Legal Question in Criminal Law in West Virginia

What is the sound of one person lined up?

Very early in the Warren Court revolution in Criminal Law, The Supreme Court ruled that "line ups" must be fairly constituted. However, these rules apply primarily to those line ups which occur at police stations. There, the composition of the line up must be fairly constituted. For example, one of the classic cases of abuse was one suspect and several dissimilar policemen still wearing their unifom pants. There are different rules for a "show up" which occurs in the field. The Court has ruled that single person show ups are permissible. The rationale for this is that usually the police are in a hot pursuit situation where the necessity to rule out a suspect is paramount so the police can continue to search for the real culprit if the witness says that the one being detained is not the suspect. It is also rationalized that it is a lesser impingement on the individual's rights to be briefly detained and displayed to the witness. The innocent person will then be released and not have to go down to the police station. The rationale is obviously faulty but evidences a trade off between individual rights and the efficiency of the police department policies. Unfortunately, for many years now, such a balance is virtually always struck in favor of the police and against the interest of the citizen. It is believed that not very many suspects who are dissimilar to the sought criminal will be detained (it really doesn't make much sense to believe that police will take the time to display people who do not match the description, I suppose) There would have to be some concerted efforts to demonstrate that miscarriages of justice are occuring on a widespread basis to attack this procedure. This is not very likely. In the case in which you have an interest, you should do some reading and research in Identification and it's pitfalls. See books by Loftus,E. Good Luck

One-man lineups in the Hillbilly

It may be legal in the Hillbilly State; it may also be legal for the cop to walk up to the "suspect" with a can of brown paint, spray the "suspect" in the face, then ask, "How about now, y'all?"Whether it would have any evidentiary value is a separate question.