College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Eyewitness traveler

Name the time and place and Gary Wells will be there to speak on the flaws of eyewitness identification.
In this old movie, "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," a group of American tourists are spoofed as they go on a whirlwind tour of Europe.

While Gary Wells, Distinguished Professor of psychology, hasn't spoken in Europe, there must have been times when he wondered if he was in Belgium or if it was just Tuesday as he has been on a whirlwind tour of the U.S., promoting his groundbreaking work in eyewitness identification.

In the last 18 months, Wells has given almost 50 presentations and seminars on his research. Wells is regarded as a pioneer in the scientific study of eyewitness identification evidence and the leading expert on the causes and prevention of mistaken identity in criminal cases.

He is credited with developing the dominant theory of how mistaken identifications occur, as well as testing and promoting procedures for conducting police lineups. Wells was invited by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to help develop the first set of national guidelines for police on eyewitness evidence.

Wells' research has shown that the reliability of eyewitness identifications of criminal suspects from lineups is influenced by the methods used to construct and conduct the lineups.

But even with all the notoriety that Wells has garnered in recent years, he was still frustrated by the lack of concrete results in changing local and state law enforcement agencies historical methods of utilizing eyewitness identification in their investigations.

"In effect, research has documented through scientific experiments that problems can exist in eyewitness identification and how we can make eyewitness identification more reliable," Wells said.
"But it has been a longstanding problem of how do you get the legal system to make use of this information."

Wells estimates there are some 13,000 individual police departments. For a vast majority of these departments, the Federal government and individual state governments have no authority to make sweeping changes.

As a result, Wells says changes in the legal system and methods moves at "sub-glacier speed."

"If someone comes up with a square watermelon, it's on the market just like that," he says as he snaps his fingers. "On the other hand, if someone comes up with a better way to conduct lineups to prevent wrongful convictions, no one in the legal system knows what to do."

So Wells decided to take it upon himself to get the word out, preaching his gospel to anyone that will invite him. Wells has crisscrossed the country giving invited talks on college campuses, at law schools, at local, state and national conferences including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the National Conference on Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation, the Philadelphia Municipal Judges Association meeting.

"It's a horrendous schedule," he said. "But it is designed to talk to various groups - police, prosecutors, judges - to try to get them to do what they can to help improve the process."

Wells has seen a change since he made conscious decision to go out on the road.

"There is always someone in the audience that takes eyewitness identification up in their jurisdiction," he said. "You never know who's going to be there and what sort of impact that particular talk will have. It's difficult to know."

New Jersey was one of those stops.

In 1999, Wells was speaking to a judges conference in New Jersey. In the audience was the chief of staff of the New Jersey Attorney General, which is one of the few state officials in the nation with authority over their state's local police departments. Since that initial talk, Wells has been back to New Jersey three more times, speaking to the state's public defenders, police and prosecutors.

"The New Jersey Attorney General's Office became convinced of the need to change the old methods," Wells said. "Now they have started to implement my recommendations."

Starting in October, New Jersey will become the first in the nation to give up the familiar books of mug shots and will adopt a simple new technique called sequential photo lineup.

Under the new system, eyewitnesses are shown suspect photos one after another and are not allowed to browse through them. If they wish to look at a particular photo a second time, the eyewitnesses are shown all the photos again.

Another important change is that the police official conducting the sequential photo lineup does not know whom the real suspect is.

Changes are needed in the system because Wells says that eyewitness identification is the most important evidence in the criminal justice system.

"Eyewitness identification is highly unreliable, but it's so very persuasive," he said.

Despite all the studies and research, it took another source to confirm Wells' findings.

"DNA was a big shot in the arm for my research," he said.

DNA evidence has biologically proved numerous times that individuals convicted of a crime were actually innocent. Wells says the most damning evidence in these overturned cases was mistaken eyewitness identification.

Still, police departments and prosecutors are reluctant to make the changes in their lineup methods. So Wells continues to hit the road, giving presentation after presentation, hoping that others will soon follow New Jersey's lead.

"If you can change the way the whole state of New Jersey operates in just 180 days, then why can't you change everything in that time period," he said. "If I didnÕt think it was making a difference I wouldn't do it. There are enough good things happening that I'm not complaining about all the travel. This is what I wanted to happen - to have an impact on the world.

"I believe it's only a question of what rate that these changes will occur," he continued. "I believe that if you have that better mousetrap, it will ultimately win out."

There's no doubt in Gary Wells' mind that he has helped develop that better mousetrap.