Suspect Identification

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History of Suspect Identification At the end of the 19th century, there was a French criminologist by the name of Alphonse Bertillon. He was the first person to develop a system of physical measurements of body parts that especially looked at the head and face. This system produced a detailed individual. It was invented in the year of 1879 and became known as the Bertillon system. This system became successful quickly. Just in 1884 alone, the French police used this system to capture 241 repeat offenders, which established they system’s effectiveness. They used the system primarily to see if the suspect they had in custody committed any previous crimes. They then began to keep records of all offenders with their measurements and their photograph, …show more content…
Pre-line instructions given to the witness is one of those variables. This includes explaining that the suspect may or may not be present in the line-up. The physical characteristic fillers are fillers who do not resemble the witness’s description of the perpetrator and may cause the real suspect to stand out. Similarities or differences between the witness and the suspect like age, race, or ethnicity are another important variable. Research suggests that people recognize faces better when its their own race or ethnic background than a different race of ethnic background. The last variable that could affect a police line-up is the incident characteristics such as the use of force or weapons. Presence of a weapon during an incident could draw visual attention away from the perpetrator’s face and could affect an eyewitness’s ability to identify the holder of the weapon. Line-ups may not be arranged in ways to make the suspect stand out. Visual Identification is a method that commonly used, but this method also has many faults that make it difficult to prosecute offenders because of the mistaken …show more content…
PCR allows investigators to analyze evidence samples of limited quality and quantity successfully. This enables the lab to generate DNA profile from a suspect. There are three different results you can get from testing DNA: inclusion, exclusion, or inconclusive. Inclusion means that the DNA found at the crime scene is consistent with the perpetrator. Exclusion means that the evidence at the crime scene is inconsistent with the perpetrator. Inconclusive means that the evidence at the crime scene could not include or exclude the perpetrator. When DNA results are inconclusive, that means that the DNA was insufficient or had already been degraded before it was tested. Courts have accepted the overall accuracy of DNA testing. DNA evidence is the most effective and sufficient out of the different types of
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