One Crime, Two Very Different Suspect Sketches

What would you say if I told you the two police sketches at the left came from the same crime — and supposedly represent the same perpetrator?

Eyewitness identification is a highly unreliable form of evidence, as these sketches clearly demonstrate. In this case, the two drawings were created based on the memories of the only two surviving witnesses of a murder last Tuesday in Jupiter, Florida. On that day, a man broke into a couple's home, killing the husband, shooting and injuring the wife and leaving the third man (a guest) unharmed. The two survivors worked with police to create the two sketches above. The clean-cut one on the left was issued within 24 hours. The other came out this week. The police won't comment on the disparity, but the sketch artist is talking.

"You don't want to put a whole lot of composites out there. We think it's (the second sketch) got a lot stronger possibility of being a likeness," sketch artist Paul Moody (who signs his sketches like they're headed for a gallery) told the Palm Beach Post. He's hinting that police trust the second witness more, but the cops are staying quiet in the face of this fiasco.

It's no surprise that eyewitness evidence is unreliable — we've known this for years. Three-quarters of the 255 wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing involved misidentifications. Reliable scientific research has shown again and again that human memory is malleable in the best of times, and even worse in traumatic situations like violent crime.

There are ways to improve the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. For one, changing the way we conduct lineups reduces the chance of misidentification. Training of law enforcement departments is also key — as is reducing our reliance on unreliable methods like composite sketches and "show-up" IDs, where a witness is shown a suspect (often in a police car) and asked if that's the guy. It's no surprise that they often say it is.

The Jupiter Police Department was under pressure to respond quickly to a murder, and they put out a composite sketch in 24 hours, apparently based on the best information they had at the time. Now they've taken the investigation into dangerous territory because we have two descriptions on which to base the search for the possible perpetrator.

Yes, tools like composite sketches can be useful to aid in the search for a perpetrator. But this case makes it very clear how dangerous it is to allow investigations to hinge on eyewitness identification alone.

If the Jupiter police do end up arresting someone based on one of these drawings and the memory of the two eyewitnesses, there had better be plenty of corroborating evidence. Eyewitness descriptions are a shaky tool at best, and in this case, with two competing visions, a highly dangerous one.

Photo Credit: Jupiter Police Department