Expert witnesses in the courtroom: the impact of the role of the defendant and expert witness type on evaluations of procedural justice
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Date
2008-06
Authors
Hudson, Karen Alice
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
People tend to cooperate with and defer future decisions to authorities when those
people perceive the authorities as fair (Tyler, 2003). In the current experiment, the
effects of expert witness type (adversarial, neutral court appointed, biased court
appointed) and class of defendant (individual, corporation, government agency) on
perceived fairness were explored. Participants were given a pre-trial questionnaire to
control for the trial experience, provided with a court transcript, and then filled out a
post-trial questionnaire composed of procedural justice evaluations. Neutral observers
rated cases with adversarial testimony as more procedurally fair than cases with court
appointed testimony, and found cases against corporations to be more procedurally fair
than cases against government entities. As hypothesized, perceived fairness judgments
were lowest when the plaintiff lost to more "powerful" entities and when the loss was
coupled with testimony by court appointed expert witnesses. The present research
continues to highlight the concern about the use of court appointed experts in the
courtroom.
Description
vi, 67 p. A THESIS Presented to the Department of Psychology and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, June 2008. A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries under the call number:SCA Archiv Hudson 2008
Keywords
Witnesses, Evidence, Expert witnesses