Jurors'Evaluations of Expert Testimony: Judging the Messenger and the Message |
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| Authors: | Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovi&# ,Valerie P. Hans |
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| Affiliation: | Sanja Kutnjak Ivković;is assistant professor, Florida State University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Valerie P. Hans;is professor, University of Delaware, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. This article is based on research funded by National Science Foundation grants SES-8822598 and GER-9350498 to Valerie P. Hans. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Kathleen Tiemey for her assistance with the qualitative analysis. An early account of some of the findings reported herein appeared in Advocate 16(4) in 1999, pp. 17–21, and is reprinted by permission. |
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| Abstract: | Jurors are laypersons with no specific expert knowledge, yet they are routinely placed in situations in which they need to critically evaluate complex expert testimony. This paper examines jurors'reactions to experts who testify in civil trials and the factors jurors identify as important to expert credibility. Based on in-depth qualitative analyses of interviews with 55 jurors in 7 civil trials, we develop a comprehensive model of the key factors jurors incorporate into the process of evaluating expert witnesses and their testimony. Contrary to the frequent criticism that jurors primarily evaluate expert evidence in terms of its subjective characteristics, the results of our study indicate that jurors consider both the messenger and the message in the course of evaluating the expert's credibility. |
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