Doppelgänger Disaster

I am sure that each and every one of us can remember a moment in which we were introduced to someone quickly by a friend and, two seconds later, we had just a vague memory of the person’s name and appearance. This is extremely common as we don’t necessarily take time to focus on remembering names or observing the characteristics of people. This type of situation is normally relaxed and friendly. So if we struggle to remember the characteristics of people, such as their hair color, facial features, tattoos and voice, after being introduced to them in a calm and civil manner, how is one going to be able to identify a person after experiencing an extremely short and potentially traumatic experience with them?

When a crime as simple as a robber takes place, the events happy in a matter of seconds. The first reaction of an individual is normally to panic, thus blurring the ability to focus on memorizing the robbers features. Maybe we remember things such as skin color or hair color, but there is small chance of us taking note of special features unless there is one that is screaming to be remembered – for example a face tattoo. Police lineups are asking victims to do exactly this – remember things that they probably didn’t take precise notice of in the first place.

While reading through this week’s notes, I remember a case that I had seen on TV a few years back and surfed around to find it. It tells the story of a woman who got robbed and ended up accusing the wrong man for the robbery. According to an article by the Washington Post, the only things that the woman could recall about her attacker were that “he was thin, light-skinned black or Hispanic man with dark hair”. (Washington Post) This statement can describe a large amount of people. The article does not specify if the woman went in for a police lineup, but it is more than likely that she did to some extent. Nonetheless, the wrong man was taken in and ultimately spent 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was only short 2 years of what he was sentenced before the law force realized that he was actually innocent.

The article explains that the real culprit was his doppelganger and that everyone who was involved in sentencing him was astounded by the uncanny resemblance between the two of them. It seems that the mistake was something that anyone could have made. But does that excuse the government for taking away 17 years of a good man’s life? Absolutely not.

The concept of a police lineup makes perfect sense, without a doubt. It’s logical to put an eye witness in a position where they can identify who the guilty part is. But this is a system that is nowhere near flawless due to the unreliability of the human mind and memory. Psychologists have been studying different ways to allow this system to be more mistake-proof and ultimately prevent innocent people from spending their lives in prison for simply looking similar to a criminal.

Psychologists have certain recommendations that have been put into practice in order to avoid situations like that of the doppelganger. The first is that the lineup should include multiple possible culprits who have the same features that are described by the witness – even if these people are innocent. This forces the eyewitness to really compare the differences between similar looking individuals and forces a more accurate response. Another concept that has been proved functional is that of informing the eyewitness that the criminal may not necessarily be in the lineup at all. Just because the police has rounded up some men who have shady backgrounds and resemble the description given, does not mean that they have the right man. In the article mentioned above, the real criminal was not even on the police’s radar until years later. Something that psychologists insist on avoiding is giving the witness information about any of the potential suspects. This creates bias in the witness’s mind and that can ultimately result in incorrect selection. An additional concept that can be put into play is that of only allowing a witness to see one individual at once, whether that be in pictures or in person. When a witness is seeing them all at the same time they start to compare and the decision becomes more and more difficult.

Putting these methods into practice does not make the system perfect, it only gives it a push in the right direction. The rate of false-identification is still higher than it should be and psychologists are continuing to work on methods that will allow for less mistakes in the world of criminal justice.

 

Below is the link to the article mentioned in my blog post.

Phillips, K. (n.d.). An innocent man served 17 years. His ‘crime’? He looked almost exactly like the real suspect. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/06/13/an-innocent-man-served-17-years-his-crime-he-looked-almost-exactly-like-the-real-suspect/?utm_term=.3a7b2dd9e0de

 

3 comments

  1. This is a great post! I remember reading this story, and I couldn’t believe that an innocent person had spent all that time in prison for robbery of all things. I could not imagine what it would be like to spend even a day in jail for a crime I did not commit, let alone 17 years! Yet, we often hear of cases similar to the one you cited.

    It is unfortunate that some eyewitnesses accounts could be unreliable, when at times, that is the only evidence against a person. According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness misidentifications account for more than 72% of all wrongful convictions. Rattner (1988) discussed that one way to prevent wrongful convictions would be to hold a pretrial session in which the judge or jury, would decide, after hearing all related information, on the eyewitnesses adequacy, validity and reliability.

    The hope is that one day we won’t ever have to hear about another innocent person, like Richard Jones, being wrongfully convicted for a crime they did not commit.

    References
    Innocence Project. (n.p.). Contributing causes of wrongful convictions. Retrieved from https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes-wrongful-conviction./

    Rattner, A. (1988). Convicted but innocent: Wrongful conviction and the criminal justice system. Law and Human Behavior, 12(3), 283-293. DOI:10.1007/BF01044385

  2. Hi!
    I really liked the beginning of your post. As soon as I started reading, I was automatically interested. It is very true that we often do forget people super quick. It has definitely happened to me quite a few times. Like I said in my post, a lot of times people have false identifications and it can really affect the case in a negative way. I think your references to the Brock Turner case were right on point and that was a big news headline we are all familiar with. When an investigator comes across a case where a lineup is needed, you never really know what your outcome may be. It may be good, it may be bad, who knows. A lot of times, everything is just going with the flow and bam there is no DNA evidence so now you are stuck with just a identification from a lineup that you don’t even know if you are able to trust.

    Overall, great and detailed post. It really gave me an interest!

  3. Hi!

    This was a great post! Unfortunately, human memory is fallible, and the results of lineups are not always reliable. This is just a side note, but I was quite surprised to see that he was given 19 years for what was essentially an attempted purse snatching/successful phone snatching. Sometimes the disparity in jail time astounds me. Brock Turner gets 6 months for rape. This man gets 19 years for aggravated robbery. That makes sense. Maybe he had priors? It still seems a bit excessive, especially when I’ve read about people who were charged with aggravated assault getting out of prison far earlier.

    Anyway, I found another article that talks about the case, and witnesses were shown a photograph lineup, but here’s the kicker, Jones was the only light-skinned man in the lineup (Hauser, 2018). Therefore, he was the only reasonable option. Employing some of the strategies you talked about in your post — including multiple options with features described by the witnesses and stressing the possibility that the criminal might not be in the lineup — could have prevented him from being falsely accused.

    False convictions are just all around bad. Not only does it hurt those who were wrongfully convicted, but it also lets the true criminal go free and, if the truth does come out, places a ton of guilt on the victim, the witnesses, and anyone involved in his conviction. Obviously, Jones is the one who suffered the most in this situation, but I also feel quite bad for the robbery victim. If I were in her shoes, I would be feeling just horribly, horribly guilty. That could really affect a person.

    I think it’s interesting that the victim talks about how, if she had been shown pictures of Jones and Amos side by side, she wouldn’t have been confident that Jones was the man who had robbed her. Albright (2017) talks about how confidence inflation can contribute to the issues with eyewitness identifications. Witnesses tend to become more confident in their identifications over time (Albright, 2017). They listen to the media telling the story as they described it and tell other people about it, and the fact that these independent sources believe them reinforces the idea that they’re right (Albright, 2017). Albright (2017) states that it’s important to note the witness’ level of confidence when they first identify the culprit. I imagine that the victim, being shown only one light-skinned man out of six options, might have still been pretty confident when she identified Jones, but I bet that, if the options had been more similar, her initial confidence would have been pretty low.


    References

    Albright T. D. (2017). Why eyewitnesses fail. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(30), 7758–7764. Advance online publication. doi:10.1073/pnas.1706891114

    Hauser, C. (2018, August 30). Man Who Wrongfully Spent 17 Years in Prison in ‘Doppelgänger Case’ Seeks $1.1 Million. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/us/kansas-doppelganger-richard-jones.html

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