Judging guilt and accuracy: highly confident eyewitnesses are discounted when they provide featural justifications

Jurors are heavily swayed by confident eyewitnesses. Are they also influenced by how eyewitnesses justify their level of confidence? Here we document a counter-intuitive effect: when eyewitnesses identified a suspect from a lineup with absolute certainty (‘I am completely confident’) and justified their confidence by referring to a visible feature of the accused (‘I remember his nose’), participants judged the suspect as less likely to be guilty than when eyewitnesses identified a suspect with absolute certainty but offered an unobservable justification (‘I would never forget him’) or no justification at all. Moreover, people perceive an eyewitness’s identification as nearly 25% less accurate when the eyewitness has provided a featural justification than an unobservable justification or simply no justification. Even when an eyewitness’s level of confidence is clear because s/he has expressed it numerically (e.g. ‘I am 100% certain’) participants perceive eyewitnesses as not credible (i.e. inaccurate) when the eyewitness has provided a featural justification. However, the effect of featural justifications – relative to a confidence statement only – is maximal when there is an accompanying lineup of faces, moderate when there is a single face and minimal when there is no face at all. The results support our Perceived-Diagnosticity account.     

The indirectly generated tainted truth effect: warning is not necessary to worsen the testimony of non-misled persons

The purpose of the present research was to examine the indirectly generated tainted truth effect (TTE). The TTE refers to decreased accuracy on a memory test among persons who are erroneously warned about non-existent misinformation in material that describes an event. It was expected that the TTE would occur even without an explicit warning about misinformation, if one distinctive item of misinformation appeared in postevent material that also contained correct information that was consistent with the original material about the event (indirectly generated TTE: IGTTE). Experiment 1 produced the IGTTE and this effect was replicated in Experiment 2. Experiment 2 showed that the classic and indirect versions of the TTE usually occurred among persons who incorrectly monitored the source of information. Experiment 3 replicated the IGTTE using a procedure that included an additional phase between presenting the original and postevent material – initial testing. When the initial testing procedure was administered in Experiment 3, the TTE was smaller; however, this initial testing procedure had no effect on the IGTTE.     

专家证言的概念性挑战

本文重点考察了专家知识与案件审理模式之间的关系。总体而言,案件审理是一种教育性活动,其间,事实认定者应能够理解、处理和思考证据,并得出理性的结论。这一过程反映了审理中准确事实认定的根本重要性,若没有准确的事实认定,权利和义务便是空谈。专家证据通常涉及一种遵从性而非教育性的诉讼程序模式,从这一点上来说其有悖于常规的审判理想状态。本文讨论了这一发展过程、其形成原因及其后果。若要实现审判的理想状态,那么替代性措施（即所有证据应以教育性模式呈现）则更为优越。如果证据无法以此种方式（教育性模式）呈现,那么在审理过程中通过证据所展现的待证事项便无法与常规的审判理想状态保持一致。     

论我国新刑诉法证人作证的有关制度的完善

我国新修改的刑事诉讼法在证人作证制度上日臻完善,使我国刑诉法证人作证制度体系更趋科学,意义深远.但其多方面的具体制度尚有进步空间.立足于我国司法实践,在我国证人作证制度方面对证人作证的保护、（强制）证人出庭作证制度、作证豁免制度以及证人拒绝出庭时书面证言的效力问题进行探讨,并基于人权保护原则和衡平原则提出若干建议.     

性别性受苦——中国贵州苗族中年妇女关于家庭暴力的口述见证

这篇文章根据我们在贵州苗族地区所收集的口述故事书写而成.从1999到2004年,我们采用口述见证方法（oral testimony）作为我们社区发展的一种策略,尝试从苗族妇女的生命故事中,理解她们面对的困难与需要,从而让我们更能够与她们一起推动社区发展的项目和计划.我们推动口述故事项目背后,还有女性主义的关怀,希望这些偏远山区的边缘妇女能够通过口述故事发声,让我们能够聆听她们被隐没的需要,理解在家庭和社区中各种形塑她们生命历程的社会力量.在这研究中,我们特别发现中年妇女生命中面对的苦难大多与家庭相关,她们不断述说家庭的负担、家庭冲突、家庭暴力、丈夫酗酒等的问题.阅读她们的生命故事,我们得出的结论是,家庭暴力是她们主要面对的苦难之一,而这苦难是当地妇女的集体经验,是性别性和制度性的.在这文章中,我们特别希望指出,当地家庭暴力产生的根源并非是单一性的,而是父权制度、农村贫困、传统文化习惯等交织在一起,形塑了她们生命的遭遇和苦难.     

Passing on the history of ‘comfort women’: the experiences of a women’s museum in Japan

This article explores the activities and experiences of a women’s peace museum in Japan which especially tries to pass on the history of Japan’s military sexual slavery, or the ‘comfort women’ issue. The system of Japan’s military sexual slavery had not been written as a part of history until courageous survivors testified and documentary evidence was unearthed in the 1990s. With few material exhibits of sexual violence, testimonies play a significant role in the exhibitions. Panels displaying the testimony of both survivors and former soldiers try to represent the person as a whole, situating sexual enslavement or crimes as part of their overall life, rather than extracting the harsh experience in an isolated way. The concrete and detailed activities of this privately run museum show the challenges faced by museums dealing with the dark history of their own country.     

中外法律语言研究侧重点的差异及启示

法律与语言的关系问题是法律语言学的研究范围。司法领域中的语言问题是法律语言学研究的核心问题。一般来讲,法律语言研究分为书面语和口语两个范畴。中外法律语言研究侧重点存在着较大不同。中国法律语言研究重书面语研究而轻法律口语研究,范围多局限于语言本身,很少涉及到语言学在司法领域中的应用等方面。国外法律语言研究对国内法律语言的未来研究与发展有重要的启示意义。     

Providing eyewitnesses with initial retrieval support: what works at immediate and subsequent recall?

The effect of retrieval support on eyewitness recall was investigated in two experiments. Based on the outshining hypothesis, Experiment 1 tested whether retrieval support enhances witness performance (compared to free recall) especially when witnessing conditions are suboptimal (e.g., because witnesses were distracted during the crime). Eighty-eight participants watched a videotaped crime with either full or divided attention and subsequently received retrieval support with the Self-Administered Interview© (SAI) or completed a free recall (FR). One week later (Time 2 – T2) all participants completed a second FR. Unexpectedly, retrieval support did not lead to better memory performance than FR under divided attention conditions, suggesting that retrieval support is not effective to overcome adverse effects of divided attention. Moreover, presence of retrieval support at Time 1 (T1) had no effect on memory performance at T2. Experiment 2 (N = 81) tested the hypothesis that these T2-results were due to a reporting issue undermining the memory-preserving effect of T1-retrieval support by manipulating retrieval support (SAI vs. FR) at T1 and T2. As expected, T1-retrieval support led to increased accuracy at T2. Thus, the beneficial value of T1-retrieval support seems greatest with high-quality T2-interviews. Interviewers should consider this when planning a subsequent interview.     

The quality of written expert testimony in alleged child sexual abuse: An empirical study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to empirically evaluate written expert testimonies in cases of suspected child sexual abuse in Sweden. A total of 121 expert testimonies were rated with an instrument developed for the study, the SQX-12 (Gumpert et al., 2001) which is a 12-item checklist aimed to reflect consensus-established concepts of quality. Reports from different professional groups were compared, as were reports produced before and after the 1991 publication of national guidelines. The results suggested that the reports produced by professionals using statement analysis generally were of higher quality than reports written by professionals from child- and adolescent psychiatry. There was a slight increase in report quality, as measured by the SQX total score, over the studied years. However, it is concluded that the overall quality of written expert testimony on child credibility still does not reach the recommended level in Sweden.     

What judges know about eyewitness testimony: A comparison of Norwegian and US judges

Abstract

We surveyed 157 Norwegian judges about their knowledge and beliefs about eyewitness testimony, and compared their answers to a prior survey of 160 US judges. Although the Norwegian judges were somewhat more knowledgeable than the US judges, both groups had limited knowledge of eyewitness testimony. The Norwegian judges, like the US judges, frequently differed from eyewitness experts in their responses to such important issues as whether eyewitness confidence is related to identification accuracy at trial and what is the best method for conducting identification procedures. As was true for the US judges, more knowledgeable Norwegian judges had many of the beliefs that may be necessary for reducing and mitigating the effects of eyewitness error. The results suggest that increasing judges’ knowledge of eyewitness testimony may be an important component of the solution to eyewitness error.