What technique preserves witness perceptions?

• A. Legal Authority
• B. Immediate Separation
• C. Surveillance Definition
• D. Fair Line-up Composition

Answer: (B)

Preserving witness perceptions means keeping each witness’s memory as independent and uncontaminated as possible at the moment of identification. Immediate separation achieves this by preventing witnesses from discussing the event or each other, which can introduce cues, alter recall, or lead to cross-witness influence. When witnesses are kept apart, each person relies on their own perception at the time, resulting in more reliable identifications and reducing the risk of biased or false identifications.

The other options don’t directly protect an individual witness’s memory from influence or contamination: legal authority concerns who can conduct the procedure, surveillance definition is about describing surveillance, and fair line-up composition focuses on fairness of the lineup itself rather than keeping perceptions independent.