Iowa State psychology professor Gary Wells had his eye on something that has prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to take action.

He’s convinced police line-ups aren’t dependable.

“No one had questioned the reliability of eyewitnesses,” Wells said, “so I began doing some experiments and staged some crimes for people.”

Wells said he was very intrigued by the results, but he never thought it would go this far.

Wells was named last week by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to a committee on writing the first federal guide to witness evidence.

The guideline, which also was released last week, covers a variety of problems regarding eyewitnesses.

“In particular, it focuses on how line-ups and photo identification should be conducted to prevent misidentification,” Wells said.

Rather than relying purely on an eyewitness’ choice of the criminal among “fillers,” people who are unconnected to a crime but stand in a line-up, he wants more verbal description of criminals and more guidelines for the line-up procedure.

“It’s a great honor for me and also a great thing for innocent suspects,” he said. “It just guarantees more justice in the legal system.”

It was more than 20 years ago that Wells said he first started getting interested in police line-ups. He thought too many innocent people were going to prison simply because they were being misidentified.

He had been told to get out of that line of work by a colleague, but he knew there were important things that could be discovered by eyewitnesses.

Wells said it wasn’t until after he testified in the Oklahoma City bombing case that the FBI believed his work would benefit the U.S. Justice Department.

“It was about at this time that my research had been recognized and the legal system began paying attention to my work applying to psychology,” he said.

Douglas Epperson, interim chairman of psychology, said he thinks Wells’ research is outstanding and has made a difference in the Justice Department.

“I’ve been aware for a number of years of Gary’s research, and I think all of us in the department recognize him as a dedicated and committed scholar who has a history of programmatic research,” he said.

Epperson said Wells’ area of emphasis in psychology is social cognition, which is how people process information in eyewitness situations.

“His research has greatly enhanced and helped identify different aspects of eyewitness accounts,” Epperson said.

Wells said there is plenty of work to keep him busy during the next year in organizing the program.

“Right now, we need the training for police,” Wells said. “I set the standards in the national guideline, and training will hopefully be in place and up and going in less than a year.”