Sequential Lineup Procedure

The problem of unjust conviction had always been a major issue for eyewitness scientists and it took the consideration of researchers to determine, whether the memory of eyewitness is reliable or not under some parameters. Evidence of identification by the eyewitness has a huge impact on the fate of the trial. It was believed that the lineup sequence can pose a problem in proper identification of the suspect. So the comparison of Sequential Lineup Procedure versus Simultaneous Lineup Procedure was scientifically carried out by Steblay et al. (2011). After that Wells et al. (2014) conducted further research. Instead of interpreting information collected from various sequential and simultaneous lineups performed in laboratories and using this laboratory data they studied actual eyewitness to crime scenes and further evaluated the sequential photo lineups and simultaneous photo lineups. Both Wells et al. (2011) and Steblay et al. (2014) kept in mind various parameters like back-loading, the continuation rule, the stopping rule, and the second viewing rule etc. Moreover, in laboratory tests a witness can guess the suspect multiple times but generally the

The findings of Steblay et al. (2011) were based on the lab reports of other eyewitness researchers, while the focus of Wells et al. (2014) was field study. It must be kept in mind that the environment of both of the studies could be a crucial factor in determining true identification. The condition of the witness in the field study can never be the same as in the laboratory experiment. Wells et al. (2014) concluded that witnesses are less likely to make identification in the sequential lineup procedure and similarly there are less possibilities of misidentifying the known-innocent fillers (the persons other than the culprits). The simultaneous lineup must also be explored further as the factor of relevant judgment is of utmost