The Psychology of Criminal Identification: The Gap from Wade to Kirby

of the United States in a trilogy of cases, United States v. Wade,' Gilbert v. California 2 and Stovall v. Denno, dealt with the constitutionality of police practices and procedures in obtaining eyewitness identifications.These decisions marked the Supreme Court's first major attempt to confront the "dangers inherent in eyewitness identification and the suggestibility inherent in the context of the pretrial identification.' 4 The Court's primary concern was to evolve legal standards and remedies that would substantially reduce erroneous identification.On account of the risk of intentional and unintentional suggestibility at lineups resulting in error and abuse in making identifications, and the concomitant difficulty of reconstructing lineup events for purposes of discrediting a witness' testimony at trial, the lineup was deemed a "critical stage" in the trial process during which suspects were to be protected by the sixth amendment right to counsel.Ambiguities remained as to the scope and meaning of this new right.Since 1967 state appellate courts and federal courts of appeals have evolved standards and criteria-sometimes rather contradictory -for determining when this aspect of the right to counsel attaches.Although the primary objective of Wade was to protect the factfinding process from erroneous identifications, lower courts failed to analyze cases in terms of the basic criteria of the "critical stage" assessment: the risks of suggestibility and the necessity of reconstructing the iden-* This article was researched with the assistance of Judith A. Baer.Her additions, reactions,