Stop, Thief!

My Torts professor from last semester sent an email out today requesting the help of some students in giving a demonstration in his afternoon Evidence class. He wanted to prove to his class that police lineups are inaccurate. So, his idea was, a few minutes into lecture, to have a group of us run in to the unsuspecting classroom, with one student running up to him and stealing his casebook while the rest of us raised a ruckus, shouting and running around. I thought this was brilliant, and immediately volunteered. To complicate things, after we ran back out of the classroom, we traded coats, changed our hairstyles, and put on our backpacks before coming back into the classroom for the lineup. Amazingly, it confounded some of the students! Most of the class voted for the right person as the actual thief, but a lot of people picked the girl who had traded coats with the thief, and a few people picked me, even though I was the only blond in the group. What a great demonstration... It's not every day that a professor invites you to disrupt his class and steal from him.