[londons_explore]

There is always the possibility the real perpetrator said "don't help the police catch me. If you do, then my friends will murder your family.".

Many of the cases of mistaken memory might simply be 'deliberate forgetting'

[boomboomsubban]

If you're threatened the "right" answer would be to say you don't recognize anyone in the lineup. Not accuse an innocent person.

And we know of many cases where eyewitness accounts are wrong purely because human memory kinda sucks. Maybe some people are lying about what they know, but that doesn't make eyewitness accounts more reliable.