When a child takes the stand: Jurors' perceptions of children's eyewitness testimony.

Abstract

Children testify in courts of law, yet little is known about jurors' reactions to them. We describe the first studies of simulated jurors' reactions to child as compared to adult witnesses. Our methodology involved exposing mock jurors to trial descriptions. In the descriptions, the age of the eyewitness who provided crucial testimony varied. Across three experiments, potential jurors judged children to be less credible eyewitnesses than adults. Eyewitness age did not, however, determine the degree of guilt attributed to the defendant. This same pattern of results was found regardless of the sample tested (college students versus a more heterogeneous group), the type of trial presented (vehicular homicide versus murder), or the medium employed (written trial descriptions versus videotaped mock trial). Our findings indicate that biases against children's credibility are likely to appear when a child bystander witness takes the stand.