JJC PSY 311 - An Expert Witness’s Race, defendant’s race and the Jurors Final Decision

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1Running head: RACE & THE JURORY’S DECISIONExpert Witnesses’ Testimonies:An Expert Witness’s Race, defendant’s race and the Jurors Final DecisionIsalet Otero MendezJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice2RACE & THE JURORY’S DECISIONAbstractForensic experts have been utilized in the legal system for many years and their expert opinions in courts many times have been debated by many scholars for various reasons. Nonetheless, forensic expert testimony has proven many times to be effective and a very imperative part of thelegal system. However, some scholars have challenged their expertise and as a result there are still some unanswered or not fully evaluated aspects of expert witnesses’ testimonies and their impact on jurors’ decisions. The following paper will discuss aspects regarding expert witnesses’testimonies and their influence on jurors. Keywords: decision, experts, jurors, legal, testimony, witness3RACE & THE JURORY’S DECISIONAn Expert Witness’s Race, the defendant’s race and the Jurors’ Final DecisionExpert witnesses such as psychologist and psychiatrists have been utilized in the legal system for many years and their expert opinions in courts have been often debated by scholars. Nonetheless, forensic experts’ testimonies have been said to be a very imperative part of many cases that require their presence in the court; however, their expertise has been questioned on thebasis of credibility, gender, and even persuasiveness and as a result this is why throughout history scholars have tried to answer these types of questions, but until this day the aspect of raceregarding experts witnesses and the defendants simultaneously have not yet been thoroughly examined. Hence, the following research proposal will attempt to develop a paradigm to target another complex aspect of expert witnesses’ testimonies in a court; thus, the purpose is to find whether an expert witness’s race can influence and ultimately sway jurors’ final verdict. Furthermore, other aspects closely interrelated to this notion will be discussed in order to establish a historical overview of the importance of this topic and other related topics as well. For that reason, scholarly researches conducted to answer similar questions regarding expert witnesses’ testimonies in court will be discussed in order to establish a background of the significance of this notion and also use these as a guideline for the research proposal.Background and studiesAt this point in time, various studies and scholars have established that expert witnesses’ unique and different attributes do or can have an effect on how jurors perceive the overall testimony and influence jurors’ ultimate decision. According to Daniel W. Shuman, Anthony Champagne and Elizabeth Whitaker their 1996 literature review’s conclusion on this topic supports this notion (Shuman, Champagne, & Whitaker, 1996):4RACE & THE JURORY’S DECISIONTypical juror forms impressions of experts stereotypically, based on the occupation of theexperts, and superficially, based on the personal characteristics of the experts (p. 382).However, others have opposed this idea and have established and found that jurors do notonly based their decision solely on personal characteristics but jurors examined the personal characteristics of the messenger and the content of the message as well. In fact, the quantitative analysis study with/of 55 jurors in 7 civil trials conducted by Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic and Valerie P. Hans (2003) found that jurors deliberate based both the messenger and the message (Ivković, & Hans, 2003). Notions such as the ones stated previously have stirred up a number of innovative concepts regarding experts’ testimonies, and jurors. For example, other scholars have proposed the idea that expert testimony is influenced by the compatibility between the gender of the expert witness and the gender orientation of the case. Hence, the study by Blake M. McKimmie, Cameron J. Newton, Deborah J. Terry, and Regina A. Schuller (2004), composed of62 participants who read a trial transcript involving a price-fixing claim in either a male or female oriented field, what they found was that the impact of the expert witness and damage awards was larger when the gender of the expert witness and the area of the case were compatible as opposed to incompatible (McKimmie, Newton, Terry, & Schuller, 2004). Furthermore, other studies have suggested and supported similar notions. For example, in Brian H. Bornstein’s (2004) study with 152 undergraduate participants of whom 38 were male and 114 were female, enrolled in a psychology class and who were to receive extra credit for their participation. Participants in this study were exposed to a trial scenario which was a one-page, single-spaced summary of a lawsuit in which the plaintiff alleged that lead contained in refuse stored by a paint manufacturer had seeped into his well water and caused his 12-year-old son to develop rheumatoid arthritis. The case was modified from an actual lawsuit and contained a5RACE & THE JURORY’S DECISIONdescription of the plaintiff and defendant, the plaintiff’s, and the known facts (Bornstein, 2004). What they ultimately found was that in both experiments, the defendant was more likely to attaina decision in his favor when his expert demonstrated anecdotal case histories than when the expert presented experimental data (Bornstein, 2004).Thus, yet again this suggests and supports previous notions that the unique attributes possessed by the expert witness’s testimony such as persuasive, the message, the expert himself/herself, can all in fact have an effect on jurors’ decisions.Over the years many studies have been conducted to examine these notions as the used ofexpert witnesses have increased in courts of law. The study conducted by McKimmie, B. M., Newton, S. A., Schuller, R. A., & Terry, D. J. (2013) was completed to examine whether the influence of language complexity and cognitive load on the persuasiveness of expert testimony has any effect on jurors. What was hypothesized in this study was that simple language is perceived as being linked with female experts, while complex language is linked with male experts, and that such expectancies about the gender orientation of the expert’s language can impact mock jurors’ verdicts such that they would be more swayed when an expert used language that matched his/her gender (McKimmie, Newton, Schuller, Terry, 2013).


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