Officer Garcia: a virtual human for mediating eyewitness identification

An analysis of court cases has revealed that the mistaken identification of the wrong person by victims and witnesses of a crime is the single most common error leading to the arrest and conviction of innocent people [Wells et al. 2006]. Recognizing the role of mistaken identification in erroneous conviction, a growing number of states and police departments have reformed their eyewitness identification procedures. In this paper, we investigate a new procedural reform: the use of a virtual officer who does not know the identity of the suspect in the lineup and therefore cannot bias the witness toward false identification.