Mock jurors’ awareness of age-related changes in memory and cognitive capacity

Abstract

While age-related changes in memory have been well documented, findings about jurors’ perceptions of older witnesses are conflicting. We investigated the effect of victim age (25 vs. 75 years old) and crime severity (victim injured vs. not injured) on mock jurors’ decisions in a robbery trial. Jury-eligible participants (120 women; 84 men) read a mock trial summary and delivered their verdicts online. Mock jurors believed the young victim more than the older victim when the crime was severe, while no age differences emerged for the less severe crime. Whereas previous research demonstrated that juror characteristics were generally associated with culpability, we demonstrated that with case-specific information, these general views became less important. In all, mock jurors were aware of age-related decline in memory provided by eyewitnesses only to a limited extent. Accordingly, in trials involving older witnesses, jurors will benefit from educative information about age-related memory changes.

Key words:

• crime severity
• extra-legal factors
• juror attitudes
• juror decision-making
• old age
• perceived identification accuracy
• probability of guilt
• witness credibility

Acknowledgements

We thank Jane Goodman-Delahunty for commenting on a section of the manuscript. This research is part of Natalie Martschuk’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Giessen, Germany; Natalie Martschuk is now a Research Associate at Charles Sturt University, Manly, Australia.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Natalie Martschuk has declared no conflicts of interest

Siegfried L. Sporer has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study

Notes

1 Cronbach's α ≥ .6 is interpreted as questionable, Cronbach's α ≥ .7 as acceptable, Cronbach's α ≥ .8 as good, and Cronbach's α ≥ .9 as excellent (George & Mallery, 2003).

2 As noted by M. J. Kite and Wagner (2002), some measures about ageing do not necessarily reflect age-related bias; instead, they reflect accurate perceptions of ageing. The subscale used here included items that were in line with research findings that memory and cognitive abilities decline in older age (e.g., Coleman & O'Hanlon, 2008; Park et al., 2002).