The Evanston Police Department is one of three police departments in Illinois testing a new lineup method — one that lab studies suggest could reduce the number of misidentified criminals by up to 50 percent.

Supporters say the new sequential lineups — which show witnesses each suspect one-by-one — reduce the chance of a witness identifying a criminal just because he or she has eliminated all other suspects.

“The witness or victim is forced to rely on their actual memory of what they saw in the incident instead of just assuming, ‘The bad guy is there (in line),'” said Cmdr. Joe Bellino of EPD.

Police departments in Chicago and Joliet are also participating in the one-year study, which started Nov. 1.

If successful, the study could prompt legislation mandating sequential lineups in police departments statewide, Bellino said.

State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) said she first introduced the bill for the study in 2002 after reading about the lab work of Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University.

When using the traditional lineup method, Wells found that college students identified the wrong criminal 43 percent of the time, Hamos said. When the sequential method was used, this figure was reduced to 17 percent.

“At this point we’re going to (field) test it,” Hamos said. “Field testing is a totally different thing to the laboratory.”

As part of the study, EPD is using sequential lineups in half of all the cases that require lineups, Bellino said. He said the department conducted 21 physical lineups last year. EPD does not have data on the number of lineups conducted by showing witnesses photographs.

EPD would likely support sequential line-ups if the test proves successful, Bellino said. But, he added, the new method does have its downsides.

The lineups have to be conducted by a “blind administrator,” he said — someone who “has no knowledge of the case and no knowledge of who the suspect offender is.” Modern technology allows him to e-mail pictures and information about important cases to the entire department.

“When I publish a flier, I’ve just about eliminated every trained blind administrator that I have,” Bellino said.

But Rob Warden, the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern, said the “double-blind” aspect is the most important part of the sequential lineup method.

Warden said investigators can subconsciously influence a witness with pauses or subtle comments, and the witness can then influence a jury.

About 70 percent of wrongful convictions in sexual assault cases result from “erroneous eyewitness identification testimony,” he said.

“One of the sad facts here is that eyewitness identification is so unreliable, so inherently unreliable, it probably shouldn’t be allowed in the courtroom in the first place,” he said.

But, Warden said, the new lineup procedure is “clearly preferred” to the old, adding that lab studies he has seen suggest that using sequential lineups will reduce the number of mistaken identifications by 50 percent.

“This is not the panacea,” Warden said. “It’s not going to eliminate mistaken eyewitness identifications, but it is going to reduce them.”

Reach Marissa Conrad at [email protected].