In police lineups, is the method the suspect?

But the sequential lineups also had a lower rate of accuracy. Witnesses picked out an innocent person 9 percent of the time, compared to a 3 percent rate for simultaneous ones.

At a Chicago symposium Friday, academics, police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys from around the country heatedly discussed the study and the future of identification practices. Some reform advocates faulted the study for using a blind administrator with the sequential lineups, but not with the simultaneous ones.

"The resistance to the study [from reform advocates] is greater than any resistance from police to trying the sequential double-blind," says Sheri Mecklenburg, director of the pilot program and a general counsel in the Chicago Police Department. "It seems to be a results-driven criticism."

Logistical reasons have kept many cities from trying the new method. Finding a separate administrator isn't always feasible, police say, and dedicating people to administering lineups uses resources that could be better spent getting more police on the street. Some also worry about the fewer number of IDs they get with sequential lineups.

But reform advocates stress that many other, less controversial changes can also make a big difference: finding "filler" candidates who closely resemble the witness's description, for instance, or telling the witness that the suspect is not necessarily in the lineup. They want witnesses to provide "confidence statements," stating how sure they are of the ID. And they want juries informed about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, especially across racial lines.

Police departments in Wisconsin have been more receptive to such reforms because the state has made them voluntary.

"Any time you mandate something, you're going to have more resistance to it," says Ken Hammond, the state's law enforcement education director.

Boston switched to the sequential method in 2004, after a series of wrongful convictions that involved mistaken eyewitness identification made headlines. Changing to the new model was time-consuming, says David Procopio, press secretary for the Suffolk County district attorney's office, but worth it - an opinion the Illinois study hasn't changed. "We don't believe one part of one study in one state is reason enough to roll back what we consider to be very progressive reforms based on very wide-ranging scientific studies that occurred over a period of many years," Mr. Procopio says.

Experts cite many reasons for faulty witness identification. There's often a desire on the part of a victim to see the person responsible put behind bars. They want to be able to make an identification, and memories can alter accordingly.

Even critics of the sequential lineup suggest that other measures might help improve accuracy. Conducting multiple lineups, some of which have no suspect, might weed out those witnesses who are too willing to pick anybody, says Ebbe Ebbesen, a psychology professor at the University of San Diego in California who says that districts were premature in switching to sequential blind lineups.

Even if most eyewitness identifications are reliable, "we know it is accounting for more wrongful convictions than all the other causes put together," including false confessions, jailhouse "snitches," and outright fraud, says Professor Wells. "When a witness takes the stand and says, 'that's the guy I saw,' that is so persuasive. We need to find ways to prevent mistaken IDs from happening in the first place."

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