Reasons to give

To the Editor:

The arrest of Penn student Bryan Warner ("Student held for attempted murder," DP, 2/6/06) raises a major policy question about the use of photo identification.

For years, police have presented victims with a group of photos of possible suspects simultaneously, rather than one at a time in a sequence. That procedure tends to produce high rates of false identification, according to research by Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University.

Since 2001, New Jersey police have been required to use sequential (one-at-a-time) photo presentations to crime witnesses, which produce far fewer false identifications.

Warner's counsel should therefore challenge any use of a simultaneous photo lineup in his case -- if that is what the Philadelphia Police did -- as unreliable and unscientific evidence.

Lawrence Sherman

The author is the chairman of Penn's Department of Criminology

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