Identification parades in South Africa — Time for a change?

• Citation: (2024) 141 SALJ 84
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/SALJ/v141/i1a5
• Published date: 13 February 2024
• Pages: 84-111
• Author: Tredoux, C.G.
• Date: 13 February 2024

84

https://doi.org/10.47348/SALJ/v141/i1a5

IDENTIFICATION PARADES IN SOUTH

AFRICA — TIME FOR A CHANGE?

COLIN G TREDOUX†

Professor, Department of Psychology,University ofCa pe Town

RYAN J FITZGERALD‡

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University

ALFRED ALLAN§

Professor,Department of Psychology, Edith Cowan University

ALICIA NORTJE*

Post-doctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology,University ofCape Town

Identication parades are essential when obtaining evidence of identity from

eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses are shown a line of people containing the suspect(s) and

innocent llers, and witnesses are asked to point out the perpetrator(s) of the crime,

noting that the perpetrator(s) might not be present. Corporeal (‘live’) parades are

required in South Africa unless there is a good reason not to use them, in which case

the police may use photograph parades. We revie w the rules for conducting parades in

South Afric a and compare these to those in several othe r countries, many of which no

longer use corporeal parades. We consider evidence from empirical studies that have

tested the ‘live superiority’ hypothesis and conclude that there is no clear evidence

in its favour, notwithstanding that there are benets to augmenting static views of

faces with additional cues to identity. We then consider the logistical and nancial

cost of conducting live parades, which we nd to be considerable. We conclude that it

may well be time to reconsider the use of live identication parades in South Africa

but caution that this should coincide with a review of the law regulating the use of

alternative methods to ensure that accused persons receive fair trials.

Evidence – eyewit ness – identication parade – lineup – psychology

I INTRODUCTION

Identicat ion parades have been used i n English law si nce at least the 1860s,1

but it seems likely that they were used earlier than that elsewhere in the

world.2 They appear to have been introduced to counteract the suggestive

† PhD (Cape Town). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9653-786X.

‡ PhD (Saskatchewa n). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7249-7269.

§ LLB PhD (Orange F ree State). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7039-797X.

* PhD (Cape Town). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6211-6848.

1 Patrick A rthur DevlinRepor t to the Secretary of Sta te for the Home Department of

the Departmental Committee on Evidence of Identication in Criminal Cases (19 76) 112

traces their use to an order issued by the Metropolitan police in M arch 1860.

2Siegfried Ludwig Sporer ‘Lessons from the origins of eyewitness testimony

research in Europe’(2008) 22 Applied Cognitive Psychology 737refers to a demand

from the Prussian jurist Henke for a similar structure in 1838 in his treatise on

(2024) 141 SALJ 84

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IDENTIF ICATION PARADES IN SOU TH AFRICA — TIM E FOR A CHANGE? 85

https://doi.org/10.47348/SALJ/v141/i1a5

practices of dock identications and staged confrontations of witnesses

and suspects.3 It is unclear when t hey were introduced into police pract ice

in South Africa, but they have been reported in cases since the 1930s.4

Since their introduction, they have become standard police practice in

many countries, including England, the United States and South Africa,

where it has long been insisted that they should be conducted when

evidence of identity is in dispute.5 They are widely thought to constitute

a safeguard against the dangers that identication evidence presents to the

liberty of innocent suspects. As early as 1926, The Justice of the Peace

wrote in the South African Law Journal6 that

‘mistaken identity is the most likely and common cause of miscarriages of

justice, and s uch miscarria ges not only shock the public con science but give

rise to doubt a nd uneasiness as to the admin istration of justice’.

Similarly, the 11th report of the English Criminal Law Revision

Committee stated that ‘we regard mistaken identication as by far the

greatest cause of actual or possible wrong conviction’.7 The orders issued

by the English Home Oce on various dates from the 1920s onward

establish that in identication parades

‘the suspect should be placed among persons (if practicable eight or more)

who are as far as possible of the same age, height, general appearance

(including standa rd of dress and grooming) and position in life’.8

In other words, parades were designed to be corporeal, or ‘live’, and

this rema ins the standard practice in South A frica. It is precisely this point

that is at issue in this article. Many countries have moved to other ways

of conducting parades, which we review below. The question of how

to conduct parades — whether in person or in some more convenient

format — is an empirical question as much as it is a question of law.

Several experiments have compared alternative ways of conducting

parades, including simple photospread arrays, and it is not clear that live

parades do any better than such alternatives.

As important as the parade may seem as a safeguard against the

dangers of eyewitness identication, it does not work particularly well.

Although leg al commentators have pointed for cent uries to these danger s,

the scale of the problem became empirically evident with the advent of

DNA technology in the 1980s, allowing for post-conviction testing

Criminal Law; Cecil HewittRolph Personal Identity (1957) 32 argues that ‘the

mists of a ntiquity have closed over the date [they were rst used]’.

3Rv Palmer(1914) 10 Cr AppR77; R v Chapman (1911) 7 Cr App R 53.

4MkizevR1932(1) PH H17 (N); R v Olia 1935 TPD 213.

5R v Mputing 1960 (1) SA 785 (T).

6 The Justice of the Peace ‘Ident ication’ (1926) 43 SALJ 287.

7 Cited in Devlin op cit note 1 at 76.

8 See Devlin ibid at 159.

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