The Selection of Distractors for Eyewitness Lineups

Thefts were staged for 252 eyewitnesses using seven different confederate thieves. Photospreads were constructed for each eyewitness to test a proposal regarding strategies for selecting lineup distractors ( C. A. E. Luus & G. L. Wells, 1991 ). Distractors were selected to resemble a suspect or to match the eyewitness's description of the culprit. A mismatch-description strategy was included for comparison and contrast with the other two strategies. The match-description strategy produced both a low false-identification rate and a high accurate-identification rate. The mismatch-description strategy was unable to hold down false-identification rates, and the resemble-suspect strategy failed to secure acceptable rates of accurate identification. The match-description strategy captures the best features of the mismatch-description and resemble-suspect strategies without also capturing their worst features.