Confidential File

A New Instrument for Crime Detection

A man without a camera took my picture yesterday.

It's not a particularly flattering one, but it wasn't intended to be.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy C. E. MacElroy, who took it, had motives other than flattery in mind.

By
using standard transparent films which he carried in a little gray box
— each bearing a coded facial characteristic — he wanted to produce a
full-face likeness.

He wanted to show me that his revolutionary "Identi-Kit,"
now being put into use by our Sheriff's Department, could soon become
the greatest practical aid to identification of wanted criminals since
the present system of fingerprinting was developed.

MacElroy is currently one of five deputies equipped with the kit. In 40 hours a deputy can master it.

And I'm more than slightly convinced, after watching the ease with which MacElroy operated it, that Identi-Kit may someday become as integral to law enforcement as fingerprinting, ballistics tests and shiny badges.

 I hope so. For a lot of reasons, I do. But that, I'll get to later.

Basically, this is what the kit consists of:

It
has 500 4 1/2 X 5 1/2-in. transparent slides. Each slide bears a facial
characteristic, or accessory. Each is coded by letter and number.

Among
the 12 categories of characteristics are ears, eyes, mouth, nose, chin
lines, eyebrows, lips, age lines. I, for example, have a C-28 chin and
an N-14 nose.

When a deputy arrives at the scene of a crime with his Identi-Kit he could begin immediately interrogating a witness about the suspect's description.

From
the witness' recollection of the criminal's facial appearance the
deputy can quickly create a picture of the suspect, merely by stacking
the right chin, hairline, eyes, etc. into place.

 Then, with the
aid of the witness, he tackles the overall face, changing
characteristics as the witness recommends. Average time for the
procedure is 20 minutes.

Right away, when the witness is
satisfied with the likeness, the deputy can radio in the letters and
numbers of the 12 overlaying transparencies to his station, and
immediately these can be broadcast to every patrol car with an Identi-Kit.

With fantastic savings of both money and time, each car has a "mug shot" to work with.

The
possibilities of establishing a central file of facial characteristics
similar to today's fingerprint files are equally fantastic.

But
what also appeals to me about the new system — which, incidentally,
was originated by Hugh C. McDonald, chief of L.A. County's sheriff's
civil division, and developed with McDonald's technical assistant by
Townsend Engineered Products, Ind., of Santa Ana — is that it permits
a witness to put down in a picture his visual memory of a suspect
without being influenced by mug books.

Man Who Should Be Free

Too
often a witness' judgment is colored by studying mug shot after mug
shot of persons he knows to have criminal records. Too often he
confuses features and faces he's just seen in the mug books with the
face of an actual criminal.

It scares me to think of how many people are doing time today because of faulty eyewitness identification.

But
it encourages me to know that the Sheriff's Department is doing
something to increase the odds in favor of the innocent suspect.

Confidential File

A Stirring Problem When You're in Stir

Among
men doing hard time, the proper care and handling of a parole board is
a priceless skill. It's an art practiced and polished and passed along
from generation to generation of the convicted.

It's endless fodder for bull sessions. It moves the listless clock.

In their luxury-naked cells the younger, less seasoned prisoners sit in the background, listening and dreaming.

The old cons do the talking. Like professors at a seminar, they drone ad infinitum.

Theories, counter-theories. They've got an endless supply. Bone by bone, they analyze the men paid by the state to analyze them.

There
are points of contradiction on how to appear before the board. Should a
prisoner shave off his mustache? How should he part his hair? Should he
borrow his cellmate's glasses to look more scholarly?

But there is one point, always, where the old pros are in agreement:

When
you go before the board — when you face the men who have the magical
power of slashing years off your prison stay — go with humility.
Confess your crimes. (At least, those crimes of which you've been
convicted.)

And then, young man, repent. Admit the error of your ways.

It is imperative, they tell you, to confess and repent.

And here lies an interesting drama, about to be enacted.

It revolves around a 26-year-old man named Jack Eugene Bishop, formerly of this town, now a resident of San Quentin.

He's doing a five-to-life stretch for armed robbery of a gas station.

Briefly, these are the details of the crime:

At
9 p.m. on July 19, 1957, a man walked up to the 19-year-old attendant
of a Compton service station and, brandishing a blue-steel revolver,
robbed him of $109.

Through mug books and, later, a police lineup Jack Bishop was identified as the robber by the attendant.

Bishop's
attorney waived a jury trial and, in court, produced witnesses —
waitresses and bartenders — who testified that they had seen the
defendant intoxicated to the point of being unable to stand up both at
8:30 that night and at 10:30. They had seen him in a cafe and a bar a
few miles from the scene of the crime.

No evidence other than
the attendant's eyewitness identification connected Bishop to the
crime. No clues, no weapon — nothing else was found to tie him to it.

In
fact, the attendant noted no slurring of speech, no staggering walk or
no mustache on the suspect. (It wasn't brought out until after the
trial, however, that Bishop sported a mustache the week of the robbery.)

The judge found Bishop guilty, nevertheless.

Today,
Bishop still swears that he's innocent. He admits to being no angel. At
the ages of 18 through 20, he was continually in trouble with the law.
Once he did 90 days for burglary.

A few days ago, he wrote a letter from San Quentin to his brother in Paramount. It read, in part:

"I just got back from having my pre-board hearing, so that means I'll be going before the parole board in about three weeks.

"I
sure have been doing some hard time sweating it out. There is really
not too much to sweat out, as most likely I will get denied.

"If I had pleaded guilty at the start, there would be hardly any doubt that I'd get my date set.

"I
just got through writing a letter to the head psychiatrist and I'm
going to try to get him to give me a lie detector test or sodium pentothal.

Whether to Cop a Plea

"There's not a person in the world can realize what kind of a position I'm in. Whatever I do is wrong.

"It's ridiculous to go up before the board and admit something I never did. It's worse yet not to…"

If he follows the advice of the old-timers, he'll "cop out" and "repent" to cut a couple years off his time.

He'll
feel like a damn liar and an awful fool if — as he maintains — he's
innocent. But when you go before the parole board, mister, you play
their rules.