Attorneys' experiences, perceptions, and plea recommendations in child sexual abuse cases.

OBJECTIVE: We examined attorneys' experiences, perceptions, and decisions regarding plea recommendations in child sexual cases. HYPOTHESES: We hypothesized that characteristics of the child (age, relationship to alleged perpetrator) and the report (timing of disclosure, consistency across reports) would affect attorneys' perceptions of evidence strength, likelihood of conviction, and plea recommendations. METHOD: We collected data from a national sample of actively practicing prosecutors (n = 217) and defense attorneys (n = 251) who had experience with child abuse cases. They averaged 18 years of experience practicing law, were slightly more likely to be men (53%) than women, and primarily identified as White, non-Hispanic (86%). In Part 1, attorneys answered general questions about their experiences in child sexual abuse cases. In Part 2, they reviewed materials from a hypothetical case that varied the child's age (5 years, 11 years), the child's relationship to the alleged perpetrator (familial, nonfamilial), the timing of the child's initial disclosure (1 week, 6 months), and the consistency of the child's report (inconsistent, consistent). They rated the evidence strength, estimated the likelihood of conviction, and assessed whether they would recommend that the defendant accept a plea offer or proceed to trial. RESULTS: In Part 1, attorneys reported that they often have access to police reports, information about the alleged perpetrator, and evidence from the child when making plea recommendations. They said that it was important to know about prior allegations against the alleged perpetrator or by the child when assessing their credibility. They reported that the length of the sentence, sex offender registration requirement, and possibility of time served guided their plea recommendations. In Part 2, the consistency of the child's report influenced their decisions the most; they rated the evidence against the defendant as stronger when the child was consistent across reports than when the child was inconsistent. Additionally, their perceptions of evidence strength drove their recommendations. When the evidence against the defendant was stronger, attorneys thought that the defendant was more likely to be convicted at trial; thus, prosecutors were less willing and defense attorneys were more willing to recommend a plea. CONCLUSION: Similar to other cases, evidence strength and the perceived likelihood of conviction drive attorneys' decisions to offer or recommend a plea to a defendant in a child sexual abuse case. The consistency of the child's report plays a major role in predicting perceptions of evidence strength. Future research is needed to determine which other factors in child sexual abuse cases may also predict attorneys' perceptions and plea recommendations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Further action toward valid science in Law and Human Behavior: Requiring open data, analytic code, and research materials.

In 2019, the inaugural editorial of Law and Human Behavior promised a measured approach to increasing transparency, openness, and replicability practices in the journal. Now, 3 years later, and on the brink of the present authors' last year as the editorial team, it seems only fitting that they take further action to bolster the validity of science published in the journal by requiring that authors openly report data, analytic code, and research materials. The purpose of this editorial is to briefly outline Law and Human Behavior's new requirements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A national survey of child forensic interviewers: Implications for research, practice, and law.

OBJECTIVE: We surveyed a national sample of child forensic interviewers to learn the types of information they wanted to have before interviewing children, their attitudes and beliefs about forensic interviews, the characteristics of their interviews, and their professional experiences. HYPOTHESES: We predicted (1) interviewers would want many different types of information before interviewing children, but specifically details about the child, alleged abuse, and disclosure, and that interviewers would find this information helpful and accessible; (2) interviewers would consider their own interviews to be neutral and nonleading and to yield accurate and complete information from children; interviewers' concern about false reports would be related to (3) the amount of preinterview information they wanted and (4) their years of experience and amount of training. METHOD: Forensic interviewers (N = 781) from all 50 states and the District of Columbia completed all (n = 754) or part (n = 27) of a questionnaire that consisted of open- and closed-ended questions. RESULTS: (1) Interviewers wanted many different types of information before interviewing children, but most often information about the child, alleged abuse, and disclosure. They thought these types of information were the most helpful and very frequently had access to that information before interviewing. (2) Interviewers thought their interviews were fairly neutral, slightly leading, mostly accurate, and fairly complete. Interviewers who were more concerned about false denials (3) wanted more preinterview information than interviewers who were more concerned about false allegations and (4) had fewer years of experience. CONCLUSIONS: Our survey results underscore the need for future research examining the effects of preinterview information on forensic interviews and children's reports. They provide a current snapshot of forensic interviewing and a national benchmark to which local child advocacy centers can compare their practices. They highlight the inherent difficulty courts face when determining the admissibility of a child forensic interview based on its primary purpose. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Taking the next steps: Promoting open science and expanding diversity in Law and Human Behavior.

In this editorial, the authors note that steady submission rate and a rejection rate that hovers at 80%, indicates the journal is flourishing and provides them with the fortunate opportunity to make an excellent journal even better. To that end, they describe three initiatives they are working on and explain the changes readers can expect as they begin to implement them in the journal. Specifically, these initiatives include: (1) promoting transparency, openness, and reproducibility in published research; (2) improving author-reviewer fit; and (3) expanding the diversity of journal content and decision makers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Adversarial allegiance: The devil is in the evidence details, not just on the witness stand.

This study examined the potential influence of adversarial allegiance on expert testimony in a simulated child sexual abuse case. A national sample of 100 witness suggestibility experts reviewed a police interview of an alleged 5-year-old female victim. Retaining party (prosecution, defense) and interview suggestibility (low, high) varied across experts. Experts were very willing to testify, but more so for the prosecution than the defense when interview suggestibility was low and vice versa when interview suggestibility was high. Experts' anticipated testimony focused more on prodefense aspects of the police interview and child's memory overall (negativity bias), but favored retaining party only when interview suggestibility was low. Prosecution-retained experts shifted their focus from prodefense aspects of the case in the high suggestibility interview to proprosecution aspects in the low suggestibility interview; defense experts did not. Blind raters' perceptions of expert focus mirrored those findings. Despite an initial bias toward retaining party, experts' evaluations of child victim accuracy and police interview quality were lower in the high versus low interview suggestibility condition only. Our data suggest that adversarial allegiance exists, that it can (but not always) influence how experts process evidence, and that it may be more likely in cases involving evidence that is not blatantly flawed. Defense experts may evaluate this type of evidence more negatively than prosecution experts because of negativity bias and positive testing strategies associated with confirmation bias. (PsycINFO Database Record

Support Person Presence and Child Victim Testimony: Believe it or Not.

This study examined the effects of support person presence on participants' perceptions of an alleged child sexual abuse victim and defendant. Two hundred jury-eligible community members (n = 100 males) viewed a DVD of an 11-year-old girl's simulated courtroom testimony either with or without a female support person seated next to her. Participants found the child victim to be less accurate and trustworthy, and the defendant to be less guilty and less likely to have sexually abused children, when the support person was present. Participants who viewed the female support person (n = 100) believed that she had probably coached and spent a great deal of time with the child victim before testifying. Female participants perceived the child to be more accurate, and the defendant to be more guilty and likely to have sexually abused children, than male participants. The degree to which the child victim's testimonial behavior violated participants' expectancies mediated the negative relation between support person presence and child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. Support person presence was positively associated with expectancy violation, which in turn was negatively associated with child victim accuracy and trustworthiness. These preliminary findings suggest that seating a support person next to an alleged child victim in court may have the unintended effect of decreasing the child's perceived credibility and, if replicated, suggest that alternative seating arrangements might be necessary.

SUPPORTING CHILDREN IN U.S. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS: Descriptive and Attitudinal Data From a National Survey of Victim/Witness Assistants.

We conducted a national survey of 786 victim/witness assistants (VWAs) to provide descriptive and attitudinal information about support person use in U.S. legal proceedings involving children. VWAs (N = 414) from 46 states returned completed surveys (response rate = 53%). Prosecutor-based VWAs or parents/guardians most frequently served as support persons. One support person was almost always or often used with child victims and/or witnesses of all ages. Support persons were extremely common in cases involving child sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, and adult domestic violence. Overall, support persons provided more informational than emotional support. The most common informational support was to provide referrals to community resources, conduct courtroom visit/orientation, and disseminate relevant procedural information. The most common emotional support was to accompany the child to trial. Support persons rarely or never questioned children directly during investigative interviews or in court. Respondents believed support persons decrease children's stress and increase accuracy and credibility; however, this effect varied as a function of who provided support, child age, case type, and type of emotional or informational support. Respondents believed that support person presence at trial probably does not prejudice jurors against defendants. These survey data provide a benchmark for legal professionals and a foundation for future social scientific research examining the effects of support person use on children.

Do Jurors Get What They Expect? Traditional versus Alternative Forms of Children's Testimony.

This study examined prospective jurors' expectancies for the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a child testifying in a sexual abuse case. Community members (N = 261) reporting for jury duty completed a survey in which they described their expectancies for how a child alleging sexual abuse would appear when testifying and their beliefs about discerning children's truthfulness, testimony stress, and fairness to trial parties. Within this survey, we varied the child's age (5, 10, or 15 years old), type of abuse alleged (vaginal fondling or penetration), and whether the abuse actually occurred (yes, no) between participants across five different testimony conditions (traditional live in-court, support person present, closed-circuit television, preparation, and videotape) within each participant. Participants expected a child providing traditional testimony to be more nervous, tearful, and fidgety; less confident, cooperative, and fluent; and to maintain less eye contact and provide shorter responses than when the child provided alternative forms of testimony. Participants believed it was easiest to determine a child's truthfulness and fairest to the defendant when the child testified live in court, but that this form of testimony was the most stressful and unfair to the child. Expectancies and beliefs differed within the alternative forms of testimony as well. Negative evaluations of children's alternative testimony may be the result of expectancy violation; namely, jurors expect differences in children's verbal and nonverbal behavior as a result of accommodation, but those differences actually do not occur.

Beliefs and expectancies in legal decision making: an introduction to the Special Issue.

This introduction describes what the co-editors believe readers can expect in this Special Issue. After beliefs and expectancies are defined, examples of how these constructs influence human thought, feeling, and behavior in legal settings are considered. Brief synopses are provided for the Special Issue papers on beliefs and expectancies regarding alibis, children's testimony behavior, eyewitness testimony, confessions, sexual assault victims, judges' decisions in child protection cases, and attorneys' beliefs about jurors' perceptions of juvenile offender culpability. Areas for future research are identified, and readers are encouraged to discover new ways that beliefs and expectancies operate in the legal system.

I spy with my little eye: jurors' detection of internal validity threats in expert evidence.

This experiment examined whether jury-eligible community members (N = 223) were able to detect internally invalid psychological science presented at trial. Participants read a simulated child sexual abuse case in which the defense expert described a study he had conducted on witness memory and suggestibility. We varied the study's internal validity (valid, missing control group, confound, and experimenter bias) and publication status (published, unpublished). Expert evidence quality ratings were higher for the valid versus missing control group version only. Publication increased ratings of defendant guilt when the study was missing a control group. Variations in internal validity did not influence perceptions of child victim credibility or police interview quality. Participants' limited detection of internal validity threats underscores the need to examine the effectiveness of traditional legal safeguards against junk science in court and improve the scientific reasoning ability of lay people and legal professionals.

All anchors are not created equal: the effects of Per Diem versus lump sum requests on pain and suffering awards.

This experiment examined whether different quantifications of the same damage award request ($175,000 lump sum, $10/hour, $240/day, $7300/month for 2 years) influenced pain and suffering awards compared to no damage award request. Jury-eligible community members (N = 180) read a simulated personal injury case in which defendant liability already had been determined. Awards were: (1) larger for the $10/hour and $175,000 conditions than the $7300/month and control conditions and (2) more variable for the $10/hour condition than the $7300/month and control conditions. No differences emerged on ratings of the parties, their attorneys, or the difficulty of picking a compensation figure. We discuss the theoretical implications of our data for the anchoring and adjustment literature and the practical implications for legal professionals.

Can jurors recognize missing control groups, confounds, and experimenter bias in psychological science?

This study examined the ability of jury-eligible community members (N = 248) to detect internal validity threats in psychological science presented during a trial. Participants read a case summary in which an expert testified about a study that varied in internal validity (valid, missing control group, confound, and experimenter bias) and ecological validity (high, low). Ratings of expert evidence quality and expert credibility were higher for the valid versus missing control group versions only. Internal validity did not influence verdict or ratings of plaintiff credibility and no differences emerged as a function of ecological validity. Expert evidence quality, expert credibility, and plaintiff credibility were positively correlated with verdict. Implications for the scientific reasoning literature and for trials containing psychological science are discussed.