Speaker 6: thinking music helps calm him. Well, one day he was
Speaker 6: crying and crying in the car. I couldn't get him
Speaker 6: to calm down.
Speaker 1: She was like, what's wrong with DOCN? Why isn't docin working.
Speaker 6: I couldn't get him to calm down with any of the
Speaker 6: usual tricks, so I decided to heck with it. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna put on the podcast, and I kid you not,
Speaker 6: as soon as you guys started talking, he stopped crying.
Speaker 6: My husband says it was coincidence. Jealous, I say, stuff,
Speaker 6: you should know.
Speaker 4: Magic.
Speaker 6: Now we're back to always listening to you guys in
Speaker 6: the car. You keep up the great work. And thanks
Speaker 6: for soothing my baby boy. And that is from Sarah
Speaker 6: Strantz and our youngest fan, Frank from beautiful Mount Pleasant,
Speaker 6: South Carolina.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thank you so much for that email, Frank,
Speaker 1: go to sleep quiet now.
Speaker 4: They named their baby after our chair?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Pretty? Wouldn't that be amazing if they actually did it?
Speaker 3: Well? Now?
Speaker 1: And thank you also to unnamed husband for being a
Speaker 1: good sport.
Speaker 4: Agreed.
Speaker 1: If you want to send us a great email about
Speaker 1: how We're magic. You can hang out with us on
Speaker 1: social media. Just go to our website stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com, and you can also send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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