Video versus in person hearings: Determining witness credibility

<p>Because of health risks during the global pandemic of 2020, many fact finding hearings previously held in-person were offered in a video format. The return of in-person hearings is reemerging as many practitioners contend that video hearings are inadequate for viewing witness demeanor, thereby hindering determination of witness credibility. This paper summarizes the best available evidence and concludes: (1) personal demeanor is a not reliable factor for weighing witness credibility or deception detection, (2) a variety of indicators to be used by a “trier of fact” are more accurate in evaluating witness credibility, (3) and a video format is more reliable than an in-person hearing in assessing witness credibility. It concludes with an examination of what has been learned and the opportunities recorded video hearings offer for assessing witness credibility in the future. </p>

Video versus in person hearings: Determining witness credibility

<p>Because of health risks during the global pandemic of 2020, many fact finding hearings previously held in-person were offered in a video format. The return of in-person hearings is reemerging as many practitioners contend that video hearings are inadequate for viewing witness demeanor, thereby hindering determination of witness credibility. This paper summarizes the best available evidence and concludes: (1) personal demeanor is a not reliable factor for weighing witness credibility or deception detection, (2) a variety of indicators to be used by a “trier of fact” are more accurate in evaluating witness credibility, (3) and a video format is more reliable than an in-person hearing in assessing witness credibility. It concludes with an examination of what has been learned and the opportunities recorded video hearings offer for assessing witness credibility in the future. </p>

Deception and detection: the use of technology in assessing witness credibility

Tribunals, like courts, have long grappled with differentiating truthful from untruthful witnesses. A number of cases before the Court of Arbitration for Sport have considered whether polygraph evidence is admissible as a means of verifying witness testimony, though tribunals have not reached any consensus. Now, authorities in several countries are trialling a new generation of ‘lie detectors’ using technologies such as eye tracking, artificial intelligence, and brain imaging. Proponents argue that these new technologies are more accurate and less subjective than existing polygraphs and that they can transform the nature of witness evidence. This article outlines the potential scope of lie-detecting technologies in arbitration and their promise to revolutionize tribunals’ evaluations of witness credibility. It considers objections to their usage, including reliability, machine bias and privacy, and the privilege against self-incrimination, and concludes that considerations of fairness and proportionality favour excluding lie-detector evidence.

The views of judges and prosecutors on the opinions of psychologist expert witnesses in cases concerning witness testimony Joanna Kabzińska

The purpose of this qualitative research is to explore the perceptions of Polish judges and prosecutors regarding the role of psychologist expert witnesses in the evaluation of eyewitness testimony. Two main research questions were formulated: What are the criteria for selecting psychologist expert witnesses to participate in interviews and then to formulate expert opinions? What do judges and prosecutors expect from psychologist expert witnesses and their evaluations of eyewitness testimony? In-depth interviews were conducted involving judges (N = 31) and prosecutors (N = 30), both male (N = 35) and female (N = 26). Though other factors, such as availability, were also frequently mentioned, the judges and prosecutors declared that their choices of psychologist expert witnesses were predominantly determined by their professional abilities. These criteria correspond with the characteristics that judges and prosecutors claim to value the most in psychologist expert witnesses: their specialist fields, their experience, and their reliability in carrying out their work. It is of particular importance to the evaluation of witness testimony that judges and prosecutors recognize that, for an opinion to be complete, there is a need for psychological testing and diagnosis in addition to being present at interviews. However, judges and prosecutors do not always recognise the difference between legal conceptions of witness credibility and the assessments of it formulated by psychologist expert witnesses. The research provides an unique insight into the expectations of Polish judges and prosecutors regarding the role of psychologist expert witnesses in evaluating, and reporting on, witness testimony. To identify the aspects of psychologists’ opinions that are particularly valued by judges and prosecutors can enable better cooperation and communication between psychologists and legal professionals.

Forensic Psychology in Historical Perspective

Forensic psychology in the 21st century entails the application of psychology to all aspects of the criminal justice process. Forensic psychologists, therefore, are engaged in the theorization of offending, offender profiling, the psychology of testimony, investigative interviewing, the psychology of juries and judges, and psychological approaches to the punishment and treatment of offenders. Historically, however, forensic psychology, has been narrower in scope. Founded principally in Europe during the late 19th century as a response to the reform of criminal procedure and research on suggestion, which undermined confidence in witness credibility, forensic psychology was initially pursued by jurists and psychiatrists eager to understand the behavior of all those involved in the criminal justice process. While this ambition was pursued piecemeal by jurists throughout the early 20th century in their studies of guilty knowledge, judges, jurors, and investigators, the exigencies of the courtroom, soon saw the field become focused on the psychology of the witness, particularly the juvenile witness. Important, in this regard were the efforts of both European and American experimental psychologists, whose precarious position within universities at the fin de siècle saw them look for real-world applications for psychology and led them to campaign voraciously for the inclusion of psychological knowledge and psychological expertise in legal proceedings. Competition between several disciplines, including law, psychology, psychiatry, and pedagogy, over the role of psychological expert made the professionalization of this field difficult up until the Second World War. During the late 1940s and 1950s, however, not only did forensic psychology increasingly become the exclusive purview of psychologists, but the discipline’s scope began to expand. Notable in this regard was offender profiling, which emerged from the psychological analysis of war criminals and the application of the insights gained here to several high-profile criminal cases in the United States.

Uncovering Credibility

The project of evidence law is in many ways analogous to that of the author or artist. All seek to expose deeper truths. While the novelist can freely invent character and corresponding behavior, evidence law uses fictive devices to recreate a coherent narrative from ostensibly unimagined facts. It does this, in part, by structuring the ways in which we assess witness credibility. What witnesses say is at the heart of most trials and whether to believe those witnesses is an overarching concern. The novelist or painter can show us the inner life of characters through an omniscient narrator or a telltale blush. Evidence law employs a different, though no less evocative, means for signaling credibility. It makes otherwise irrelevant information admissible at trial as credibility evidence, encouraging fact-finders to consider the kind of person whose word they are being asked to accept by digging into that person’s past. In admitting this evidence, the law relies on a false equivalence between a propensity to lie, which will allegedly be uncovered through credibility evidence, and evidence tailored to the question of whether a witness should be believed, which is what is actually being offered to the fact-finder. This chapter seeks to disentangle the two concepts—propensity to lie and worthiness of belief—and in so doing to reveal the danger in mistaking a fundamentally authorial impulse to use worthiness and status-based distinctions to color in the narratives of the courtroom in service of a hyper-rational process of proof.

The Joint Effect of Scientific Knowledge and Photographic Evidence on Expert Witness Credibility

The present study examines the role of scientific and photographic evidence on mock jurors’ perceptions of witness credibility and whether adding such details to an expert witness’s slideshow increases the credibility of that testimony. To assess credibility, 128 undergraduate students were divided across 4 research groups. The students reviewed narrated slideshows of Human Factors expert witness testimony and used the Witness Credibility Scale (Brodsky et al., 2010) to quantify the credibility of that testimony. We hypothesized that adding scientific data and photographs would lead to an increase in perceived credibility. Final results indicate that scientific data did generate a statistically significant increase in perceived credibility, specifically concerning the knowledge and trustworthiness of the witness. Conversely, the inclusion of images did not produce a statistically significant effect on perceived credibility. The results of this study demonstrate that including specialized scientific information in an expert witness’s testimony affects jurors’ overall perception of credibility of the witness.