Exam 14: Pretrial Visual Identification Procedures

An indicted suspect and his attorney are seated in an interrogation room at the police station. Without informing the suspect or attorney, the police allow a witness to observe them through a window in the room's wall to determine if the victim can identify anyone in the room as the perpetrator. How is such a situation likely to be viewed by the courts?

Memory fades fairly rapidly immediately following the event, a phenomenon referred to as the __________.

When sensory acquisition is incomplete because a person is overwhelmed with too much information in too short a period of time, _______________ has occurred.

The Yerkes-Dodson law posits perception and memory are at their best when the person is experiencing a(n) _____ level of stress.

Eyewitness identification is complicated by the fact that people can easily change many of their facial characteristics, such as hair style, presence or absence of facial hair, and hair color. These are called _____ characteristics.

In _____, different memory images may become combined or confused with one another.

In determining the admissibility of identification evidence, the most important factor is whether _____.

When a person has witnessed a violent crime that involves a weapon, he pays very close attention to his surroundings and his level of accuracy in recalling these events is much higher than in normal circumstances.

Within an hour after a robbery, the police identify an individual whose modus operandi and description match that described by the victim. Police bring a photo of the individual. This is most accurately called a photographic _____.

By which of the following may a suspect waive the right to counsel at the confrontation?

The American Bar Association recommends that lineups and photo arrays should be double-blind, meaning that the suspect and the foils should not be able to see the identity of the witness.

Photo arrays are considered a "critical stage" of a criminal prosecution.

The people who appear in a lineup or photo array other than the suspect are called __________.

In Neil v. Biggers, the Supreme Court listed five factors to be considered in evaluating the likelihood of misidentification. Which of the following is not one of the five?

A __________ error is a belief that events that were imagined were actually perceived.

Explain the concept of incomplete sensory acquisition.

What do data from The Innocence Project suggest is the leading cause of wrongful conviction in United States courts?

Police are in the initial stages of investigating a suspect for involvement in a criminal offense. The suspect has not been indicted. Police arrange for a lineup, but don't provide counsel for the defendant. In the course of conducting the lineup, police followed certain procedures that were highly suggestive to the witness called upon to participate in the lineup. Given this scenario, _____.

Before, during, and after an identification procedure, police and prosecutors should avoid giving witnesses any feedback on whether they feel they have made a "good" or "correct" identification.

The difference between a lineup and a showup is that a lineup includes a group of persons, whereas the showup involves a presentation of only one criminal suspect to the witness making the identification.