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