Do jurors get what they expect? Traditional versus alternative forms of children's testimony

Abstract

This study examined prospective jurors' expectancies for the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a child testifying in a sexual abuse case. Community members (N = 261) reporting for jury duty completed a survey in which they described their expectancies for how a child alleging sexual abuse would appear when testifying and their beliefs about discerning children's truthfulness, testimony stress, and fairness to trial parties. Within this survey, we varied the child's age (5, 10, or 15 years old), type of abuse alleged (vaginal fondling or penetration), and whether the abuse actually occurred (yes, no) between participants across five different testimony conditions (traditional live in-court, support person present, closed-circuit television, preparation, and videotape) within each participant. Participants expected a child providing traditional testimony to be more nervous, tearful, and fidgety; less confident, cooperative, and fluent; and to maintain less eye contact and provide shorter responses than when the child provided alternative forms of testimony. Participants believed it was easiest to determine a child's truthfulness and fairest to the defendant when the child testified live in court, but that this form of testimony was the most stressful and unfair to the child. Expectancies and beliefs differed within the alternative forms of testimony as well. Negative evaluations of children's alternative testimony may be the result of expectancy violation; namely, jurors expect differences in children's verbal and nonverbal behavior as a result of accommodation, but those differences actually do not occur.

Supporting children in U.S. legal proceedings: Descriptive and attitudinal data from a national survey of victim/witness assistants.

“…Looking more broadly at how our data compare with previous surveys, we see that VWAs share prosecutors’ (Goodman et al, 1999), judges’ (Hafemeister, 1996), and jurors’ (McAuliff & Kovera, 2012) optimism regarding the potential for support persons to reduce children’s stress. However, unlike the legal professionals in Plotnikoff and Woolfson’s (2000) study, there was little evidence VWAs fear that support person use decreases children’s credibility in the eyes of jurors by making it easier for the defense to claim the child’s testimony was the product of coaching or talking to adults about the case.…”

Expressed Emotions and Perceived Credibility of Child Mock Victims Disclosing Physical Abuse

“…However, a subsequent survey of a large representative sample of jury eligible Norwegian citizens showed that people in general believe that small children remember events equally well or even better than adults, and about half the respondents in a recent survey of psychologists (Magnussen & Melinder, 2012) and judges (Magnussen, Melinder, Raja, & Stridbeck, 2010) so believed. A recent study by McCauliff and Kovera (2012) show that the US jurors have fairly specific expectations to the emotional behavior of a child witness giving evidence in court, either live or by closed-circuit television. A recent study by McCauliff and Kovera (2012) show that the US jurors have fairly specific expectations to the emotional behavior of a child witness giving evidence in court, either live or by closed-circuit television.…”

Expectations about victim and offender behaviour during stranger rape

“…As argued by McAuliff and Bull-Kovera (2012), people expect behaviours across a variety of settings, anticipating those that are assessed to be both typical and feasible. Therefore, it is logical to suppose that jurors will have expectations about aspects of the victim and offender behaviour during the rape itself, which may be based in stereotypes such as rape myths.…”