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NEIL V.BIGGERSCRITERIA

FOR EVALUATINGEYEWITNESS

IDENTIFICATION

In its 1972 ruling in Neil v. Biggers,the U.S. Supreme

Court outlined five criteria that should be used in evalu-

ating the accuracy of eyewitness identifications: the wit-

ness’s certainty, his or her quality of view, the amount of

attention paid to the culprit, the agreement between the

witness’s description and the suspect, and the amount of

time between the crime and the identification attempt.

For many reasons, these criteria are suboptimal. Some

of them directly contradict empirical research, and oth-

ers can actually be misleading under certain circum-

stances. Preferable methods for evaluating accuracy

include assessing the suggestiveness of the identifica-

tion procedure, including the instructions given to the

witness; examining the structure of the lineup or photo

spread; and checking whether the person administering

the photo spread knew who the suspect was.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Neil v.

Biggers(1972) was the first time that the Court had

made explicit recommendations about evaluations of

eyewitnesses in criminal cases. These criteria, known

to eyewitness researchers as the Biggerscriteria, are

the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at

the time of the crime, the witness’ degree of atten-

tion, the accuracy of the witness’ prior description of

the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated by

the witness at the confrontation, and the length of

time between the crime and the confrontation.

Although the Biggers criteria are intuitively

appealing, psycholegal researchers generally disap-

prove of them for several reasons. First, reports on the

extent to which these criteria are met, especially con-

fidence, are not reliably related to identification accu-

racy. Second, most of the reports are subjective,

provided by the very person whose memory is in dis-

pute when an identification is challenged. Finally,

they attempt to postdict accuracy, a goal that has had

limited success throughout the empirical study of eye-

witnesses. The background of the criminal case that

prompted the criteria and the empirical data related to

each criterion are presented below.

In the crime for which Biggers was convicted, the

victim was taken from her home and raped along the

railroad tracks a short distance away. The attack lasted

between 15 and 30 minutes. Several times after the

assault, the victim was shown photos in both lineups,

where multiple photos are shown at a time, and

showups, where only one photo is presented. She did

not identify anyone from these photos. Seven months

after the assault, Biggers was identified in a police sta-

tion showup. The showup was conducted because the

police claimed that they were unable to locate appropri-

ate fillers for a lineup. After the police escorted the vic-

tim past the defendant, she asked them to have him say,

“Shut up, or I’ll kill you,” a phrase used by her assailant.

She then identified Biggers and indicated that she had

“no doubt” about the accuracy of her identification.

The critical issue decided by the Supreme Court

was whether the showup was “unnecessarily sugges-

tive” and therefore violated due process. In previous

cases, the Court argued that it was possible for

identification procedures to be so unnecessarily

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