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How Police Lineups Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry out there outside
0:17
Speaker 1: the fish bowl, and also there's guest producer Noel in
0:21
Speaker 1: our pal Ben. But yeah, I'm in the room this time. Man, Yeah,
0:25
Speaker 1: on the mike. Thanks for having us. Uh, this is
0:29
Speaker 1: way better than that time you have me on the
0:30
Speaker 1: April Fools episode. Well, I'm glad you brought that up
0:33
Speaker 1: because may remember Ben from that I think it was
0:36
Speaker 1: two thirteen or fifteen something, ungodly time ago. It's my replacement. Yeah,
0:42
Speaker 1: it was the April Fools joke for the three D
0:44
Speaker 1: printing episode. So this is your second time on the show. Yeah,
0:47
Speaker 1: the Internet shredgy Ben was it were? They were like
0:50
Speaker 1: a target of abuse. I want to thank everybody for
0:52
Speaker 1: the very polite emails and as as we could tell, thankfully,
0:55
Speaker 1: Chuck is fine. They yeah, they took it easy on him.
0:58
Speaker 1: We have very nice listeners. Something. And then know, this
1:01
Speaker 1: might be the first time you're ever speaking on the podcast,
1:03
Speaker 1: even though you've guess produced it like a million times.
1:05
Speaker 1: I think I may have mumbled something in the background
1:07
Speaker 1: the time. Really, so we're having you two on let's cut,
1:15
Speaker 1: let's get down a business because you two have a
1:18
Speaker 1: podcast together, right, I know you also are on Mini
1:22
Speaker 1: Crushed movie Crush. Yeah, you're also in real World's colliding
1:27
Speaker 1: right now, Right, there's a lot I'm going over them all.
1:29
Speaker 1: You're on stuff they don't want you to know. But
1:32
Speaker 1: you two, Ben and Nol have come together and made
1:34
Speaker 1: ridiculous history, which isn't awesome. Oh yeah, that's right. We're
1:38
Speaker 1: just missing that. God I'm starting to sweat. But you
1:43
Speaker 1: guys are on ridiculous history together. We are tell us
1:46
Speaker 1: about that. So history is full of these cartoonish bizarre events,
1:54
Speaker 1: often not covered in your typical history class. Sounds for Mimilier, right,
2:01
Speaker 1: because for one reason or another, people thought that's no
2:08
Speaker 1: way that didn't really happen. The first recorded instance of
2:12
Speaker 1: a mooning did not result in the death of hundreds
2:15
Speaker 1: of people, is surely not? Surely not? But it did,
2:19
Speaker 1: And surely the US government did not have a plan
2:21
Speaker 1: to shoot a nuclear missile at the moon, right, That
2:25
Speaker 1: was just a Mr Show sketch, Sure not, but it
2:27
Speaker 1: also was It was kind of parallel thinking. Is the
2:30
Speaker 1: Mr show sketch happened before this story became declassified Project
2:36
Speaker 1: day one nine. So our continuing mission with Ridiculous History,
2:41
Speaker 1: not to sound too star trekky about it, is to
2:44
Speaker 1: find those moments, the bizarre people, places, and things throughout
2:49
Speaker 1: the span of human civilization that at least crack the
2:52
Speaker 1: both of us up on a continual basis. And sometimes
2:55
Speaker 1: we do have to stop recording just for a second
2:59
Speaker 1: because we're so tickled. Yeah wow, that's that's actually high qualities,
3:05
Speaker 1: mainly because we tickle each other physically. That's cheating, Ben,
3:09
Speaker 1: You're making it sound so serious. It's actually a lot
3:12
Speaker 1: of fun. It's a fun show, right Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
3:16
Speaker 1: I mean I'm giving been a hard time, but yeah,
3:18
Speaker 1: that's definitely like we touch on from time to time.
3:21
Speaker 1: It'll it'll go into a heavier territory. Like, for example,
3:25
Speaker 1: we did an episode about how women in Kansas in
3:27
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties were imprisoned in labor camps for having STDs.
3:32
Speaker 1: Well that certainly falls under ridiculous, not exactly fun or
3:35
Speaker 1: funny right now, ridiculous, But so it's it's it's all
3:39
Speaker 1: of those things. Some of them are you know, crack
3:41
Speaker 1: you up hilarious moments like Napoleon Bonaparte getting attacked by
3:45
Speaker 1: bunnies or you know, the aforementioned stt labor camps or
3:50
Speaker 1: racist special Olympics that were held here in the States.
3:55
Speaker 1: And we're a complete uh well tomorrow phrase we use
3:58
Speaker 1: on the show each ship show. So so wait a minute,
4:02
Speaker 1: I think you are like, you need to name the
4:04
Speaker 1: state that hosted that. It was St. Louis. Yeah. St Louis,
4:11
Speaker 1: And it's because the World's Fair was happening in St.
4:14
Speaker 1: Louis and they were going to have it in Chicago.
4:17
Speaker 1: But the people hosting the World's Fair said, if you
4:19
Speaker 1: don't do your Olympics as part of the World's Fair,
4:21
Speaker 1: we're going to totally blow you out of the water
4:23
Speaker 1: with how awesome our World's Fair is. And no one's
4:25
Speaker 1: gonna come to your Olympics. Scared them in the early
4:27
Speaker 1: days of like, you know, not the earliest days of
4:29
Speaker 1: the Olympics, when they brought it back like in them,
4:31
Speaker 1: you know, it was not ancient room. It was not
4:35
Speaker 1: in fact ancient Rome. And it was also it was
4:39
Speaker 1: not a good example of the Olympics either because the
4:43
Speaker 1: white supremacists who were in charge of the whole shebang
4:48
Speaker 1: decided that this would be the perfect time to prove
4:52
Speaker 1: their cockamamie ideas of like eugenic ideas of kind of
4:56
Speaker 1: like white superiority and like they would have indigenous people
4:59
Speaker 1: competing in these Olympic events, but of course they didn't
5:01
Speaker 1: teach them how to, you know, do the events, so
5:04
Speaker 1: they didn't just automatically know how to pull vault or
5:06
Speaker 1: throw a javelin or whatever. So and one supremacists can
5:10
Speaker 1: ruin anything. Anything they put their hands on, they really
5:13
Speaker 1: can just turns to poop. Yeah, we are doing an
5:17
Speaker 1: episode on flash events later, so stay tuned for there. So,
5:20
Speaker 1: so before we give everything away, you guys tell everyone
5:23
Speaker 1: where they can find ridiculous history and when. You can
5:26
Speaker 1: find ridiculous history at our website. No, it's ridiculous history show,
5:32
Speaker 1: I think, so the website. It's definitely keep prepared for this.
5:37
Speaker 1: I've got steck of notes right here. Yeah, you can
5:41
Speaker 1: find us an Apple podcast. You find us on Spotify,
5:44
Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you find your favorite shows,
5:47
Speaker 1: like stuff you should know or stuff they don't want
5:50
Speaker 1: you to know, or I should I list the entire
5:52
Speaker 1: pantheon of all the shows we have. It's too many
5:55
Speaker 1: at this point, but but yes, you can find us
5:58
Speaker 1: in all of those places. We also have a community page,
6:03
Speaker 1: uh that we're really proud of and really happy with,
6:06
Speaker 1: called ridiculous Historians on Facebook. Taking a total cue from
6:10
Speaker 1: the cisk army nice. Well, First of all, thank you
6:14
Speaker 1: for all of the flattery that you've been heaping on
6:16
Speaker 1: us for the last few minutes as much appreciated, but
6:19
Speaker 1: also thank you for coming by. Appreciate it, guys, Thank
6:21
Speaker 1: you guys for having so much. Let's do this every week. Yeah,
6:25
Speaker 1: that might be been much. Let me check the sketch.
6:32
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I love those guys, but I'm
6:34
Speaker 1: glad to get out of that that new studio box.
6:38
Speaker 1: It's like a Fema trailer. Man. It's for malde hyde
6:40
Speaker 1: wafting off slowly poisoning us. It is still offcasting. It
6:44
Speaker 1: feels like, yeah, big time. It's in my hair, which
6:48
Speaker 1: is now falling out. We're in bad shape. Well before,
6:52
Speaker 1: I like what you're wearing. By the way, thank you.
6:53
Speaker 1: I spilled a tremendous amount of coffee on myself and
6:56
Speaker 1: luckily I had a bunch of samples of our new
6:58
Speaker 1: T shirt. Yeah, and this is not just a plug. Everyone.
7:02
Speaker 1: Josh is literally wearing a Lewis the Child Skeptic T
7:06
Speaker 1: shirt from the Stuff you Should Know store because they
7:09
Speaker 1: sent us every shirt. I'm like, oh, great, to the
7:12
Speaker 1: guy who has a hundred T shirts, here's twenty more.
7:16
Speaker 1: But they are pretty cool. I'm pretty happy with this.
7:18
Speaker 1: Like the size of it. Look at the size, perfect size.
7:22
Speaker 1: It's not so big that it wraps around and gets
7:24
Speaker 1: all mangled by my love handles. But it's also not
7:27
Speaker 1: so small that it looks like, you know, caved in chest.
7:33
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I didn't remember that reference
7:35
Speaker 1: though I didn't neither like they listened to the Pie
7:40
Speaker 1: Piper episode. Oh there you go. It sounds like a
7:42
Speaker 1: youth thing, yeah, Josh, But it was just an offhanded
7:45
Speaker 1: comment I made. Now it's a T shirt I'm wearing,
7:47
Speaker 1: which is I love. It makes a pretty great time
7:50
Speaker 1: to be alive. By the way, I need to give
7:53
Speaker 1: a shout out to Brittney Shift. Um, Britney Shift sent
7:57
Speaker 1: this idea to us. Okay, great, And the reason you
8:02
Speaker 1: know we don't often take well that's not true. We
8:04
Speaker 1: kind of keep a kitty of listeners suggestions, but we
8:07
Speaker 1: don't often like do one the next week and then
8:11
Speaker 1: shout out the person. But I thought we had fully
8:15
Speaker 1: exhausted our Crime and Punishment series. So I was delighted
8:20
Speaker 1: that Britney Shifts sent this in and I was like,
8:22
Speaker 1: why haven't we done police lineup? I don't know, it's
8:26
Speaker 1: a great question. Was just sitting there waiting. Yep. The
8:30
Speaker 1: only other one that's left is what kind of shoes
8:33
Speaker 1: detectives wear? That that's the last one? Is this? Yeah,
8:41
Speaker 1: that's gum shoe or crepe sold I think do you
8:44
Speaker 1: knew that? Yeah? But I don't know how it relates
8:47
Speaker 1: to cops. I guess they wore those. They are super comfortable.
8:50
Speaker 1: Cops are always walking around walking, yeah you know, but
8:56
Speaker 1: sometimes when they're walking, they're actually out on the street
9:00
Speaker 1: looking for people who resemble a suspect that they have
9:03
Speaker 1: in the jail house. And they say, hey, you come
9:08
Speaker 1: on over here, how would you like to make ten bucks?
9:11
Speaker 1: And the person says exactly how copper and the cops says,
9:16
Speaker 1: by standing in is what we call a filler in
9:18
Speaker 1: a police or they do like Comber Simpson and when
9:23
Speaker 1: they were like a boat raffle that they said he
9:24
Speaker 1: had to come down to the police station. Yeah, you
9:26
Speaker 1: want a boat? Yeah, and then they beat him merciless
9:31
Speaker 1: for like parking unpaid parking tickets. Also shout out to
9:34
Speaker 1: Beth at Schuster, who wrote to this article in the
9:39
Speaker 1: n i J Journal the National Institute of Justice, I believe, so,
9:44
Speaker 1: is that right? Yeah, they're pretty much committed to keeping
9:47
Speaker 1: people from being wrongly convicted, so I would guess the
9:50
Speaker 1: J stance for justice. Yeah, and this is this is
9:53
Speaker 1: a good start, and we had some other stuff we
9:55
Speaker 1: added to it. But thank you Ms Schuster, Yeah for
9:59
Speaker 1: your work up. Well, um, I already led into the
10:03
Speaker 1: episode and it didn't take so let me try again.
10:06
Speaker 1: This n i J article you sent calls out a
10:10
Speaker 1: dude named Jerry Miller, who back was two years old,
10:15
Speaker 1: I believe. And Jerry Miller had a particularly bad day
10:19
Speaker 1: when he was arrested and he was charged with robbing, kidnapping,
10:24
Speaker 1: and raping a woman, and he got convicted. He was
10:28
Speaker 1: convicted because two people, two eye witnesses, saw him in
10:33
Speaker 1: the lineup picked him out, and then later at trial
10:36
Speaker 1: the victim said, maybe that's him, maybe it's not, but
10:40
Speaker 1: who cares. There's two eye witnesses that picked the show
10:42
Speaker 1: out of a lineup. He's done. He did twenty four
10:48
Speaker 1: years in prison, and you may notice from the tone
10:51
Speaker 1: that I'm using here he was wrongfully convicted. He actually
10:55
Speaker 1: got out of prison and was living life re leased
10:57
Speaker 1: on parole, wearing an ankle bracelet a monitor constantly as
11:02
Speaker 1: a registered sex offender. And then finally I think, um, oh,
11:08
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure two thousand seven. In two thousand seven,
11:11
Speaker 1: as part of the Innocence Project, which we've done an
11:14
Speaker 1: episode on with um, yeah, that lady what is her name? Oh, Haulleen,
11:23
Speaker 1: but it's definitely not Paulazon. Thank you, Jerry. Yeah, I
11:29
Speaker 1: wanted to say Pauli Shore so bad. I just knew
11:32
Speaker 1: it was wrong, but we didn't. Right, We did an
11:36
Speaker 1: Innocence Project episode, and under the Innocence Project, Jerry Miller
11:41
Speaker 1: was exonerated through DNA evidence. He incontrovertibly did not do
11:47
Speaker 1: this and lost twenty four years of his life because
11:50
Speaker 1: of flawed eyewitness testimony. Yeah, and so you know, this
11:54
Speaker 1: is all about police lineups and more about I mean,
11:59
Speaker 1: we'll tell you how they work in a general sense,
12:01
Speaker 1: but this sort of more about how you know, it's
12:05
Speaker 1: such an imperfect system, but sort of The takeaway from
12:09
Speaker 1: all of this that we're about to go over with
12:11
Speaker 1: all the studies and the trying different things is kind
12:14
Speaker 1: of like, you know, it's an imperfect system and we
12:18
Speaker 1: can try and craft it the best way we can,
12:21
Speaker 1: but human memory is imperfect. Identifying people in lineups is imperfect,
12:26
Speaker 1: and we're just it's kind of the best we got
12:29
Speaker 1: right now. Right Well, a lot of people are like,
12:31
Speaker 1: get rid of eyewitness testimony really altogether, yes, all together.
12:36
Speaker 1: Humans suck at eyewitness testimony. And there's a lot of
12:41
Speaker 1: reasons why. It's not like people are out there like
12:43
Speaker 1: I want to have me a bad guy, show me
12:45
Speaker 1: a lineup. I'm gonna pick one of those guys out.
12:48
Speaker 1: They're not doing that. They're they're subject to basically the
12:52
Speaker 1: way our brains are wired. We don't walk around videotaping
12:56
Speaker 1: everything that we see. Yeah, you know, we get sillly
13:00
Speaker 1: bombarded with sensory information and under normal circumstances, you know,
13:06
Speaker 1: you see a stranger on the street, you just see
13:08
Speaker 1: there's another human. I've identified him as not a threat
13:10
Speaker 1: and keep walking by it. If that person turned out
13:13
Speaker 1: to be accused of a crime, um or or perpetrated
13:18
Speaker 1: a crime, and you were brought in to say was
13:21
Speaker 1: this the person you saw? Your brain is going to
13:24
Speaker 1: try to reconstruct what little pieces of memory it formed
13:28
Speaker 1: of that person. And there's a lot of things, a
13:31
Speaker 1: lot of factors that are involved that can make that
13:34
Speaker 1: really difficult task even harder. Yeah. Like I am someone
13:39
Speaker 1: who has told myself, Chuck, pay attention. Like, if you're
13:45
Speaker 1: ever in a situation like, pay attention, try and collect
13:48
Speaker 1: yourself and try and remember a few really good details
13:52
Speaker 1: about the car or the person. So like, this is
13:55
Speaker 1: on my mind. And I actually had a situation when
13:59
Speaker 1: I lived now I happened to me where I had
14:02
Speaker 1: to go through a police lineup and I failed. Oh really,
14:07
Speaker 1: was the suspect there? No? Well no, here's here's the
14:10
Speaker 1: quick version is I wasn't in a hit and run
14:12
Speaker 1: this lady. Uh, these two lady, these two younger girls,
14:16
Speaker 1: they were probably teenagers, hit me from behind in my car.
14:22
Speaker 1: I stopped my car, starting to get out and they
14:24
Speaker 1: take off. So it's a hit and run. I chase them,
14:27
Speaker 1: which is you should not do. Were you shooting into
14:30
Speaker 1: the air and again to slow down trying to shoot
14:32
Speaker 1: out their tires? No, but I did chase him. Because
14:36
Speaker 1: I was so mad, and your adrenaline just shoots through
14:38
Speaker 1: the roof when something like that happens, so immediately you're
14:41
Speaker 1: just not yourself and like recording details. So I was
14:45
Speaker 1: trying to catch up to get a license plate. I
14:47
Speaker 1: saw that they went down the street that I knew
14:50
Speaker 1: was a dead end. Um, it wasn't a cul de sect,
14:54
Speaker 1: but it functioned to like a cul de sact. So
14:56
Speaker 1: I stopped where I was, got out of the car.
14:58
Speaker 1: Sure enough, twenty later they come halling but back towards me,
15:03
Speaker 1: and uh, the look on their faces was like you know, oh, snap,
15:08
Speaker 1: there's the guy. And they just sped right past me.
15:10
Speaker 1: And I saw their faces as they sped past me
15:13
Speaker 1: in their car. The cops found the car, found the people,
15:19
Speaker 1: and they're like, we didn't do that, and so who
15:22
Speaker 1: are these girls? These teenagers? Well that's the long and
15:26
Speaker 1: short of it. Is all you have to do and
15:27
Speaker 1: something like that. I said, didn't do it, and if
15:30
Speaker 1: I can't pick you out, then you get away. And
15:33
Speaker 1: they showed me pictures of like, you know, these were
15:37
Speaker 1: like teenage young teenage Hispanic women. They showed me probably
15:42
Speaker 1: probably fifteen pictures and said, can you identify them. I
15:46
Speaker 1: was like, no, it was a month ago. They sped
15:49
Speaker 1: past me for a second, like I couldn't even hazard
15:52
Speaker 1: a guess, and I didn't want to do that. You know,
15:54
Speaker 1: well that's very sensible of you. Yeah, I just didn't
15:57
Speaker 1: want to take a stab at it. So I was like, no,
15:59
Speaker 1: I have no idea, and they're basically like, sorry, they
16:01
Speaker 1: said they didn't do it. Wow. It's like, but you
16:03
Speaker 1: have the car and it's damaged, and like none of
16:06
Speaker 1: that matters. They're like not not if you can't identify
16:08
Speaker 1: I mean I could see that. I think would be like, oh, yeah,
16:09
Speaker 1: that happened some other times in some other hit and runs.
16:12
Speaker 1: I mean, but yeah. The long story short though, is
16:16
Speaker 1: I'm someone who has tried to tell myself to react
16:20
Speaker 1: in the right ways, and I couldn't tell them much
16:24
Speaker 1: beyond like the color of the car and sort of
16:26
Speaker 1: would it looked like because you were seeing red? Because right,
16:31
Speaker 1: that's our that our bodies are not primed to form memories.
16:34
Speaker 1: It's not where our where our energy goes. It's more
16:37
Speaker 1: like getting away or shooting out the tires of a
16:40
Speaker 1: car that just hit and ran. Right, But what you
16:43
Speaker 1: did with that lineup is the other side of the coin.
16:47
Speaker 1: The other problem with lineups is or eyewitness testimony from lineups,
16:52
Speaker 1: is that sometimes people pick out people who are innocent
16:56
Speaker 1: and other times people fail to pick out the people
16:59
Speaker 1: who are actually the perpetrators. So it's like you said,
17:02
Speaker 1: they're very they're very flaw it's as flawed system. The
17:06
Speaker 1: problem is is the wrong people can go to jail
17:09
Speaker 1: and the people who actually did it can get away
17:12
Speaker 1: with it. So that's an extremely flawed system. And when
17:15
Speaker 1: something that um important is on the table, then um,
17:21
Speaker 1: it needs to be fixed. And there's a lot of
17:23
Speaker 1: people looking into how it can be fixed, but we're
17:26
Speaker 1: not there yet by any stretch. No, and here's the
17:28
Speaker 1: stat you were talking about the DNA exoneration. Uh, of
17:34
Speaker 1: the first three exonerations in the US were wrongfully convicted
17:40
Speaker 1: because of eyewitness testimony and police lineups. Say it again,
17:44
Speaker 1: seventy of the first hundred and eighty three. So like
17:48
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project, it's basically like a pilot study to
17:53
Speaker 1: show through DNA exoneration all the ways that we wrongfully
17:58
Speaker 1: convict people. And what is coming to the to the
18:02
Speaker 1: front is eyewitness testimony. Yeah, and that the basis of
18:06
Speaker 1: that is the police lineup right. And one other thing
18:09
Speaker 1: that's that's problematic with the eyewitness testimony is if you
18:12
Speaker 1: want to wow a jury, bring out an eyewitness who
18:16
Speaker 1: seems totally sure that what they saw or that they
18:19
Speaker 1: saw the person they're pointing to and the defendant's table, yeah,
18:23
Speaker 1: or that that dramatic moment. It's like a movie trope.
18:25
Speaker 1: Now you know, is the person in this room right?
18:28
Speaker 1: Let the records show that witness is pointing at the defendant, right. Yeah.
18:33
Speaker 1: So the problem is it has a huge impact, but
18:36
Speaker 1: it's also really crutty wit, really crutty um evidence. There's
18:41
Speaker 1: this guy here, he had a great quote. He says
18:43
Speaker 1: that um eyewitness testimony is a very unusual, complex kind
18:49
Speaker 1: of trace evidence, and it's difficult to recover, easy to contaminate,
18:54
Speaker 1: and very hard to handle. And that just there's no
18:57
Speaker 1: better description of eyewitness testimony. If I was ever in
19:01
Speaker 1: court and someone identified me from the witness stand, I
19:05
Speaker 1: would do that thing where you look at behind you
19:08
Speaker 1: when they pointed at you, just be like, I think
19:10
Speaker 1: they're talking behind me, and they would say no, and
19:14
Speaker 1: they would point again, and I would move a little
19:16
Speaker 1: bit more I'd be like, this is this witness is
19:19
Speaker 1: clearly disturbed, and then if that, if that didn't work,
19:21
Speaker 1: you would escalate to I'm rubber and your glue. Yeah,
19:24
Speaker 1: that usually works, right. So there's a couple of other
19:27
Speaker 1: things that makes eyewitness testimony problematic, Chuck Um. In addition
19:33
Speaker 1: to not being like human video recorders, there are human VCRs.
19:40
Speaker 1: There are, Um, there are circumstances, especially surrounding a crime,
19:44
Speaker 1: that can make it really difficult to remember. If you're
19:46
Speaker 1: in a fight or flight situation, you're not forming memories.
19:50
Speaker 1: If there's a weapon, um, there are people tend to
19:54
Speaker 1: focus on the weapon. Um. You me was mugged once
19:58
Speaker 1: and the opposite happened to her. She remember what the
20:01
Speaker 1: person looked like, but she didn't even remember that there
20:03
Speaker 1: was a weapon. And her friends were like, yeah, there
20:05
Speaker 1: was a gun. Interesting, Yeah, and she went to a
20:08
Speaker 1: lineup and like pick the guy out and bullet proof.
20:10
Speaker 1: So she is so she's like, take your gun and
20:13
Speaker 1: shove it that I'm not even going to recognize it. No,
20:16
Speaker 1: but that makes sense. If someone pulls a gun on
20:17
Speaker 1: you or has a switchblade or some other kind of
20:20
Speaker 1: creepy weapon, the human instinct is to to focus your
20:24
Speaker 1: attention on that thing pointed at you. And apparently people
20:27
Speaker 1: can really describe the weapon, right, But you're focusing on
20:32
Speaker 1: the weapon, you're not focused on the person who's holding
20:34
Speaker 1: the weapon. Typically that helps a little bit, but not
20:37
Speaker 1: as much as the face. Right. And then another problem
20:40
Speaker 1: is if you are um, say uh an hispanic dude,
20:45
Speaker 1: and you're a witness to a crime and it's a
20:47
Speaker 1: white guy who's the perpetrator, you're going to have a
20:50
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of difficulty picking that white guy out, as
20:55
Speaker 1: sad as it is to say, from a lineup of
20:57
Speaker 1: other white guys, because I would this testimony that crosses
21:01
Speaker 1: race or ethnicities is known to be very unreliable because
21:07
Speaker 1: it's just more difficult for somebody of an ethnicity or
21:10
Speaker 1: a race to to separate or identify people of another
21:15
Speaker 1: ethnicity or race. Yeah, and I don't think it's the
21:18
Speaker 1: case where people are like, oh, white people look the
21:20
Speaker 1: same to me. It's just weird brain science, right, You
21:26
Speaker 1: just have a harder time. From way back when we
21:29
Speaker 1: were basically Tuck Tuck and Tuk Tuk lived with fifteen
21:33
Speaker 1: other people that look just like him because they'd all
21:35
Speaker 1: been in breeding for generations and generations, and they had
21:39
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for another group of people
21:42
Speaker 1: who've been inbreeding for generations and generations that wanted their
21:46
Speaker 1: jackfruit tree that they live by. What's jack fruit? O?
21:50
Speaker 1: That word jack fruit, the big huge thing, the big
21:53
Speaker 1: huge one. It actually makes a killer barbecue vehicle shredded
21:59
Speaker 1: like shredded vegan standing. Oh okay, it's really good, gotcha, gotcha?
22:04
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about
22:06
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of the run of the mill police lineup
22:10
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, so, run of the mill
22:32
Speaker 1: police lineups. I mentioned that before we left. Everyone's seen
22:36
Speaker 1: movies and TV shows, and it's not too far off. Actually,
22:41
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a couple of ways you can
22:42
Speaker 1: do it. Uh. There are lineups where you look at
22:46
Speaker 1: someone in front of your face. And then there are
22:48
Speaker 1: lineups like I had in l A, where I look
22:51
Speaker 1: at photographs the ones. You know. It's way more sexy
22:54
Speaker 1: for a TV show or a movie to line them
22:57
Speaker 1: up in the traditional way. It's extray or narrowly sexy
23:01
Speaker 1: like a live police lineup like you see on TV. Uh.
23:04
Speaker 1: And then there are the simultaneous or sequential there's a
23:07
Speaker 1: lot of debate, which we'll get into in a minute,
23:09
Speaker 1: about which is best. To me, it's pretty obvious that
23:12
Speaker 1: sequential is best. Simultaneous is the one that you see
23:14
Speaker 1: on TV. They line up six or seven dudes or ladies, uh,
23:19
Speaker 1: and you identify them. Uh usually well it depends. We'll
23:22
Speaker 1: get into the fillers or the foils, but uh, only
23:26
Speaker 1: usually only one of those people is a suspect. And
23:29
Speaker 1: in like the best ideal version of it. Uh, then
23:32
Speaker 1: there're sequential, And that's when they bring out one person
23:35
Speaker 1: at a time and bring out like seven guys, just
23:38
Speaker 1: one at a time, and you say, you know, let
23:39
Speaker 1: me know at the end of this which one you
23:41
Speaker 1: think it was, or if it's a photo lineup, they
23:43
Speaker 1: show you one photo at a time. Exactly. Yeah, I
23:45
Speaker 1: agree with you. I think sequential is head and shoulders
23:48
Speaker 1: the better one of the of the two. Yeah. And
23:52
Speaker 1: here's the the final little piece of how it can
23:54
Speaker 1: vary is whether or not to the administrator that the
23:58
Speaker 1: person that's in charge of administrating the lineup knows who
24:02
Speaker 1: the purp is or not. Yeah. That's a big one, man.
24:05
Speaker 1: So it's either double blind, which means that they don't
24:07
Speaker 1: even know, and to me, it seems obvious that that's
24:10
Speaker 1: always the best way because there are many many circumstances
24:13
Speaker 1: where you would actually even if you don't want to
24:16
Speaker 1: or mean to lead a witness. And one example they
24:19
Speaker 1: gave here in this article is if they say, and
24:23
Speaker 1: if they identify a filler or a foil a k a.
24:26
Speaker 1: A person that was paid ten bucks, say that's the person,
24:29
Speaker 1: the administrator might say, take your time? Are you sure
24:33
Speaker 1: like you really need to take your time? Which is
24:35
Speaker 1: basically pretty much they or conversely, if if um, when
24:43
Speaker 1: they're doing it sequentially, when they get to like number four,
24:46
Speaker 1: they're like, WHOA get a load of this guy. Huh jeez,
24:50
Speaker 1: look at that bag character. He's guilty of something. But
24:53
Speaker 1: they can't like even just a smile or something like that,
24:58
Speaker 1: like a non verbal que you don't even mean to do, right,
25:02
Speaker 1: or you may mean to do because you know that
25:04
Speaker 1: that's the guy, and you know it in your bones
25:07
Speaker 1: that that guy did it, and you're leading the witness, right,
25:10
Speaker 1: it can be some some sort of nonverbal gesture. The
25:13
Speaker 1: problem is is that most people, I can't say most people,
25:17
Speaker 1: but it's been shown that some people, when they're brought
25:20
Speaker 1: in as a witness for a police lineup, I feel
25:23
Speaker 1: like it's their role. It's their job to pick somebody
25:26
Speaker 1: for the cops. So they're more than happy to be
25:29
Speaker 1: led by the cops because then they're fulfilling their role
25:31
Speaker 1: and they did what they were supposed to do. So
25:34
Speaker 1: another another technique or way to administer a good lineup
25:40
Speaker 1: is to say, here, here's the lineup, whether it's sequential
25:44
Speaker 1: one at a time or um all at once simultaneously. Right, Um,
25:49
Speaker 1: the suspect may or may not be in this lineup. Yeah,
25:53
Speaker 1: that seems like I think they found that reduced mistaken
25:57
Speaker 1: identity rates, uh were lower when they did this, So
26:04
Speaker 1: you would think just always do that right right, because
26:07
Speaker 1: it says to the witness like the person may not
26:10
Speaker 1: be in here. It's like a none of the above,
26:12
Speaker 1: the dreaded letter e none of the above. You're like,
26:15
Speaker 1: oh God, does that does that mean that they're that
26:18
Speaker 1: the answers not here? And so you may you may
26:21
Speaker 1: say I don't I don't see them where. If they
26:23
Speaker 1: don't say that, you're going to presume that the suspect
26:26
Speaker 1: is in that lineup, and it's your job to find
26:29
Speaker 1: that person and you have to pick somebody. Yeah, most
26:33
Speaker 1: people aren't going to think like I can't say so,
26:36
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to They're gonna be like three. Yeah. Well,
26:41
Speaker 1: first of all, it's a crime against you most a
26:44
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're like picking out this purpose. Sure.
26:47
Speaker 1: Uh so you want them to be you know, found
26:50
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, that's a really good point to you
26:52
Speaker 1: want you don't want them to get away with it.
26:54
Speaker 1: And the other thing too, is I think there's a
26:56
Speaker 1: natural human instinct when given a test to not want
27:01
Speaker 1: to say I can't like you might feel like you
27:04
Speaker 1: have failed. Right. That's why I admire you saying that,
27:07
Speaker 1: like with the phone lineup, you know, not not being
27:10
Speaker 1: not just being like yeah, but if that wouldn't matter
27:15
Speaker 1: to my case, because if I would have said these
27:17
Speaker 1: two and then they're like, no, that's not the lady
27:19
Speaker 1: whose car it was. But a lot of people still
27:21
Speaker 1: would have right right, right, And they probably wouldn't say no,
27:24
Speaker 1: that's wrong. They would have been like, Okay, thanks a
27:25
Speaker 1: lot for your time or whatever, and then you would
27:27
Speaker 1: have left. They have been like, god, he was so close. Uh.
27:32
Speaker 1: Some other research it's interesting that suggests when uh, there
27:36
Speaker 1: is an offender in the lineup that young children and
27:39
Speaker 1: elderly perform about as well as just regularly young adults.
27:44
Speaker 1: But when the lineup does not have the actual offender,
27:47
Speaker 1: then they commit mistakes a lot higher. And to me,
27:51
Speaker 1: that's just because I think kids and elderly might not
27:55
Speaker 1: fully understand. I think they have to pick somebody. Okay, yeah,
27:59
Speaker 1: I agree, I think that's exactly what it is too.
28:02
Speaker 1: But the research bears that out. It looks like so
28:05
Speaker 1: there's there is some like you you talked about research,
28:08
Speaker 1: there's a lot of research in this, but it's become ambiguous.
28:12
Speaker 1: Right if you step back and you listen to all
28:14
Speaker 1: of the different different things that you can do with
28:17
Speaker 1: a lineup, it becomes very clear that a sequential double
28:23
Speaker 1: blind lineup where either one photo of a suspect is
28:27
Speaker 1: shown to the person at a time, or one live
28:30
Speaker 1: suspect is brought out to be looked at one person
28:33
Speaker 1: at a time and is administered by a cop or
28:37
Speaker 1: a worker somebody who doesn't know who the suspect is,
28:41
Speaker 1: that that's going to reduce the chance of a misidentification
28:47
Speaker 1: or a failure of an identification, and that the person
28:51
Speaker 1: who's being presented with these people is not going to
28:54
Speaker 1: be able to guess, and if they actually do remember
28:58
Speaker 1: who the perpetrator was, they're going to recognize them. It's
29:03
Speaker 1: just obvious that that's the best way to do it. Right.
29:06
Speaker 1: The thing is is there was a study in Illinois
29:08
Speaker 1: UM that just completely rocked that idea that that that's
29:13
Speaker 1: the case, because there was a three or five year
29:15
Speaker 1: study in Illinois that looked at different types of lineups
29:20
Speaker 1: and compared them side by side and found that actually,
29:23
Speaker 1: know that a double blind sequential UM lineup actually produces
29:29
Speaker 1: worse results than a UM a simultaneous non double blind one. Right.
29:36
Speaker 1: But then again, not so fast with that because other
29:40
Speaker 1: people since then have questioned the methodology they used in
29:43
Speaker 1: that program and kind of said, you know, I don't
29:47
Speaker 1: even know if we can take this research and take
29:50
Speaker 1: these statistics seriously, right, because method methodologically it was a
29:55
Speaker 1: screwed up study, Like they really dropped the ball on
29:59
Speaker 1: the study. Yeah, and um, I don't think we mentioned
30:01
Speaker 1: the two judgments either. During simultaneous lineups, when everyone's standing
30:05
Speaker 1: there together, you use what's called relative judgment. In other words,
30:08
Speaker 1: you compare all the dudes standing up there against one another,
30:12
Speaker 1: and with the ones where they trot them out one
30:14
Speaker 1: at a time. They use something called absolute judgment, which
30:17
Speaker 1: is supposedly means that they're comparing it to only their
30:21
Speaker 1: memory and not to the people that came before or after. Right,
30:25
Speaker 1: That's that's the hope, that's the ideal, right, right, But
30:28
Speaker 1: with this reachers and research in the study, I kind
30:31
Speaker 1: of didn't even know what to think because it sort
30:33
Speaker 1: of went against the grain and the findings. But then
30:36
Speaker 1: they said, I don't even know if we can trust
30:38
Speaker 1: these findings because the methodology was no good. So we
30:43
Speaker 1: ended up sort of back at square one with the
30:45
Speaker 1: Illinois pilot program. It seems like, yeah, the reason why
30:47
Speaker 1: the methodolo methodology was so terrible. They used the double
30:51
Speaker 1: blind procedure for sequential lineups, but they didn't use it
30:56
Speaker 1: for simultaneous lineups. So if cops were advertently or inadvertently
31:00
Speaker 1: leading people with simultaneous lineups, then of course those those
31:04
Speaker 1: are going to produce um correct choices with suspects better
31:09
Speaker 1: than the one that's a double blind sequential one. They
31:13
Speaker 1: compared apples to oranges in the study. It's almost like
31:17
Speaker 1: a sixth grader came up with how to actually conduct
31:20
Speaker 1: the study that the Illinois legislature said, Illinois State Police,
31:24
Speaker 1: go go figure this out, to do a three year
31:27
Speaker 1: study on this, and they came back and said, huh,
31:31
Speaker 1: and it was it's terrible. And the problem is, if
31:35
Speaker 1: it is true that a sequential double blind study is
31:39
Speaker 1: the way to go, that it is just smarter and
31:40
Speaker 1: works better, that study set that back by years because
31:45
Speaker 1: now all the cops all over the country heard they
31:48
Speaker 1: did the study and it's actually worse not and the
31:51
Speaker 1: design of the study was flawed methodologically, just it doesn't work. Yeah.
31:57
Speaker 1: They even went to the cops UH at Illinois Pilot
32:00
Speaker 1: program talk to them and they said the majority of
32:03
Speaker 1: the officers said they didn't think that it was superior
32:06
Speaker 1: UH and said that witnesses who can identify the offender
32:09
Speaker 1: can do so under either procedure UH and officers express
32:13
Speaker 1: concerns that using a blind administrator disrupts the relationship an
32:17
Speaker 1: investigator has tries to build with a witness. So I
32:20
Speaker 1: interpret all that as it's cops saying, can we just
32:24
Speaker 1: keep doing it the way we've always done it because
32:27
Speaker 1: it gets results right. But the thing is is, um,
32:30
Speaker 1: they have some pretty good points in that if you
32:33
Speaker 1: are running a lineup or whatever. You put together like
32:36
Speaker 1: a six pack is what it's called in the US,
32:39
Speaker 1: where you've got three and three mug shots of people,
32:43
Speaker 1: um and or I think in Canada they usually use twelve.
32:47
Speaker 1: But you put this thing together, then you have to
32:49
Speaker 1: find like a patrol officer or a sergeant or somebody
32:53
Speaker 1: who has no idea what's going on with your kids? Right,
32:57
Speaker 1: and then those that person is to go to the house,
33:00
Speaker 1: record the the what the person did, and then come
33:04
Speaker 1: back and tell you. It's just an extra thing that
33:08
Speaker 1: cops are like, come on, dude, this is just making
33:10
Speaker 1: it way too hard. Yeah. I mean they sit in
33:12
Speaker 1: here that sometimes even have trouble coming up with the
33:16
Speaker 1: blind administrator. And maybe it's a it probably has everything
33:21
Speaker 1: to do with budgets. But my thought is like, why
33:24
Speaker 1: isn't there one person that does only this. Oh, that's
33:28
Speaker 1: a great question. That just is called the administrator the
33:32
Speaker 1: fine of administrator and goes to the people's houses or
33:36
Speaker 1: runs them in the in the precinct or whatever, and
33:39
Speaker 1: this is the only thing that they do, Right, I'll
33:42
Speaker 1: do it. Bring in the administrator. Yeah, that's a TV
33:45
Speaker 1: show waiting to happen. Uh Yeah, I don't know, it's
33:49
Speaker 1: probably budgetary. Um. They also found with a lot of
33:53
Speaker 1: these when there's multiple purpose, it just goes haywire because
33:58
Speaker 1: sometimes they'll put two of the purpose in the same lineup,
34:02
Speaker 1: right right, so super confusing. That actually falls in line
34:05
Speaker 1: with like how to build like a decent line up
34:08
Speaker 1: the right way, and we'll cover that and where they
34:11
Speaker 1: get people to stand in as suspects right after this,
34:34
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck, So you were just talking about how
34:36
Speaker 1: if you have a lineup and you put two suspects
34:40
Speaker 1: that you've got, say there are two guys who robbed
34:42
Speaker 1: some lady, um, and you have five people in the lineup,
34:47
Speaker 1: but two of them are your suspects. That actually is
34:51
Speaker 1: totally unfair for the suspects because what you've done just
34:55
Speaker 1: then is increase the chance that somebody could guess, just
35:00
Speaker 1: guess randomly, uh at the suspect. Right. If you have
35:06
Speaker 1: five people in a lineup and one of them are
35:08
Speaker 1: the suspect, then that person has a one in five
35:11
Speaker 1: chance of being chosen by random chance. But if there's
35:13
Speaker 1: two suspects in a five person lineup, they have a
35:17
Speaker 1: two out of five chance, which is way more than
35:19
Speaker 1: a one in five chance. Some people might even say
35:22
Speaker 1: double the chance, right, and so it's just less fair.
35:26
Speaker 1: So one of the standards that you want to fulfill
35:29
Speaker 1: if you're putting together a lineup in your cop is
35:32
Speaker 1: that you have one suspect per lineup, which is tougher
35:38
Speaker 1: to do than you would think. Yeah, and it seems
35:40
Speaker 1: like a lot of the problem with this is uh
35:42
Speaker 1: and they even say so in the n i J
35:44
Speaker 1: articles that lab studies are one thing, but actually implementing
35:48
Speaker 1: this in the field they get different results. And people
35:51
Speaker 1: are doing lab research on one end, cops are out
35:54
Speaker 1: in the field, sometimes they're in people's homes, sometimes they're
35:57
Speaker 1: in the precinct. And it seems like the two heads
36:00
Speaker 1: aren't talking very much, and there are people, you know.
36:03
Speaker 1: They did like a live web chat at some point
36:06
Speaker 1: to bring together all these experts from around the world,
36:09
Speaker 1: and they kind of all around me were like, this
36:11
Speaker 1: is a big mess and we need to all combined
36:14
Speaker 1: forces to try and do the right thing. And the
36:17
Speaker 1: feeling I get is that a lot of these police
36:19
Speaker 1: precincts just kind of want to be left alone. Sure,
36:22
Speaker 1: I mean, they know what works, and it works, you know,
36:24
Speaker 1: but does it well, that's the question, So, um, they
36:28
Speaker 1: fingered a collar, right, is that the right the gumsh
36:32
Speaker 1: you finger to call it? Yeah, then uh, it's it's
36:35
Speaker 1: all in a good day's work. But if they fingered
36:37
Speaker 1: the wrong collar, then it's no good so um. One
36:44
Speaker 1: of the reasons it's somebody cop would put a two
36:48
Speaker 1: suspects in a lineup. It's not just to like increase
36:51
Speaker 1: the chances that one of those suspects gets picked by
36:53
Speaker 1: an eyewitness. It's because sometimes it can be hard to
36:56
Speaker 1: come up with people for a lineup. Yeah, this was
36:58
Speaker 1: hard to believe, Like they can't find people sometimes, right, Well,
37:02
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because let's say you have
37:04
Speaker 1: multiple witnesses, and each witness gives you a different description
37:11
Speaker 1: of the perpetrator. Right, Ideally, you're going to find a
37:18
Speaker 1: different lineup for each witness. Yeah, Like, if there's three witnesses,
37:24
Speaker 1: you should run three lineups because their descriptions are probably
37:28
Speaker 1: somewhat different. Right. That can be difficult, And there's a
37:31
Speaker 1: couple of ways to handle a lineup. You can do
37:34
Speaker 1: a suspect matched lineup, where you've got a suspect and
37:39
Speaker 1: to keep your suspect from standing out, you make um
37:43
Speaker 1: all the other people in the lineup look like you
37:46
Speaker 1: know your suspect. That's one way to do it. Another
37:49
Speaker 1: is to do the perpetrator description match strategy, which is
37:55
Speaker 1: you've got um and that's when you have no suspect, right,
37:58
Speaker 1: just ants. You can have a suspect, but you're creating
38:02
Speaker 1: your lineup based on what the what the witness has
38:05
Speaker 1: described the perpetrator to look like, and then just throw
38:08
Speaker 1: the suspect in there right, which can be bad for
38:10
Speaker 1: the suspect because if the suspect the person you actually
38:13
Speaker 1: think did it, it doesn't look anything like the eye
38:15
Speaker 1: witness said that there's gonna be four redheads and the
38:18
Speaker 1: one blonde guy who's actually the suspect, he's going to
38:21
Speaker 1: stand out like a sore throne. So there's a lot
38:23
Speaker 1: of different things that have to be massaged here to
38:26
Speaker 1: try to make everybody in the lineup basically look all
38:29
Speaker 1: like the perpetrator the eyewitness described, or all like the
38:33
Speaker 1: suspect that you've got, because you don't want the suspect
38:36
Speaker 1: to stand out. And there's a lot of techniques that
38:37
Speaker 1: they used to try to make everybody look the same. Yeah,
38:41
Speaker 1: one of the I mean they like you said, they
38:42
Speaker 1: dressed people. It was funny that one article said in
38:46
Speaker 1: the Bronx Precinct, they usually put them in Yankees hats. Right,
38:50
Speaker 1: just line up a bunch of guys and Yankees, right.
38:52
Speaker 1: That means that they have like five Yankees hats hanging
38:55
Speaker 1: outside of the you know that room where they walk
38:57
Speaker 1: them into. Wasn't Cramer in the lineup when he was
39:00
Speaker 1: suspect totally serial killer suspect? Yes, I don't remember it
39:05
Speaker 1: was a serial killer, but I remember he was in
39:06
Speaker 1: the line up. He kept turning the wrong way. Yeah,
39:08
Speaker 1: I think he was misidentified on the when they went
39:11
Speaker 1: to l A to pitch the TV show, Cramer got
39:13
Speaker 1: caught up in some like serial killer thing. I think
39:16
Speaker 1: of that, and I think of the great lineup scene
39:19
Speaker 1: in The Usual Suspects, which let's address that real quick,
39:23
Speaker 1: when they have to say something so well, we can't
39:26
Speaker 1: repeat it here because there's bad words. Right. You know,
39:28
Speaker 1: what I was going to say is that that lineup
39:30
Speaker 1: would never happen because not only do you have two
39:33
Speaker 1: suspects in there, all five people in the lineup are
39:36
Speaker 1: your suspects, and they're not dressed the same Yep. Yeah,
39:40
Speaker 1: it's it's a total movie line up, it would never happen.
39:43
Speaker 1: What were you going to say about them saying something? Well,
39:45
Speaker 1: they had to recite a line. I don't know how
39:47
Speaker 1: typical that is, though, you me. When she did her
39:51
Speaker 1: line up, she remembered what the guy was saying, and
39:54
Speaker 1: they that, okay, so that's the thing. And she was like,
39:57
Speaker 1: wait a minute, can I do they have to say
39:58
Speaker 1: whatever I say they said? And the cop was like yeah,
40:01
Speaker 1: and she's like, really what I wanted to say? Yeah?
40:05
Speaker 1: He's like, no, you have to say what they actually said.
40:07
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how did that result? Did she get the guy? Oh?
40:11
Speaker 1: She picked him out of media? Okay, yeah, yeah, I
40:13
Speaker 1: think I got busted. Nice man, you don't mug you me.
40:16
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that, buddy. You hear that? Purpose right,
40:20
Speaker 1: he started quaking in your boots. The one thing, too,
40:23
Speaker 1: that caught me sort of off guard is that I
40:26
Speaker 1: never thought about is the the part about whether or
40:29
Speaker 1: not they're clean shaven, Like there could be details of omission,
40:34
Speaker 1: Like if eyewitness doesn't remember or doesn't mention that they
40:38
Speaker 1: either were clean shaven or not, then I think they
40:41
Speaker 1: default just something that may not be accurate. And so
40:45
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you're lineup, well, your lineup should
40:48
Speaker 1: have all clean shaven dudes. You should just assume that
40:51
Speaker 1: if they didn't say the guy had a beard, that
40:53
Speaker 1: that doesn't that that doesn't mean that the guy had
40:56
Speaker 1: a beard and they just didn't say it. You should
40:58
Speaker 1: just assume it means that they're clean shave, and they
41:00
Speaker 1: should all be clean shaven in the lineup, because if
41:02
Speaker 1: you have five clean shaven guys and one filler or
41:05
Speaker 1: one foil with a big beard like me, I might
41:09
Speaker 1: get picked out just because I look different, right exactly,
41:11
Speaker 1: Or if if the one guy's clean shaven, and you're like, well,
41:15
Speaker 1: they didn't say that the person had a beard, but
41:17
Speaker 1: they also didn't say they didn't have a beard. So
41:20
Speaker 1: I can put this clean shaven suspect in with four
41:23
Speaker 1: other guys who all have beards and make them stand out.
41:25
Speaker 1: That's the opposite. And apparently there's this New York Times
41:29
Speaker 1: article from years back about a guy named, um what
41:33
Speaker 1: was his name, casting agent basically Robert Weston, Yeah, Robert Weston.
41:37
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty interesting little article. Um. But in the
41:41
Speaker 1: article it says that the Bronx cops that use this
41:44
Speaker 1: guy to help fill lineups which we'll talk about in
41:46
Speaker 1: a second. Um that that when they give the perpetrators
41:50
Speaker 1: like the Yankees, hats or whatever for the lineup, like
41:54
Speaker 1: the perpetrator is always the one who pulls it down
41:56
Speaker 1: over his eyes, and they have to be like, dude,
41:58
Speaker 1: putt see however, but else is wearing their hat makes
42:01
Speaker 1: us exactly like that, or else they're going to pick
42:03
Speaker 1: you out. So they actually are trying to help the
42:06
Speaker 1: perpetrator at least, not stand up and be like me,
42:10
Speaker 1: you know, and instead just keep it on the on
42:13
Speaker 1: the level, at least as far as the Yankees had
42:16
Speaker 1: brooms go. I so want to be a filler. I'm
42:20
Speaker 1: sure you could do it. I want to have to
42:22
Speaker 1: hang around long enough until the dude who looks like
42:24
Speaker 1: you commits a crime, which in Atlanta, I'm sure there's
42:27
Speaker 1: a lot of hipsters running around. For sure. I don't
42:30
Speaker 1: look like a hipster. I don't know, uh, I look
42:33
Speaker 1: like it the hipster gone bad. Oh yeah, I'm not
42:37
Speaker 1: need enough to be a hips You look like a
42:38
Speaker 1: hit and run hipster. Hipsters are super well cooft and
42:41
Speaker 1: like squared Away. Oh I know what you mean. You
42:43
Speaker 1: know your your jeans aren't pegged no, I look like
42:46
Speaker 1: a hipster who slept in. So back to Robert Weston,
42:50
Speaker 1: this guy in New York at the time, at least,
42:54
Speaker 1: I can't believe how little money he made. He only
42:56
Speaker 1: got ten dollars for putting together a complete lineup. Yeah,
43:00
Speaker 1: and they said sometimes he does as many as four
43:02
Speaker 1: in a day and sometimes not at all. Like so
43:05
Speaker 1: a good day for him is forty bucks. That's what
43:08
Speaker 1: it sounds like. Man. Maybe that's the problem is they
43:11
Speaker 1: need to Well again, it's budgetary. Probably he's gonna say,
43:14
Speaker 1: pay a little bit more, get a casting agent in there,
43:17
Speaker 1: get some of those college educated fillers in there, right,
43:20
Speaker 1: I guess. And and also it made it sound like,
43:24
Speaker 1: I don't know, he's kind of pulling people off the street.
43:26
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're homeless people. Sometimes they're like drug addicts. Well yeah,
43:31
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it depends on who the purpose.
43:34
Speaker 1: Sometimes they get other cops that aren't busy to stand in, right,
43:38
Speaker 1: I mean, these are people there's a real need. People
43:40
Speaker 1: will go to a police station and stand in the
43:42
Speaker 1: lineup for ten dollars. Right, they get paid as much
43:45
Speaker 1: as the guy who organized the party. Right. But if
43:48
Speaker 1: Robert Weston stands in himself. He'll get an extra twenty
43:51
Speaker 1: bucks on top of putting the thing together right. How
43:53
Speaker 1: many times he tries to do that, but he he
43:56
Speaker 1: He even said like if they want white guys, I
43:58
Speaker 1: don't know any white guys. So they go to homeless
44:00
Speaker 1: shelters for that. And that's that's very much what cops do.
44:03
Speaker 1: Cops will go find people on the street, they will
44:05
Speaker 1: go to homeless shelters. They will have UM casting agents
44:09
Speaker 1: like Robert Weston on their speed dial um and what
44:13
Speaker 1: they'll say is, I've got a um, middle aged white
44:18
Speaker 1: guy with a graying beard, and um he's about six
44:23
Speaker 1: ft tall. Give me four other people that match that description,
44:27
Speaker 1: and ideally four other people that that match that description
44:32
Speaker 1: will show up and not three and then one other
44:34
Speaker 1: total outlier or something like that. Well, the one cop
44:37
Speaker 1: was complaining about his work, it was kind of funny
44:40
Speaker 1: complaining about Robert Weston. He was like, he didn't bring
44:42
Speaker 1: in good people. He always like fudges the ages and
44:45
Speaker 1: the races and stuff. But the reason why they keep
44:48
Speaker 1: using this guy is because he answers his fun doesn't
44:51
Speaker 1: matter what time you call him. He can put a
44:53
Speaker 1: lineup together for you. And if you have a very
44:55
Speaker 1: limited amount of time. You can only hold the suspect
44:58
Speaker 1: for so long without charging the them, but you want
45:00
Speaker 1: to put them in a lineup for what's called an
45:02
Speaker 1: investigatory lineup to where you just want to see maybe
45:06
Speaker 1: bringing one witness just to see if you're on the
45:09
Speaker 1: right track. You've got a very limited amount of time
45:11
Speaker 1: and you need people like that, which means that you
45:14
Speaker 1: may have a lower quality one. Fortunately, that would just
45:17
Speaker 1: be for an investigatory one. If it were for a
45:19
Speaker 1: confirmatory one. That's the one that you see on TV
45:22
Speaker 1: where it's like you bring in a witness and you've
45:25
Speaker 1: got your suspect and they're sitting in jail and you
45:27
Speaker 1: bring them out. That is the one where like all
45:31
Speaker 1: the t should be crossed in the eyes should be dotted,
45:33
Speaker 1: because a good court, well here, and we'll want to
45:37
Speaker 1: know the details of how that lineup went, and if
45:40
Speaker 1: anything sounds hinky, they'll toss that lineup right out, that
45:43
Speaker 1: eye witness testimony out. The worst possible version of all
45:47
Speaker 1: of this is something called a show up. And this
45:51
Speaker 1: is something this is also a movie trope that you
45:52
Speaker 1: see and that's when an officer brings a witness to
45:55
Speaker 1: a place to show the witness the suspect that's been
45:59
Speaker 1: apprehend ended. So like they're in the back of a car,
46:04
Speaker 1: or here's what happens in the movie. There's a guy
46:06
Speaker 1: in the back of a police car handcuffed. They'll bring
46:09
Speaker 1: the person who was robbed or whatever there to the scene.
46:13
Speaker 1: They'll yank him out of the back of the car
46:15
Speaker 1: and say, it's just the dirt bag who did it?
46:18
Speaker 1: Like just one guy, and uh, that's clearly the worst
46:21
Speaker 1: possible version of all of this, and the guys like,
46:23
Speaker 1: I need more pay, I'm coming down. So so one
46:28
Speaker 1: of the here's the reason why that show up is
46:30
Speaker 1: so terrible, Chuck, Well, there's no other people that they're
46:33
Speaker 1: comparing them to. That's one. But they're also in handcuffs,
46:37
Speaker 1: in the back of a cop car or something like that.
46:38
Speaker 1: They're in police custody. And so the eyewitness is going
46:41
Speaker 1: to assume that, in addition to their testimony, the cops
46:45
Speaker 1: obviously have something on this person, and so that must
46:48
Speaker 1: mean that the cops know it's that person and this
46:50
Speaker 1: is just a formality. So I'll be like, yeah, sure,
46:53
Speaker 1: that was that person. That's the first problem with it.
46:56
Speaker 1: The second problem is is that from that point on,
46:59
Speaker 1: that person and that they've just seen now becomes the
47:03
Speaker 1: star of their memory of that crime. It's like they
47:07
Speaker 1: photoshop this person's face into that vague, shadowy face that's
47:12
Speaker 1: holding the gun that they were actually focused on, and
47:14
Speaker 1: from that moment on they just get more and more
47:18
Speaker 1: certain that that was the person because that person is
47:21
Speaker 1: now starring in their memories. And it's not just the
47:23
Speaker 1: problem with the show up but with any um misidentification.
47:28
Speaker 1: When they see that person and that person becomes seared
47:30
Speaker 1: in their brain, they're positive from that point on, and
47:34
Speaker 1: they can seem very confident in court, which again juries
47:37
Speaker 1: by even though it's garbage, and weeks and months can
47:41
Speaker 1: go by between the point that you have experienced a
47:44
Speaker 1: crime and when you may be identifying someone or a
47:48
Speaker 1: court for sure as months and months and months later.
47:51
Speaker 1: So man, part of me does think, like, get rid
47:55
Speaker 1: of all this. A lot of people say that, or
47:57
Speaker 1: at the very least say, this is I would's test simony.
48:00
Speaker 1: It's actually terrible testimony. Actually it's terrible evidence, but let's
48:04
Speaker 1: do it right. But and if they did say that,
48:06
Speaker 1: if they basically lowered what what how much weight eyewitness
48:11
Speaker 1: testimony held in court. Then those cases that were built
48:15
Speaker 1: entirely on eyewitness testimony wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
48:18
Speaker 1: They have to go build a bigger case. Yeah, but
48:21
Speaker 1: like in Umi's case, it worked, it did now it
48:24
Speaker 1: like that, right. That's the problem is that you know
48:28
Speaker 1: if if of the time is wrong, the time is right,
48:35
Speaker 1: we think so, I mean, it's not It's not like
48:38
Speaker 1: Arson investigation, which we're gonna do one on one day,
48:41
Speaker 1: where it's just totally made up. Like it does have
48:44
Speaker 1: some veracity, but there's a lot of flaws with it
48:46
Speaker 1: and the really dicey. They need to figure it out
48:51
Speaker 1: because of that, So they need to go do that now.
48:55
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine anything worse than being misidentified
48:58
Speaker 1: and serving two decades in prison for something you really
49:03
Speaker 1: didn't do? No, I really can't. I mean I remember
49:07
Speaker 1: how said I got when we did the Innocence Project.
49:09
Speaker 1: It's just you hear these stories and then they get
49:11
Speaker 1: out and they're like, man, here's there's four thousand bucks.
49:14
Speaker 1: We feel pretty bad, right, go get yourself something nice.
49:16
Speaker 1: Try to forget about all this, right. Yeah, did you
49:19
Speaker 1: ever see that movie An Innocent Man with Tom Selick?
49:24
Speaker 1: It's scared the Bejesus out of me. The same thing
49:27
Speaker 1: happened to him when he was when he was he
49:30
Speaker 1: was framed. Oh wait, that's high road to China. All right,
49:35
Speaker 1: I got my stuff, makes it? No, that's quickly down
49:37
Speaker 1: under that right? Uh? You got anything else? Nope? All right,
49:41
Speaker 1: Well that's it for police lineups for now. We'll do
49:43
Speaker 1: an update whenever they get it figured out. We did
49:46
Speaker 1: one on police catches, right, Okay, is this it we've done? No?
49:50
Speaker 1: We still got arson in the section. We got a
49:53
Speaker 1: lot all right, um, yeah, okay, okay. If you want
49:58
Speaker 1: to know more about police line ups then I don't know,
50:01
Speaker 1: go hang around a police station. See if you can
50:03
Speaker 1: stand in one, learn firsthand. Okay. Get a little sign
50:06
Speaker 1: that says I will be your foil ten dollars. Uh.
50:11
Speaker 1: And since I said ten dollars, it's time for listener Matt.
50:16
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this youngest fan is very cute email. Hey, guys,
50:19
Speaker 1: love the podcast. You're doing it right? Uh, it's not
50:23
Speaker 1: a Uh this email is not episode specific, but I
50:26
Speaker 1: had to tell you about this. My husband and I
50:28
Speaker 1: welcomed to our baby boy into the world a couple
50:30
Speaker 1: of months ago, when I was pregnantly joked that the
50:32
Speaker 1: baby would think that one of you was his dad
50:35
Speaker 1: because he heard your voices so often. Ah, that's a
50:39
Speaker 1: very funny joke in the family, you know, joke about
50:43
Speaker 1: the paternity of your childhood. Uh. Now that he's here,
50:47
Speaker 1: I've been playing music in the car instead of the podcast,
50:50
Speaker 1: thinking music helps calm him. Well, one day he was
50:53
Speaker 1: crying and crying in the car. I couldn't get him
50:54
Speaker 1: to calm down. She was like, what's wrong with Doc?
50:57
Speaker 1: And why is it doc and working? Uh. It couldn't
51:00
Speaker 1: get him calmed down with any the usual tricks. So
51:02
Speaker 1: I decided to heck with it. I'm gonna put on
51:03
Speaker 1: the podcast and a kid you not. As soon as
51:06
Speaker 1: you guys started talking, he stopped crying. My husband says
51:09
Speaker 1: it was coincidence. Jealous, I say, stuff, you should know magic.
51:14
Speaker 1: Now we're now we're back to always listening to you
51:17
Speaker 1: guys in the car. Keep up with great work and
51:19
Speaker 1: thanks for soothing my baby boy. And that is from
51:22
Speaker 1: Sarah Strantz and our youngest fan, Frank from beautiful Mount Pleasant,
51:28
Speaker 1: South Carolina. That's awesome. Thank you so much for that email. Frank,
51:32
Speaker 1: go to sleep. Quiet now they named their baby after
51:35
Speaker 1: our chair? Yeah right, that's pretty wouldn't that be amazing
51:39
Speaker 1: if they actually did? Uh? And thank you also to
51:43
Speaker 1: unnamed husband for being a good sport. Agreed. If you
51:47
Speaker 1: want to send us agree email about how we're magic,
51:50
Speaker 1: you can hang out with us on social media. Just
51:52
Speaker 1: go to our website, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
51:55
Speaker 1: And you can also send us an email to Stuff
51:57
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52:05
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