earticle

영어

There are cases when testimony by a witness is the sole and substantial evidence identifying the criminal. In this situation, cases are bound to occur when errors in the criminal identification process for the witness lead to the danger of misjudgment. The examiner must not only use various examination techniques depending on the characteristics of the examination subject, but also hold knowledge on the problems of human memory. The examiner must acquire information about the past from the witness, and must therefore know the influence which the working process and the weakness of the memory exert on the interviewee's testimony. The witness's memory is forgotten and distorted by various causes of change and leads to a wrong testimony; the witness is confident in his state of non-awareness regarding his memory errors, and becomes trapped in the illusion that he is testifying accurately. There are many criminal identification methods to minimize the errors of the witness's weak memory and hence reduce misjudgment. One of the more frequently used methods in the developed world including in the U.S. and the U.K. is the lineup method. In Korea's case, the police established the "Detailed Process Guideline in Criminal Identification" in 2005 but reality is that it is barely used in practical work. Along with the recent amendment of the Criminal Trial Law, the customary record-based investigation of the past must be improved. If methods identifying the criminal through a criminal identification process using the lineup method from the beginning stage of the investigation can be systematized, the credibility of the investigation agencies' investigation will improve. This paper introduces many criminal identification methods and suggests that among them the lineup method stands out as a useful criminal identification process to prevent misjudgment.