Caught in the Lineup

FBI Agent Tommy Cauthen sat in his car, fuming. A volunteer for a police lineup, due to meet Cauthen on a rundown street in Kenosha, Wis., was more than an hour late. As Cauthen was about to give up and leave, he spotted another man who fit the general description of the volunteer--young, medium height and black--so the FBI man offered him $5 plus a ride home for standing in the lineup at the Waukesha County Jail, 40 miles and an hour's drive away. Without hesitation, Willie Walls Jr., 21, agreed and jumped into the agent's car. That was to prove to be a bad mistake, but Walls had no way of knowing the vagaries of the lineup system.

Under court order to produce a lineup of people who resemble an actual suspect, police usually scour the area for other offenders, or enlist police trainees or even idlers to help out--sometimes for a token payment. In this case, authorities were looking for two gunmen who had robbed Racine's Union Savings & Loan Assn. of $4,782 on Dec. 30. They had managed to arrest a single suspect, Robert Brantley. Officers hoped that two female tellers would pick Brantley from among six young blacks in the lineup. To the authorities' astonishment, both tellers identified not Brantley but Walls. Said Cauthen: "I was shocked."

Cauthen drove Walls home as promised, firmly convinced that the tellers had been mistaken. A short time later, however, a convicted felon also in the lineup told the FBI that he had overheard Brantley and Walls whispering about the robbery. Additional evidence was marshaled, and both Walls and Brantley were put on trial. The jury could not agree about Brantley's guilt, and the Government dropped the charges, but Walls was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Last week Walls' court-appointed attorney announced he would appeal on the ground that Walls should have been tried separately from Brantley. Walls, who admitted he knew Brantley, nonetheless insisted on his own innocence, pointing out that he had voluntarily agreed to stand in the lineup. Said he: "I'm not crazy. If I'd done it, there's no way I'd even talk to an FBI agent." But Agent Cauthen has a different explanation for Walls' actions. Says he: "I think Walls suspected I had been waiting for him, and he didn't want to arouse my suspicion. He got into something he just didn't know how to get out of."

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