Lineups: A voice lineup is a test in which a listener hears several voices and tries to tell whether a voice she has heard previously is among them, and if so, which it was. Conducted properly, a voice lineup can protect the innocent. Conducted improperly, a voice lineup can effectively point an accusing finger at an innocent person.

The problem: Your speech says so much about you that it is very difficult to create a proper voice lineup. Your speech can reveal your age, your health, your level of education, your regional dialect, and many other factors. Even the location in which a recording is made can reveal information. For example, a recording made in a jail cell will sound different from a recording made in a book-lined lawyer’s office, so if one of the subjects is recorded in a jail cell and the others are recorded in their offices, the lineup effectively points out the person who was recorded in the jail cell as being a suspect.

Testing a lineup: Whether a voice lineup is biased can be tested with a surrogate jury, in which listeners are asked questions about the people in the lineup. If they can discriminate the accused from the others, it can be argued that the purported identification by the witness is meaningless. Worse, the voice lineup has actually served to "finger" the accused. [Return to Sound Evidence Home Page]