A Case of Mistaken Identity?

The Psychology of Eyewitness

Memory
by
Karen Chambers
Department of Psychology
Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN

In the past few months there have been a series of attacks on white and Asian women in a local
neighborhood, and the police have been under pressure to solve the cases. You are the defense
attorney representing Tyrone Briggs, who has been charged with aggravated assault in the crimes.
Tyrone is a 19-year-old high school basketball star who, at the time of the crimes, was living at 412
Jervay Place, the local housing project. Tyrone is 6'1" tall, has long hair processed in Jeri curls, a
broad flat nose, a large mole on his lip, and a severe stutter. The general description given by the
witnesses (most of whom were the victims of the assaults) at the time of the attacks was that the
attacker was in his early 20's, light skinned, between 170 and 200 pounds with a short afro and
possibly a receding hairline. None of the victims mentioned a mole or a stutter at the time of the
attacks.
You have recently read a defense attorney newsletter that outlines some of the problems with
eyewitness identification and have looked at the National Institute of Justice's guidelines for law
enforcement commissioned by the U.S. Attorney General (see Sources below). Based on your
reading, you believe that Tyrone may be a victim of mistaken identification. However, the five victims
and an African American man who briefly held the assailant at gunpoint have all identified Tyrone as
the man who committed the crimes. You need to decide whether to hire an expert in eyewitness
memory to testify at the trial. Because it costs money to hire the expert, you want to be reasonably
certain that the expert witness will indeed cast doubt on the veracity of the victims' testimony.
The first witness was a Seattle University pre-med student who was taking a run around the campus
track during the afternoon when she was attacked. As she was running, she noticed a man standing

near the public restrooms. As she neared him, he called out to her, saying he had a question. As she
got closer to him, he suddenly lunged at her with a serrated knife and began dragging her toward the
restroom. She wriggled out of her sweatshirt and ran across the field toward the campus buildings
while he yelled after her, "I'm going to get you!"
The second witness, an attorney, was attacked at 8:00 a.m. as she was walking toward the
courthouse. A man jumped out of "nowhere," knocked her to the ground, and said repeatedly, "Give
me your money. I'm going to stab you." He held a serrated knife in his hand. She fought back and he
ran off, taking her purse and gym bag with him.
The third witness, a social worker, was attacked when she parked near the housing project on her
way to the hospital. A man came around the corner and walking quickly pulled out a small steak knife
and said, "Your purse or your money." She started screaming and the man ran away. The encounter
lasted about half a minute and was the shortest attack.
The fourth witness, another social worker, was walking to work at the hospital when a man jumped
out of the bushes and grabbed her. In a low conversational tone of voice he said, "I'm going to stab
you in the head. Give me your money." She offered him the five dollars that she had. He said it was
not enough and began putting his hand up her skirt. She started screaming, kicking, and scratching,
and managed to get away. He ran off in the opposite direction.
The fifth witness, an X-ray technician, was walking to work at the hospital when she saw a man
standing in the darkened entrance to an alleyway. She kept walking. Seconds later she was lying on
the ground dazed. The assailant had hit her in the back of the head with a fence post. He then
proceeded to punch her several times in the face and then dragged her into a vacant apartment in
Jervay Place, where he tore off her clothes and attempted to rape her. Another man, Karl Vance,
opened the door to the vacant apartment shouting, "Hold it. I have a gun!" Mr. Vance then yelled to
his girlfriend, who lived at 410 Jervay Place, to call the cops. The attacker bolted through the back
door.
Within two months of the first attack and a month after the last attack the police had arrested Tyrone.
The same day Tyrone was arrested, Karl Vance picked Tyrone's picture out of a series of 21 photos
and indicated that he was absolutely positive of his identification. The next day the police obtained a
search warrant and searched Tyrone's home. They were unable to find any stolen property, knives, or
distinctive clothing. Later that day, the police brought four of the victims down to the precinct to view a

lineup. The police informed the women that it was to be expected that they might have an emotional
response to seeing their attacker again; however, the women were assured that the attacker could
not see them.
After an hour, the police informed the women that they could not get enough people together to
ensure that the person in custody would have a fair lineup so they would have to do a photo lineup
instead. Because Tyrone had a prominent mole on his lip, the police followed standard procedure and
made sure that all of the photos had a similar mole so that Tyrone would not stand out. All four of the
victims looked at the photo lineup and selected Tyrone's picture. However, they indicated that they
were uncertain and chose the person who looked most like their attacker. The fifth victim selected
Tyrone from the same photo lineup a week later.
One week later the victims were brought back in for a live lineup. Tyrone was in the lineup with six
other African American men who looked similar to him. The officer who conducted the lineup did not
conceal Tyrone's mole or ensure everyone had a similar feature. The officer who conducted the
lineup had members of the lineup repeat phrases that were said at the time of the crimes. One of the
victims noted in her written statement that the man in the lineup stuttered and her attacker did not.
Several others noted that he seemed "nervous" because of the stutter. However, all of the victims as
well as Karl Vance selected Tyrone.
As the defense lawyer, you need to decide whether to hire the expert witness.
1. Do you think that Tyrone Briggs might be a victim of false identification? Why or why not?

2. What factors are present that make the witnesses reliable?

3. What factors are present that make the witnesses unreliable?

CASE TEACHING NOTES

for
"A Case of Mistaken Identity?"
by
Karen Chambers
Department of Psychology
Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN

INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this case study, which is based on an actual court case brought to trial in 1987, is to
demonstrate that memory is a reconstructive process rather than an accurate recording of events.
Many fundamental principles of memory can be discussed using this case. I have used the case in
my undergraduate Introductory Psychology course and in my Psychology and the Law course (with
class sizes ranging between 15 and 25) after having given a lecture on memory phenomenon. It
might also be used in a cognitive psychology course.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
I have run this case study two ways depending on my goals. In my Introductory Psychology course, I
am really trying to get the basics across in an interesting way, so I have the students read the case
study in class in small groups. For about five to 10 minutes, each group attempts to generate ideas
about why/why not Tyrone may be a victim of false identification. I emphasize that they want to think
about why there might be a problem with the victims' testimony. I then have each group talk about
one issue, and I discuss relevant studies and literature as the students come up with a list of
testimony problems. This usually takes 20 to 30 minutes.
If your students have access to the Internet in class, you can have them access the information at the

two URLs provided in the case study (see National Institute of Justice 1999 and State Appellate
Defenders Office 1996 in the references below) and have them discuss the pitfalls to avoid in
eyewitness memory. The students will still need to think about why these are relevant to this
particular case. The article on the National Institute of Justice site is quite long; tell students to use
the ASCII file and search for "lineup."
In the advanced course on Psychology and the Law I have students read some articles on
eyewitness memory before doing the case study in class. The best one for the purpose of this case
study is Wells et al. (2000), which is a summary of the information from the National Institute of
Justice site and details not only what law enforcement officials should do but also why they should do
it. Again, the day of class the students work in small groups for five to 10 minutes analyzing the case
and then I lead an open discussion calling on each of the groups to share their thoughts and ideas
about the case.

BLOCKS OF ANALYSIS
1. Viewing conditions and their affect on eyewitness accuracy.
In this case, a major problem for the defense attorney is that the witnesses all viewed the
criminal in the daylight and he was wearing no disguise or hat (see Lindsay, Wells and
Rumpel 1981) .
2. Misattribution of source
Source misattribution refers to the phenomenon in which we learn information from one
source and then erroneously attribute it to a different source. A classic example is when you
start telling a joke to a friend only to realize she or he originally told it to you. In this
situation, you have misattributed the source of the joke to someone other than the original
source.
This is a subtle feature of the case study but some of the students usually pick up on it. Karl
Vance's longtime girlfriend lived in the housing project in which Tyrone lived. In fact, she
was Tyrone's next door neighbor (note the apartment numbers). It is possible that Tyrone
was familiar to Karl because they had seen each other in the hallways of the apartment
complex (Johnson, Hastroudi and Lindsay 1993). Thus, when Karl Vance saw the picture of
Tyrone in the lineup it is possible that he misattributed the familiarity he felt for the picture
to the crime scene rather than accurately attributing it to seeing Tyrone around the
apartment complex.
3. Suggestive questioning/bias lineup
This case presents misleading questioning in a different way than normally addressed in the
literature. The fact that during the photo lineup all the photos had a person with a mole was
a subtle cue to the witnesses that the suspect the police had in mind had a mole. In the live
lineup, only Tyrone had a mole and the witnesses picked him out as the criminal. The
suggestion that the accused had a mole in the photo lineup may have decreased the
accuracy at the time of the live lineup. This is similar to the many studies conducted by
Loftus (see, for example, Loftus and Ketcham 1991) showing that a suggestive question

increases subjects' inaccuracy in a final test of memory.

Also, Buckout (1974) has demonstrated that constructing the lineup so that one person
stands out results in biases in selection compared to a lineup where everyone is similar. In
this case, Tyrone stood out because he was the only one with a mole at the live lineup. He
may also have stood out because he was the only one with a stutter when asked to speak
during the lineup.
4. Effect of decision criteria
Malpass and Devine (1981) demonstrate that biased instructions significantly alter a person's
accuracy when trying to recall an event. Malpass and Devine demonstrate that when asked
"which of these people" committed the crime, the subjects identified someone 78 percent of
the time from a lineup that did not contain the criminal (thus, all IDs are wrong). In
contrast, when the subjects where explicitly told that the criminal "may or may not be in
the lineup," only 33 percent of the subjects identified someone. This is similar to the
findings of other studies on memory that demonstrate people use varying criteria to
determine whether they remember something depending on the circumstances of the recall
task (Zaragoza and Lane 1994; Lindsay and Johnson 1989).
In a situation where it is called to the witness's attention that the actual perpetrator may not be
there, eyewitnesses are likely to adopt a more stringent criterion and to recognize that the
person in the lineup who most closely matches the suspect may not actually be the suspect. In
the example in the case study, however, the police gave cues that indicated they believed the
right person was in custody. For example, the investigator initially said that "we can't get
enough people to ensure a fair lineup to the person in custody" and at the second lineup the
investigator warned the victims that they might have an emotional response upon seeing the
assailant again.

FURTHER INFORMATION
Students generally want to know more details about the case and I have found this case generates a
great deal of thought and discussion about the nature of memory and the judicial system. I have
streamlined the case in an attempt to highlight the memory issues that were relevant to the case; the
chapter in Loftus and Ketcham (1991) gives more detail and is a very interesting read.

Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on witness memory, was asked by the defense to testify;
however, the judge did not allow her testimony because he felt there was sufficient
"corroborating evidence" that Tyrone did commit the crimes. Paradoxically, the
corroborating evidence that the judge cited was the fact that there were no knives or other
"fruits" of the crime found in his apartment.

There was another suspect who fit the original description given by the victims, and another
victim (not described here) tentatively identified his picture as the assailant. However, the
picture of the second suspect was never shown to the five witnesses who identified Tyrone.

Despite the fact that there was at least one additional attack while Tyrone was in jail, the
judge did not allow testimony about similar crimes if the victim was to testify that the
assailant was someone other than Tyrone.

Tyrone was tried and the jury could not reach a decision. He was tried again and the jury
convicted him. The conviction was overthrown because of jury misconduct. The prosecution
tried the case a third time and the jury could not reach a verdict. The prosecution ended up
dropping the case three years after originally charging Tyrone with the crime.

REFERENCES
Buckout, R. 1974. Eyewitness testimony. Scientific American 231:23-31.
Johnson, H., and D.S. Lindsay. 1993. Source Monitoring. Psychological Bulletin 114:3-28.
Lindsay, D.S., and M.K. Johnson. 1989. The eyewitness suggestibility effect and memory for
source. Memory and Cognition 17:349-358.
Lindsay, R.C.L., G.L. Wells, and C. Rumpel. 1981. Can people detect eyewitness identification
accuracy within and between situations? Journal of Applied Psychology 66:79-89.
Loftus, E.F., and K. Ketcham. 1991. Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness

and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial. New York: St. Martin's.
Malpass, R.S., and P.G. Devine. 1981. Eyewitness identification: Lineup instructions and the
absence of the offender. Journal of Applied Psychology 66:482-489.
National Institute of Justice. 1999. Eyewitness evidence: A guide for law enforcement.
Retrieved November 2, 2000: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/178240.htm
State Appellate Defenders Office. 1996. Criminal defense newsletter. Retrieved November 2,
2000: http://www.sado.org/19cdn12.htm
Wells, G.L., R.S. Malpass, R.C.L. Lindsay, R.P. Fisher, J.W. Turtle, and S.M. Fulero. 2000.
From the lab to the police station: A successful application of eyewitness research. American

Psychologist 55:581-598.
Zaragoza, M.S., and S.M. Lane. 1994. Source misattributions and the suggestibility of
eyewitness memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition
20:934-945.
Acknowledgements: This case study was developed with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts
and the National Science Foundation as part of the Case Studies in Science Workshop held at the
State University of New York at Buffalo on June 12-16, 2000.