Legal System V. Eyewitness: The Jury Is Still Out On Who Is Better Able To Reduce Eyewitness Error (Variance)

Brewer and colleagues have introduced and researched a confidence identification procedure wherein witnesses rate how confident they are that each person in the lineup is the culprit (Brewer et al., 2012, 2020; Sauer et al., 2008, 2012). The goal is to determine the likely guilt or innocence of the suspect using confidence ratings, which ostensibly measure the degree of match between each lineup face and the witness's memory of the culprit. The approach seeks to increase the information that can be collected from witnesses over the categorical decision (suspect ID, filler ID, lineup rejection) witnesses make in a traditional lineup procedure. The confidence procedure also seeks to leave the decision about the suspect's guilt in the hands of someone other than the witness. It is envisaged that suspicion regarding the guilt of the suspect would rise or fall with the police investigator's interpretation of the witness's confidence ratings and that fact finders would weigh the confi- dence evidence in their determination of the defendant's guilt (see also Gepshtein et al., 2020). We agree with Brewer and Doyle (2021) that there are intuitive benefits of maximizing the information that can be collected from eyewitnesses. Here, we outline two key steps that we deem to be critical before the procedure is considered for implementation.