Innocent until proven guilty: The effect of truncated testimony and deliberation on jury decision-making

Abstract

Many countries, including New Zealand, now allow for children’s evidence to be provided by alternative means, rather than requiring them to be physically present in the courtroom. The opportunity for children to provide their evidence-in-chief through pre-recorded videotaped interviews is designed to reduce the stress associated with testifying in court in the presence of the accused. The use of videotaped interviews also allows for the truncation of the child’s testimony, presenting only a portion of the evidential interviews at trial. This practice may prevent the jury from viewing the child’s statement in the original context, and makes it possible for bizarre, implausible claims to be excluded. As jury deliberation is a key component of the adversarial system in New Zealand, the aim of the current study was to examine the impact of jury deliberation on the pattern of verdicts by juries who are presented with a child’s testimony in the absence of the context of the full interview or those who are presented with the full interview. To do this, we examined mock jurors’ verdict judgments prior to and following deliberation, and examined the content of deliberation. We found that before deliberating, mock jurors were equally likely to render a guilty verdict to the child’s core allegation, regardless of whether it was presented with additional, less plausible allegations. After deliberating, mock jurors who viewed the video containing multiple allegations were more likely to find the defendant guilty of the core allegation than were jurors who only viewed the core allegation. There were also differences in deliberation content between interview conditions. These findings provide some insight into the impact that bizarre details may have on verdict decision-making and the effect that group processes related to jury deliberation may have on a jury’s final verdict.