The education of jury members: Influences on the determinations of child witnesses

Abstract

The present study investigated the impact of an education program on jurors’ abilities to reach truth during trials with child witnesses. The experiments took the form of staged trials, with actors filling the roles of judge, prosecution, defence and defendant. Participants from the general community served as mock jurors in small groups. Prior to the trial, half of the juries were provided with an education package which served to introduce them to the main empirical findings within the child witness literature. Within each education condition, half of the juries viewed accurate child witness testimony during the trial and half viewed an inaccurate version. Analyses of the trial questionnaires revealed significant effects of education on the accuracy of verdicts, with more educated jurors making correct verdict determinations than did uneducated jurors. Educated jurors’ perceptions of the child witnesses were also more accurate overall than those of uneducated jurors.

Keywords:

• Child witnesses
• jury education
• juries
• juror perceptions
• suggestibility

Acknowledgements

We would like to sincerely thank all of the actors involved in the study, who gave up their time out of the kindness of their hearts. Thanks go to Nigel Sumner-Armstrong, David Lavercombe, Jim Wilson, and Nick Revis. Portions of this research were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Georgia, USA, 7–10 April 2005.