Date of Award

7-1-1991

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

A total of 192 jury-qualified subjects participated in this study which compared the effects of a child's videotaped deposition on juror's perceptions of a defendant's guilt to live in-court testimony. A three hour trial, videotaped from a simulated case of child physical use being conducted for the Trial Advocacy Class of the University of North Dakota Law school, was shown to all subjects. A separate deposition of the child's testimony, identical to the live testimony, was also videotaped and shown to half the subjects. Eight juries viewed the videotapes of the trial with the child testifying on the witness stand during the court proceedings (Live condition). Eight other juries had the child's deposition presented on a separate monitor in place of the child testifying directly in court (Videotaped condition).Testimony condition did not affect jury perceptions of the defendant's guilt or innocence neither before nor after jury deliberation. After the juries had deliberated, one-half found the defendant guilty and the other half found the defendant not guilty or were hung. When individual, before-deliberation juror data were analyzed, approximately two-thirds of the subjects in both conditions felt the defendant was guilty. There was no significant change in these perceptions after jury deliberation nor were there changes in the believability of the child's testimony. The majority of subjects in both conditions felt that viewing a videotaped deposition of the child's testimony would not affect their perceptions of the defendant's guilt. Of those sects who did feel a videotaped deposition would affect their perceptions of the defendant's guilt, those who viewed the Videotaped condition stated they would find the defendant less guilty, while those who viewed the Live condition expressed the opposite belief (i.e., a more guilty defendant). In the Videotaped condition older, married and divorced, higher educated persons with children were more likely to find the defendant not guilty. Also of note is that subjects in the Videotaped condition were more likely to rely on jury deliberation in their decisions of the defendant's guilt or innocence than were subjects in the Live condition.

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