How Judicial Instructions Help Jurors Understand Specific Eyewitness Factors

• In Event: Eyewitness Testimony, Wrongful Conviction and Jury Decision Making

Abstract

Eyewitness misidentifications are a contributing factor in 70% of the DNA exoneration cases, and 60% of all exoneration cases (National Registry of Exonerations, 2017; www.innocenceproject.org). The high number of exoneration cases featuring an (inaccurate) eyewitness identification highlight the need for legal safeguards to educate decision-makers on the error-prone nature of eyewitness identifications. A recent court decision reflects the courts’ desire to educate jurors by creating judicial instructions highlighting the factors that influence eyewitness identification accuracy (New Jersey v. Henderson, 2014). Research has explored the efficacy of these instructions (Dillon et al., 2017; Jones et al., 2017; Papaillou, Yokum, & Robertson, 2015), but not how the instructions influence comprehension of specific eyewitness factors.
In the current research, we conducted two mock juror studies to examine how judicial instructions assist jurors’ comprehension of specific eyewitness factors and incorporate knowledge into their verdict decisions. In the first study, we found that jurors were able to accurately assess the unreliability of a showup procedure, but were unable to incorporate this knowledge into verdict decisions. In the second study we examine how judicial instructions influence jurors’ knowledge of other identification factors, and how jurors integrate that knowledge into their verdict decisions.

Authors

• Amanda Nicholson Bergold, University of Pennsylvania Law School

• Angela Jones, Texas State University

• Steven Penrod, The Graduate Center, John Jay College / CUNY