Nancy Steblay<\/strong><\/a> believes these crucial questions deserve answers: How reliable is eyewitness identification,\u00a0and how trustworthy are the law enforcement procedures that collect eyewitness evidence?<\/p>\n\u201cI was trained as a social psychologist. As I was teaching after graduate school, I saw\u00a0that many of the principles I\u2019d learned about social psychology and experimental methods really applied to this area of psychology\u00a0and law,\u201d said Steblay, who is entering retirement after 32\u00a0years at Augsburg. \u201cWhat became interesting to me are principles through which we could change the justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Activists and community leaders in the United States have long decried the injustices of racial discrimination and violence perpetuated in the criminal justice system. More than six years\u00a0before Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, prompting a growing number of citizens and leaders to call for greater accountability for law enforcement officers\u2014with some calling into question the legitimacy of police policies and even police presence as a whole\u2014Steblay and her team collected data, evaluated methods, and drew scientific conclusions about a specific mechanism within the\u00a0law enforcement system that many believe is, at the very least, in desperate need of reform.<\/p>\n
That component of the justice system is the police practice of lineups: a law enforcement process designed to confirm an eyewitness\u2019s identification of a criminal suspect among a lineup of several people with similar appearance, build, and height as the suspect. However, this process is far from flawless.<\/p>\n
Mistaken eyewitness identification is observed in\u00a0seven of every 10 cases when the true identity of the criminal is revealed by forensic DNA testing, said Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor who collaborated with Steblay.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a national problem and has major implications for our criminal justice system and our belief in the reliability of that system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Real People in Real Cases<\/h3>\n Eyewitness identification of criminal perpetrators is a staple form of evidence in courts of law.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of eyewitness memory like trace evidence, such as blood, gunshot residue, or other physical evidence,\u201d Steblay said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to contaminate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steblay, along with Wells, is among the top national experts in eyewitness identification. As an experimental social psychologist who has conducted research on eyewitness memory, police procedures, and eyewitness evidence for 30 years, she is often called upon by defense attorneys to testify when they believe a suspect is being wrongly accused based on faulty identification.<\/p>\n
Her ability to speak with authority on the subject has been reinforced\u00a0by her research findings. Assisted by Augsburg student researchers, Steblay and Wells led studies that, for the first time, sought to understand and predict eyewitness identification errors using actual lineups.<\/p>\n
Before these studies, scientific psychology\u2019s understanding of eyewitness identification accuracy was based almost exclusively on controlled laboratory studies that simulate eyewitness experiences.<\/p>\n
Steblay and Wells were awarded a National Science Foundation grant to pursue a four-phase study from 2014-2018. The research followed up on their prior work, in which police lineups were presented to real eyewitnesses by detectives using laptop\u00a0computers with a software program developed specifically for the field experiment. Data was collected from 855 lineups in four cities: Austin, Texas; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; San Diego; and Tucson, Arizona.<\/p>\n
The field data collected in these cities provided lineup photos and eyewitness identification decisions, investigator reports, and audiotapes of the verbal exchange between the lineup administrator and eyewitness during each lineup procedure. A startling discovery emerged from a pattern of cases when lineup administrators, who were also the case detectives, knew who the suspects were and behaved in a leading fashion with the eyewitnesses.<\/p>\n
Learning From Lineups<\/h3>\n Augsburg student researchers collected data and assessed 190\u00a0real lineups for fairness or bias. \u201cIt\u2019s powerful to bring students into research by saying, \u2018Here\u2019s the problem of wrongful convictions, and let\u2019s figure out how to solve them,\u2019\u201d Steblay said.<\/p>\n
Psychology majors made up the research team at Augsburg, adding laboratory skills to what they learned in the classroom. Steblay and 27 student researchers conducted the first and second studies across multiple semesters.<\/p>\n
Verbal exchanges between police lineup administrators and eyewitnesses to crimes were audio-recorded. There had never been an analysis of recorded verbal comments from actual witnesses because such recordings had never existed until this study.<\/p>\n
The Augsburg students coded 102\u00a0audio transcripts to examine the association between witness comments and lineup selection, finding that an instant identification by an eyewitness was less likely to produce an error than when the witness was deliberative.<\/p>\n
Natalie Johnson \u201918<\/strong>, who\u2019s pursuing a master\u2019s degree in counseling psychology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, was one of the students who listened to police audiotapes and coded them based on whether the decision-making process was immediate or deliberative.<\/p>\nShe and other students were startled\u00a0to realize that the police push for a conviction could, in some cases, influence how criminal cases are pursued.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing the work on police lineups made me realize how flawed our system can be,\u201d she said. \u201cIt made me realize our criminal justice has a long way to go.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0Sean Adams \u201917<\/strong>, who is currently a legal assistant, said he was shocked by how poorly some of the lineups were constructed.<\/p>\nThe tests were designed to include fake witnesses, and these mock witnesses in Augsburg\u2019s laboratory studies represented the worst possible scenario: a witness with no memory of the offender. Mock witnesses should not be able to pick the police suspect from \u00a0a lineup at a rate higher than chance. \u201cThe worst lineup I saw had such a leading description that the [laboratory] witnesses picked the police suspect 80% of the time,\u201d Adams said. \u201cThat should have statistically been less than 20% of the time.\u201d Lineups should be constructed so that the suspect and the fillers (innocent people added to the lineup) match the suspect description.<\/p>\n
Relevant Research<\/h3>\n Along with stunning insights into eyewitness identification, these studies brought to light more questions worth exploring. The research resulted in 12 conference poster presentations involving 23 students, and it fostered two student honors projects and spinoff projects that are ongoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was time-consuming, but it was important. I think the student researchers had a sense of the importance,\u201d Steblay said. \u201cIt was really fun to work with them. Their work enabled me to complete the project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Augsburg student researchers saw the subject material\u2019s importance for effective law enforcement practices as well as its resonance with people beyond their research group. When Austin Conery \u201917<\/strong> began researching how to predict eyewitness identification errors, he discovered that his Augsburg University research project was a hot topic with friends and family.<\/p>\n\u201cEvery party or every family event, someone would ask what was going on at school, and\u00a0I could talk about the research for hours because it was so relevant,\u201d Conery said.<\/p>\n
Besides a view into a major criminal justice system issue, students said the research opportunity gave them practical experience.<\/p>\n
Conery said the research gave him the confidence to read, understand, and apply studies in his current job as a site director at a children\u2019s mental health provider, PrairieCare.\u00a0\u201cIt was a great way to implement the things I was learning in class,\u201d he said. \u201cIt gave me the place to think critically in a controlled environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Adams considers his future work, he\u2019s looking back to his time at Augsburg. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking of what I enjoyed in college, and a lot of it was the work I did with Nancy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Turning Research Findings into Practical Policies<\/h3>\n Steblay\u2019s influence may not make her a household name, but her research findings are being put to practical use in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n
Minnesota judges view a webinar module she created, \u201cEyewitness Science: Protection and Evaluation of Eyewitness Identification Evidence,\u201d as part of their judicial e-learning program. Steblay also published a chapter in the 2019 book, \u201cPsychological Science and the Law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The findings of the research by Steblay, Wells, and Augsburg student researchers are leading to major reforms nationally. The best practices include critical stipulations: that lineups must be double-blind, meaning the administrating officer doesn\u2019t know who the suspect is, and that the non-suspect fillers in the lineup must resemble the suspect and match the description of the offender that was provided by the eyewitness.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are hundreds of thousands of police officers who are using these eyewitness identification protocols that we didn\u2019t use 20 years ago, and they don\u2019t know Nancy Steblay\u2019s name,\u201d said William Brooks, a police chief in Norwood, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
Brooks travels the country training police on what he regards as groundbreaking science-backed best practices for lineups. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s been as wide of an impact in other areas of investigation as in how we deal with eyewitness memory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In mid-May, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed bipartisan legislation that requires uniform science-backed eyewitness identification practices for all law enforcement, which goes into effect in early 2021.<\/p>\n
Still, the eyewitness identification best practices face resistance. \u201cSome\u00a0of it is individual police jurisdictions just not wanting to be told how to do things,\u201d Steblay said in an interview with Yahoo News. \u201cSometimes police\u00a0or prosecutors say they don\u2019t want rules to be so rigid, because then if we just violate one of the rules, then that ruins our prosecution or we can\u2019t catch the bad guys or whatever. So they feel like it\u2019s undermining their ability to do the good job that they should do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see it that way,\u201d Steblay said. \u201cI just think these are not difficult changes.\u201d Steblay views the recommended lineup reforms as a means to strengthen eyewitness evidence and reduce the likelihood of a mistaken identification.<\/p>\n
The Innocence Project, a nonprofit founded in 1992 to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing, has worked to pass laws throughout the country that embrace the scientifically supported best practices advanced by Steblay and Wells.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we began our work, a handful of states had embraced best practices. Today more than half of the states in the country have adopted key eyewitness identification reforms,\u201d said Rebecca Brown, the nonprofit\u2019s policy director.<\/p>\n
Steblay hopes more police departments will enact these reforms. \u201cWe have at least part of the answer to how police can reduce mistaken identification and wrongful convictions.”<\/p>\n
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Reforms in action<\/h3>\n States where core eyewitness reforms have been implemented through legislation, court action, or substantial voluntary compliance:<\/p>\nCalifornia, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nvia Innocence Project<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ve seen the story on TV or heard it on a true crime podcast. A crime is committed. An eyewitness identifies a suspect in the lineup. The suspect is prosecuted and relegated to years of incarceration. Justice is served … until DNA evidence exonerates the suspect. Augsburg University Professor of Psychology Nancy Steblay believes these <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":10478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[218,220,221,144,90],"class_list":["post-10475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-best-of","tag-criminal-justice","tag-psychology","tag-research","tag-spring-summer-2020"],"wps_subtitle":"National Science Foundation grant fuels Professor Nancy Steblay and Augsburg students\u2019 research of the reliability of eyewitness identification and law enforcement procedures","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10475"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10917,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions\/10917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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You\u2019ve seen the story on TV or heard it on a true crime podcast.<\/p>\n![\"Map](\"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/08\/Map.png\")