Courtroom Testimony Research Articles

The Evidentiary Power of Dementia Witnesses in Domestic Violence Cases

The Indonesian criminal justice system often neglects crime victims, relegating them to mere witnesses needed for case substantiation, a consequence of its bias towards perpetrator protection. This disregard extends to vulnerable victims like those with dementia, whose cognitive limitations significantly hinder their courtroom testimony, posing challenges in recalling events and expressing themselves clearly. Consequently, the credibility and evidentiary value of their statements are compromised, exacerbating the social and psychological impacts on dementia sufferers. This research aims to address this issue by examining the evidentiary power of dementia witnesses in domestic violence cases within the Indonesian legal framework, drawing on theories of legal protection and certainty. Employing a normative juridical approach, the study analyzes the role of the Public Prosecutor in the evidentiary process and proposes regulatory frameworks to ensure the fair treatment and protection of vulnerable individuals within the criminal justice system.

Invited Commentary: Advancing but not yet Advanced: Assessment of Effort/Malingering in Forensic and Clinical Settings.

Neuropsychologists' conclusions and courtroom testimony on malingering can have profound impact. Intensive and ingenious research has advanced our capacities to identify both insufficient and sufficient effort and thus make worthy contributions to just conflict resolution. Nevertheless, given multiple converging factors, such as misleadingly high accuracy rates in many studies, practitioners may well develop inflated confidence in methods for evaluating effort/malingering. Considerable research shows that overconfidence often increases diagnostic and predictive error and may lead to fixed conclusions when caution is better advised. Leonhard's work thus performs an important service by alerting us to methodological considerations and shortcomings that can generate misimpressions about the efficacy of effort/malingering assessment. The present commentary covers various additional complicating factors in malingering assessment, including other factors that also inflate confidence; subtle and perhaps underappreciated methodological flaws that are inversely related to positive study outcomes (i.e., the worse the flaws the better methods appear to be); oversimplified classifications schemes for studying and evaluating effort that overlook, for example, common mixed presentations (e.g., malingering and genuinely injured); and the need to expand research across a greater range and severity of neuropsychological conditions and diverse groups. More generally, although endorsing various points that Leonhard raises, a number of questions and concerns are presented, such as methods for calculating the impact of case exclusions in studies. Ultimately, although Leonhard's conclusions may be more negative than is justified, it seems fair to categorize methods for assessing malingering/effort as advancing, but not yet advanced, with much more needed to be done to approach that latter status.

The importance of clinician courtroom testimony for children exposed to domestic violence

AbstractChildren exposed to domestic violence account for as many as a third of all children in the United States. Many of these children will seek mental health treatment for symptoms of trauma. The clinicians who provide their treatment are often called as witnesses in family law proceedings, especially child protection and custody cases. Clinicians are often anxious when they receive subpoenas to testify and prefer to avoid testimony. Training about court proceedings, subpoenas and how to prepare for testimony would be beneficial for clinicians and will help clinicians be more confident in the courtroom. Additionally, becoming designated as expert witnesses can only help mental health clinicians provide a greater understanding of the issues encountered by children experiencing domestic violence, and these clinicians can provide recommendations that will take into account child safety without exacerbating trauma symptoms.

“The pedagogical expert witness: teaching complex science in the courtroom”

The search for the truth can be a daunting task, but without knowing what happened and who is responsible, there can be no attempt at achieving any measure of justice. Forensic scientists often play a pivotal role in determining significant facts and interpreting those facts for the court to consider. When called to testify, expert witnesses have a special duty to the court to provide fair, objective, and non-partisan assistance. The courtroom becomes the classroom as the expert witness takes on pedagogical duties of teaching the underlying science, methodology, and the nuances of forensic opinions. Depending on the area of expertise and evidence, the learning curve for the trier of fact can be steep. The didactic presentation of complex data requires planning and skill. Drawing upon my Courtroom Testimony for Expert Witnesses course and my PhD research, I focus on the search for truth, expert witness bias, and the challenge of teaching complex science to the trier of fact. There will be specific emphasis on the incorporation of visual evidence to explain complex concepts in a more concise and memorable manner to aid in comprehension. The expert witness is a teacher and how the expert teaches makes a difference.

Brown Trans Figuration: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies

Brown Trans Figuration: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies

Silent Witnesses: The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose

Silent Witnesses:The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose Leora Bilsky (bio) and Vered Lev Kenaan1 (bio) The Holocaust brought about a crisis of testimony that led to critical engagement with the limits of representation by lawyers, historians, psychoanalysts, and poets. This question was first addressed by the architects of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945) who preferred incriminating documents produced by the perpetrators themselves over the testimony of their victims. A reversal was brought about 15 years later in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961), where the testimony of Holocaust survivors took center stage. In the last two decades another transformation has occurred, known as "the material turn"—the rising interest in material objects (from artworks to everyday objects) in anticipation of the death of the last survivors. This material turn was accompanied by a wave of restitution litigation over artwork looted by the Nazis. In this article we offer a new theoretical perspective on the complicated issues raised by the material turn in Holocaust memory. What kind of testimony or voice can we attribute to objects? How can the testimony of objects change the relationship between law and literature in representations of the Holocaust? At the center of our discussion are three Jewish-Polish poetic testimonies written by Zuzanna Ginczanka, Władysław Szlengel, and Rachel Auerbach during the war in Poland, under Nazi occupation. Anticipating the crisis of testimony brought about by the new crime of genocide, these writers give voice to everyday objects and assign them the role of witnesses in an imagined future trial, held after the extinction of their communities. By introducing inanimate objects as privileged witnesses in an imagined Holocaust trial, we argue that these authors problematize the notion of courtroom testimony. By adopting and employing the rhetorical figure of the testifying object, these Jewish authors respond to the rich Western humanist [End Page 379] tradition of testament poetry, while at the same time performing acts of intervention. Our reading shows that these texts disrupt the continuity of the European convention of the testament poem, precisely by ascribing the testifying voice to Jewish things. Preface "The Telephone" With my broken and sick heart,with thoughts on the other side,I sat in the eveningBy my telephone. I thought: I will callsomeone on the other side,when there comes my turnto sit by the telephone. And soon I realize—God, there's nobody to call,I went another wayIn 1939. Our ways have parted,Friendships became stuckAnd suddenly, here I am,Without anybody to call. (Szlengel, 1943, pp. 38–41) "The Telephone" was written in Polish by the Polish-Jewish poet Władysław Szlengel (1943/1987) in the Warsaw ghetto (Oneg Szabat Program, 2021). Szlengel's poem is about the dreadful loneliness caused by being forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto away from the familiar habitus. Drawn back to the other, forbidden part of Warsaw where all his Polish acquaintances continue to live, the speaker longs to reconnect with old friends and neighbors. Yet his wish soon resolves into bitter realization: [End Page 380] "God, there's nobody to call." Here the poem shifts from the lyric mode to the satirical. Looking for some other channel of communication, the poet turns to the telephone's speaking clock as a substitute for familiar interlocutors. Szlengel thus produces a Jewish variation of Cocteau's (1928) La Voix Humaine by conducting an imaginary conversation with an automated female voice.2 Associating a broken human voice choked with tears and the voice of the machine, Szlengel conveys the loss of trust between the ghetto's Jews and their former Polish neighbors. When Szlengel (1943/1987) writes, "It will be easier on the heart, knowing that when I call, someone on the other side will listen to me quietly," the voice he craves to hear from the other side is of someone who shares memories of their hometown and is not afraid to talk with one who was cast out of it. In 1939 the telephone could still provide a means of communication to overcome the ghetto walls. Notwithstanding this technical possibility, such an effort is doomed to...

Investigating the Legal Discourse of Bill Clinton’s Impeachment Trial

This paper presents a legal discourse analysis of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial held in 1998. The paper’s main objective is to explore the different meanings communicated by the dexterous use of some lexical and pragmatic strategies used by discourse interlocutors involved in the trial. More specifically, the article offers a linguistic study of the testimony and statements of President Bill Clinton relating to his impeachment trial. The paper focuses on three main analytical dimensions: word selection, power relations, and questioning and answering, and the way these strategies influence the discourse participants’ conversational performance in the selected trial. To this end, this study draws on a legal discourse analysis approach as discussed by Coulthard (2013) and Mey (2016), focusing on lexicalization, the notion of power, and the use of questions and answers in courtroom settings. The overarching research question is: What are the different ideological and pragmatic meanings targeted beyond the use of selected words during the trial? Results reveal that language is a powerful tool in courtroom testimonies as it helps to extract information, verify evidence, draw legal outcomes, and encode and/or decode the underpinning meanings of courtroom discourse participants. These, in turn, serve to support or defy evidence and ultimately lead to issue a legally just decision.

The effect of Video-Linked Courtroom Testimony on Lay Judges' Judgment in Judiciary IT

The effect of Video-Linked Courtroom Testimony on Lay Judges' Judgment in Judiciary IT

Children’s narrative coherence in ‘Achieving Best Evidence’ forensic interviews and courtroom testimony

ABSTRACT In the United Kingdom, Section 27 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act permits ‘Achieving Best Evidence’ (ABE) forensic interviews to replace the evidence-in-chief in cases involving children. It is therefore imperative that forensic interviewers elicit complete, reliable, and coherent narratives from children. The goal of the current research study was to assess the coherence of forensic interviews and whether the interviewers’ emotional or cognitive support was associated with increases in the coherence of these interviews. Children’s narrative coherence was examined in 80 transcripts of ABE investigative interviews with 7- to-15-year-olds who disclosed sexual abuse. Narrative coherence was assessed using the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme, including three dimensions of narrative coherence: chronology, consistency, and theme (Reese, E., Haden, C. A., Baker-Ward, L., Bauer, P., Fivush, R., & Ornstein, P. A. (2011). Coherence of personal narratives across the lifespan: A multidimensional model and coding method. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12(4), 424–462. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2011.587854). Findings revealed that first elicited events were more likely to be more coherent compared to subsequently elicited events, and child engagement was positively associated with all dimensions of narrative coherence. Interviewer support was positively associated with chronology, script accounts of abuse were associated with decreased consistency and chronology (but not theme), and cognitive support was not associated with any dimension of narrative coherence.

Review Essay: Surgeons at the Bar: From the Crime Scene to the Courtroom

How did English and Welsh medical practitioners enter the common-law courtroom as expert witnesses, and how can one assess their influence on crime-scene investigations and courtroom testimony? Witnesses offering specialist opinions were hardly novel in the eighteenth-century London courtroom, but their participation grew at such a pace that, by the early 1900s, they had become regular participants in police investigation and criminal trials. Even as their presence grew, their evolution was not a singular event: defense lawyers, judges, and juries were experiencing qualitative changes in their roles in the adjudication of crime just as prison surgeons, asylum superintendents, and hospital medical officers entered the witness box. It is the singular achievement of this important study that Katherine D. Watson has isolated critical moments in the growth of medicine's role while embedding the practitioners’ rise within the shifting dynamics of criminal prosecution in early modern England.

Suitability of 3D printing cranial trauma: Prospective novel applications and limitations of 3D replicas

3D printed reconstructions of skeletal material offer a novel, interactive and increasingly used tool to support courtroom testimony and aid juror interpretation of expert testimony. While research has begun to address the accuracy of 3D printed skeletal material, there has been little consideration of the diverse applications of prints to support trauma demonstrations, particularly in relation to gunshot trauma. This study explored the suitability of three printed human crania replicas exhibiting either gunshot trauma or blunt force trauma for identifying whether the prints were sufficiently accurate for the presentation of trauma wounds. The data indicate that metric measurement and qualitative assessment of trauma macromorphology was possible from the 3D printed reconstructions. The findings also offer an indication that it is possible to obtain data around the accuracy of 3D printing bullet wounds and for establishing a bullet path. However, some limitations of prints reconstructed from post-mortem computed tomography (PMCT) data were identified including the observation that not all fracture lines were successfully replicated which indicates that at present virtual models should be used concurrently with 3D prints in court.

Supporting Young Offenders to Communicate in the Youth Justice System: A Scoping Review

ABSTRACT Young offenders disproportionately present with Developmental Language Disorder and are likely to struggle with the communication demands of the justice system. Professional guidance outlines strategies for facilitating successful communication, but it is unknown to what extent recommendations are substantiated by evidence. This review mapped academic and grey literature regarding the communication requirements, barriers and recommendations for routine youth justice interactions, such as forensic interview and courtroom testimony. Academic papers were identified through searches of five online databases, and OpenGrey, Google Scholar and organizational websites were searched to identify grey literature. 75 of 505 retrieved papers met inclusion criteria. Extracted data were presented regarding a) requirements and barriers a young person would encounter in the youth justice system, b) communication recommendations made for each stage of this journey, and c) type of evidence underlying the outlined findings. Communication barriers included exposure to unfamiliar vocabulary, repairing misunderstandings, constructing narratives and displaying the appropriate attitude. Recommendations were wide-ranging and broadly consistent, though very few had been evaluated for effectiveness. Some papers queried the practicality and effectiveness of recommendations such as rephrasing difficult terminology. A relatively small number of papers considered the views of young offenders or observed real youth justice interactions. Future research should include observational studies of real youth justice interactions to evaluate the effectiveness of widely recommended strategies. Policymakers may wish to consider concerns raised that rephrasing the language used in the youth justice system is not practical or sufficiently effective, and that broader changes to the communication environment are required.

Dire, Médire, Dédire

Abstract The article analyzes the triviality of Austin’s version of everyday-world speech act theory (which explicitly excluded fictional uses of language) in favor of its specific value for investigation of fictionality, invoking ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and Émile Benveniste. Noting the thematic prominence in the Misanthrope of two of Austin’s favorite examples of speech acts, for marriage (“I do”) and courtroom testimony (“I swear to tell the truth . . . ”), the article examines the work’s dramatic ambiguities in relation to Austin’s theory—and in particular, its shortcomings. Molière thus articulates the profoundly divided nature of Alceste indicated by Donneau de Visé (“ridicule”/“juste”), Rousseau (“un homme droit, sincère, estimable,” but also facing the world as “un personnage ridicule”), and recently by Georges Forestier and Claude Bourqui (the melancholic, jealous lover vs. the philosophe misanthrope, the world champion of sincerity), permanently at war with himself, in a war he is bound to lose. The article concludes that Molière constructs much of the famously conversational dramatic texture and indeterminate conclusion not through “successful” speech acts, but rather through failed ones; a reflection, too, of the rapidly transforming social values of the play’s historical moment.

In memoriam: Carol Henderson

Carol E. Henderson, JD It was with great sadness that we learned of the unexpected passing of Carol Henderson on May 14, 2020, in her home in St. Pete Beach, Florida. It is truly a tragic loss for all of us. Carol was a compassionate, passionate, and inspiring person dedicated to her missions in life. As a member of the editorial board of WIREs Forensic Science journal, she committed herself to obtaining great authors from among her extensive “rolodex,” as she called it, of peers and colleagues literally from around the world. When not editing articles for WIREs and keeping her authors “on task,” she loved to cook, write Haiku, read, travel internationally, and snuggle with her cats, Holmes and Watson. But most important to her were her friends and colleagues. Frequently on the phone with them, she called to chat, discuss the future of forensics, check on their health and the well-being of their families. She was always there for them. Her passion was education, particularly law students and lawyers, focusing on the good and the bad of forensic science. She was a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law and then a tenured professor at Stetson University College of Law where she taught forensic science and ethics. Her approach to class was to make it a hands-on experience for the students using experts in the field to provide their insights. Carol took her passion to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences where she participated in many scientific sessions and committees focused on the future of forensic science. She rose to be the President of the Academy and later received the Distinguished Fellow Award. In addition to authoring or editing more than 100 books, articles, and encyclopedias, she was an innovator, becoming the founding director of the award-winning National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law, an interdisciplinary resource that provides education and information to scientists, legal professionals, law enforcement, academics, and the public worldwide. Since its inception, NCSTL has trained more than 14,500 legal and scientific professionals, and has the only comprehensive, searchable database of science, technology, and law in the world. Many know Carol because of her more than 300 lectures, webinars and workshops on scientific evidence and courtroom testimony on six continents. All she has done in her life leaves her with a legacy of significant contributions to the forensic sciences and the gratitude of all impacted by her work and friendship. Now is not a time for grief, but a time to celebrate and treasure all the good things she has given us.

Risks and Realities of Working with Alienated Children

Involvement in custody cases that include accusations of parental alienation—whether as an evaluator, expert witness, lawyer, judge, therapist, provider of a specialized intervention, or researcher—incurs both professional and personal risks. Some risks relate to false negative or false positive identifications of parental alienation that can lead to regulatory agency complaints and public condemnation by the parent who feels wronged by the case outcome. Other risks stem from providing services in an emerging area of practice and working with children who overtly oppose repairing the relationship with their rejected parent. These risks include: unfounded accusations of mistreating children; negatively biased commentary and sensationalist attacks in the media and in social media, professional conferences and journals, and in courtroom testimony; harassment, vilification, and invasion of privacy; threats of violence and public humiliation; shunning and rumor spreading by colleagues; and complaints to regulatory agencies. This article examines circumstances, beliefs, and dynamics that give rise to these risks, suggests precautions to reduce the risk of false accusations against professionals, and offers recommendations for dealing with regulatory agencies. Criticisms that a court or service provider has mistreated a child merit careful scrutiny in the context of the case evidence and empirical data. While some interventions for alienated children raise legitimate concerns, others have been maligned by anecdotal complaints that studies show do not represent the experience of most participants.

The Trial of Orenthal James Simpson

Although the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman has been called a great trash novel come to life, no one can deny the pull it had on the American public. If the early reports of the murder of the wife of the ex-football-star-turned-sports-announcer hadn't caught people's full attention, Simpson's surreal Bronco ride on the day of his arrest certainly did - ninety-five million television viewers witnessed the slow police chase live. The 133 days of televised courtroom testimony turned countless viewers into Simpson trial junkies. Even foreign leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin eagerly gossiped about the trial. When Yeltsin stepped off his plane to meet President Clinton, the first question he asked was, Do you think O. J. did it? When, at 10 a.m. PST on October 3, Judge Ito's clerk read the jury's verdict of Not Guilty, 91% of all persons viewing television were glued to the unfolding scene in the Los Angeles courtroom.

Aspirational Descent and the Creation of Family Lore: Race Shifting in the Northeast

This article builds on work examining how hundreds of thousands of white French descendants in the northeastern part of the continent have been shifting into “Indigenous” identities in the past two decades or so. The first part of the paper explains the workings of “aspirational descent,” that is, when a French woman from the 1600s is turned into an “Indigenous” ancestor for the purpose of claiming indigeneity in the present. The second part of the paper explores the creation of “family lore” by several French descendants using aspirational descent in courtroom testimony. Overall, the author illustrates how stories about long-ago Indigenous ancestry in white settler families, such as that of Elizabeth Warren, often involve creative interpretations of childhood stories that rely on the logic of elimination inherent to settler colonialism.

Greece’s Ulrike Meinhof: Pola Roupa and the Revolutionary Struggle

Pola Roupa’s arrest in 2016 was the final nail in the coffin of Revolutionary Struggle, the first guerrilla group to emerge on Greece’s terrorist landscape after the 2002 collapse of 17 November, the country’s premier terrorist organisation for almost three decades and one of Europe’s longest-running terror gangs. Drawing on the judicial investigation findings, courtroom testimonies, RS communiqués and interviews with counter-terrorism officials, this article tells the story of Pola Roupa, the first female leader of a Greek terrorist group in an attempt to understand the political reasons and motivational factors that led to her involvement in terrorism. At the same time, the article hopefully contributes to the study and understanding of women and terrorism by providing an insight into the role and experience of a female militant inside Greece’s gender-conservative and overwhelmingly male-dominated armed struggle movement.

Different predictive and accuracy models for sex and stature estimation from second- and fourth-digit lengths in the Kinnaur population of Himachal Pradesh, North India: Medico-legal and forensic implications.

Forensic anthropologists are not only active in courtroom testimonies but also contribute to disaster victim identification. The timely recovery and identification of victims in any disaster is crucial, and anthropologists play a vital role in this process. In mass disasters such as airplane crashes, tsunamis, earthquakes or terrorist attacks, fragments of dead bodies are usually brought for identification. Each fragment demands special tactics to fulfil any of the basic attributes of forensic identification such as age, sex, stature or ancestry. If sex and stature can be estimated from a single fragment, then it can potentially reduce the identification time and possible victim matches. In this study, an attempt has been made to estimate sex and stature from the second- and fourth-digit lengths. Different predictive and accuracy models have been devised using statistical techniques. No bilateral difference was observed in the digit lengths in either sex. Consequently, an average of the digit lengths was employed for model approximations. The fourth-digit length provided the best sex estimates (M=82.1%, F=79.2%) when binary logistic regression (BLR) statistics were applied. It was also observed that overall sex estimations improved from 78.8% (from BLR) to 79.8% when discriminant function analysis was used for sex estimation. Second- and fourth-digit lengths were used independently and together for stature estimation models for males and females individually and for the pooled sample. In stature estimation models, three major interpretations were perceived: (1) the second-digit length provided the best stature estimates; (2) the estimation models compute better stature estimates for females than their counterparts, that is, standard errors are less in females than males; and (3) second and fourth digits predict more reliable stature estimation when the sex of the digits is known than that of the pooled sample.

Three-dimensional printed models of the rib cage in children with non-accidental injury as an effective visual-aid tool.

Three-dimensional (3-D) printing is gaining terrain in medical education, presurgical evaluation and recently as forensic evidence in court. Physicians, including radiologists, often provide expert testimony in court cases involving children with rib fractures and other injuries concerning for child physical abuse. Effectively communicating the complexities of fractures and other skeletal findings to nonmedical personnel using standard radiology studies can be challenging, especially during medical courtroom testimony. For this reason, we printed two 3-D models of the rib cage from the chest computed tomography (CT) scans of two patients with suspected non-accidental injury. The patients also had available chest radiographs. The DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) data were 3-D reconstructed and segmented using two attenuation thresholds. We removed unwanted structures and printed them on a commercially available scanner. A pediatric radiologist, blinded to clinical data, reviewed both 3-D models, identified all rib lesions and classified them according to their healing stage. We compared the 3-D models and the chest radiograph against the chest CT as the standard of care. We convened a meeting with the Child Protection Team at out institution to get their feedback and opinions about the models. From our observations of our experts, three spontaneous interactions were observed. Instinctively, the experts picked up and grasped the models, rotating them, feeling them and angling them to better visualize the fractures from multiple angles. The experts expressed a willingness to consider using the models in court.