Overview
Jurors are assigned the arduous task of examining and processing copious amounts of evidence – in light of their legal instructions – to determine an appropriate verdict. While jurors do a relatively good job at sorting through the evidence and the law, the complex nature of evidence may lie outside jurors’ “common knowledge,” and additional education may aid jurors as they process such information. This is especially true in the domain of eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is extremely influential despite its potential to be unreliable. Eyewitnesses may appear very confident in their identification of the perpetrator, yet be completely mistaken. Indeed, over 75 % of wrongful convictions overturned due to DNA testing have been linked to faulty eyewitness identifications. Unfortunately, traditional safeguards, such as cross-examination of eyewitnesses, result in little improvement in jurors’ ability to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate eyewitness...
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Nicholson, A.S., Yarbrough, A.M., Penrod, S.D. (2014). Jury Decision Making and Eyewitness Testimony. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_670
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_670
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