Law, Jurors' Perceptions of Child Witnesses

The reliability of children's eyewitness testimony has been of concern for over a century. Although early research concluded that children were highly suggestible witnesses, modern work finds that even young children can be reliable witnesses under optimal conditions (Eisen, Quas, & Goodman, 2002). Considerable attention has also focused on children's perceived accuracy. That is, in a legal context such as a courtroom, children's actual accuracy may never be known with certainty; nevertheless, their perceived accuracy (credibility) must be evaluated by forensic investigators, jurors, and judges. Social scientists have been particularly interested in the perceived credibility of children's testimony in child sexual abuse cases, because such cases often involve little other corroborative evidence that would form the basis of jurors' verdicts.

Research on perceptions of children's testimony in sexual abuse cases finds that adults are not very skilled at discerning children's actual accuracy (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, 1992), and as a result, their perceptions of credibility are influenced by a host of legal and extralegal factors, such as the following:

• 1.
  Juror characteristics: Women jurors are, on average, more child-victim-oriented than men and render more guilty verdicts in mock child sexual abuse trials (Bottoms & Goodman, 1994). Researchers have begun to identify the psychological origins of this tendency (preexisting differences in men's and women's empathic tendencies and attitudes toward child sexual abuse) and to investigate the effect of jury deliberations on this gender difference.
• 2.
  Victim characteristics: In some circumstances, children of color are perceived to be more responsible for abuse than nonminority children, but this may not affect trial verdicts (Bottoms, Davis, & Epstein, in press). Child gender affects judgments in a complex manner, interacting with both defendant and juror gender, to produce effects such as lenient sentences for women accused of molesting adolescent boys. Victim age is also a powerful predictor of juror perceptions through its influence on perceptions of competence and trustworthiness, which are theorized to be central components of credibility. In child sexual abuse cases, young children are perceived to be more credible than older children because they are deemed trustworthy and honest, yet lacking in the level of cognitive competence necessary for fabricating false charges (Bottoms & Goodman, 1994). For the same reason, children with intellectual disabilities are perceived as more credible than children of average intelligence. Older children may be perceived as more credible than younger children in other types of cases, however, such as when they are bystander witnesses to car accidents, because such cases highlight a greater need for cognitive competence (recall of specific details). Finally, children's demeanor, especially their confidence, is also a cue taken by jurors. As with adult eyewitnesses, the most confident child witnesses are not always the most accurate, but jurors rely on confidence to judge children's credibility.
• 3.
  Defendant characteristics: Research focusing on defendant factors reveals, for example, that child victim witnesses are perceived as more credible when evidence about their alleged molesters' past acts of child abuse are admitted at trial (Bottoms & Goodman, 1994). Other work shows that defendant race can be an important factor in child sexual abuse cases, though perhaps only in interaction with victim race. For example, jurors appear to be sensitive to the decreased plausibility of cross-race instances of child abuse, regardless of whether the suspect is White or African American (Bottoms et al., in press).
• 4.
  Situational case factors: In many jurisdictions, procedural innovations have been instituted to protect children from the trauma of testifying in open courtrooms. Such innovations, such as testimony via closed-circuit television and the pretrial preparation of children for the task of testifying in court, sometimes increase children's actual testimonial accuracy but decrease children's perceived credibility in the eyes of jurors (McAuliff & Kovera, 2002). That is, children who have been prepared or who testify via television can appear less emotionally distraught and, in turn, less believable than otherwise (although this can be offset by explanatory testimony from an expert witness). Another courtroom factor that can affect perceptions of child witnesses is attorney trial tactics. For example, through opening and closing arguments, attorneys can successfully induce juror empathy for child victims and, in turn, influence verdicts.

Research has begun to examine perceptions of children and their testimony in a different context: [Page 640]cases in which adolescents are themselves accused of crimes. Today, an increasing number of cases involving adolescent offenders are being transferred from juvenile to adult criminal courts, where cases are tried before juries rather than juvenile or family court judges. Research is beginning to document the ways in which adolescents and adults differ in competencies related to adjudication, such as competence to understand legal charges and court processes, to assist in one's own defense, and so on. Little research has addressed jurors' perceptions of such competencies or of the ways in which these perceptions affect juror judgments in cases involving juvenile offenders. One study suggests that jurors perceive juvenile offenders either as immature, incompetent adolescents who should be rehabilitated rather than punished (a “way-ward youth” stereotype) or as culpable, competent offenders who should be punished (a “superpredator” stereotype). Jurors who endorse the superpredator stereotype are more likely to vote “guilty” in trials involving juveniles than are jurors who endorse the wayward youth stereotype (Haegerich, 2002).

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