How Persuasive Is an Eyewitness Who Is Familiar with the Defendant?

This chapter focuses on familiarity in the courtroom. Specifically, this chapter describes how familiarity between an eyewitness and a defendant affects juror decision-making in terms of perceptions of guilt and credibility of both the eyewitness and the defendant. The chapter describes how familiarity has been operationalized in the juror decision-making literature and discusses various definitions of familiarity, such as exposure duration, number of exposures, and the context of the relationship between the eyewitness and defendant. Research examining how familiarity influences jurors’ judgments is summarized. The chapter also discusses the association between familiarity and eyewitness confidence and its impact on jurors. The chapter concludes by describing familiarity within the context of real court cases, the use of expert testimony, and how familiarity may have affected judges’ rulings.