Comparing the effectiveness of Henderson instructions and expert testimony: Which safeguard improves jurors’ evaluations of eyewitness evidence?

The effectiveness of judicial instructions on eyewitness evidence in sensitizing jurors to suggestive identification procedures captured on video

“…Then, if they accept the information provided in the instructions, jurors must remember the content of the instructions, and ultimately apply the information to the case at hand (McGuire 1972). When determining jurors' application of judicial instructions, researchers typically measure jurors' verdicts (either as a binary decision, e.g., Ramirez et al 1996, on a scale, e.g., Jones et al 2017) and their perceptions of the eyewitness (e.g., Martire and Kemp 2009).…”

“…In terms of memory for judicial instructions, Ramirez et al (1996) found that participants recalled only 31% of the 10 elements contained in the Telfaire instructions when presented orally to the participants. Attempts to directly measure comprehension using multiple-choice questionnaires demonstrated that, compared to a noinstruction condition, neither orally-presented Telfaire (Greene 1988) nor orally-presented Henderson instructions (Jones et al 2017) significantly improved jurors' knowledge of eyewitness factors. This is surprising because, in another study, mock-jurors' reported that they understood the Henderson instructions (Papailiou et al 2015).…”

“…Unfortunately, attempts to improve US judicial instructions by incorporating psychological research-the Henderson instructions-have not fared better than their predecessor. The Henderson instructions either led to skepticism (Papailiou et al 2015;Dillon et al 2017) or had a null effect on jurors' verdict (Jones et al 2017), although a revised version did increase sensitivity to witnessing conditions (Jones and Penrod 2018). In the only test of jurors' sensitivity to eyewitness accuracy, Martire and Kemp (2009) found that the New South Wales judicial instructions (Judicial Commission of NSW 2006) had a null effect on jurors' judgments.…”

“…Comprehension of judicial instructions. In the Victorian judicial instructions (but not the control) condition, we measured participants' comprehension of the instructions (e.g., Greene 1988;Jones et al 2017). Judicial instructions cannot be effective if jurors do not understand them (e.g., Baguley et al 2007;Semmler and Brewer 2002); thus, it is important to assess whether participants understood the information presented to them.…”

Evidentiary instructions improve mock juror assessment of feature-comparison evidence

“…However, for evidentiary instructions to be effective jurors must be capable and willing to follow them. Unfortunately, research has revealed that jurors experience difficulties in understanding and applying many types of judicial and evidentiary instructions (Baguley et al, 2017;Jones et al, 2017;Valentine & Fitzgerald, 2016).…”