The victim of a robbery described a young person about 16 years old, whom she did not know and had never seen before, as the robber. She was given a high school yearbook, for the only high school in town, and asked to look through it to see if anyone looked like the person who committed the robbery.
She identified a possible suspect, who was scheduled for a future lineup. Is this year book identification an acceptable method for locating a suspect? Yes it is. Please explain why it is.
The lineup contained one muscular football player, one tall, thin basketball player, one short skinny jockey, one average baseball player, one broad shouldered swimmer and the suspect, who looked like one, not all of them. All were 23-25 years old, had blue eyes and dark brown hair. All had the same racial features.
The suspect was 6 foot 1 inch tall, weighed 175 lbs, had black hair and brown eyes. He was placed in a lineup with five other people, all with the same racial characteristics, hair and eye color. All men in the lineup were within 5-10 pounds weight and 1-2 inches in height and one to three years in age of the suspect
A few minutes after the crime was committed, the eyewitness victim of the crime was driven to a street corner, where a suspect had been detained (based on victim's description), to try to make an identification of the person who committed the crime. No effort was made to locate other people with similar appearance in order to have a lineup. The eyewitness/victim identified the person being held as the one who committed the crime.
The eyewitness was given a folder containing a photo array consisting of six pictures of women. The suspect's photo was in color. Two other photos were in color with the remainder in black and white.
The suspect was an Asian, as were two of the other women in the photo array. Of the remaining three, one was Caucasian, one Hispanic and one African with very light colored skin. One of the women in the photos appeared to be considerably older than the other five.