The contribution of facial recognition technology to wrongful arrests and trauma.

Objective: When a crime is captured on video, law enforcement agencies increasingly have used facial recognition technology (FRT) to generate suspects to investigate. However, there are increasing examples of people who have been wrongfully arrested based because of the inaccurate results returned from these artificial intelligence-assisted searches of facial databases, despite very low error rates in the accuracy of these systems.

Method: We discuss the reliability of the evidence provided by a match returned by FRT, propose a framework for identifying potential problems with the use of FRT in criminal investigations, and review the research on the general trauma that comes from justice system involvement, trauma that is compounded by wrongful arrest and conviction.

Suspect race affects defense attorney evaluations of preidentification evidence.

Objective: When an officer places a suspect in an identification procedure and the witness identifies the suspect, it falls on attorneys to make decisions that reflect the strength of that identification. The factor that most affects the strength of identification evidence is the likelihood that the suspect is guilty before being subjected to the procedure, which scholars refer to as the prior probability of guilt. Given large racial disparities in exonerations based on eyewitness misidentifications, the current work examined whether defense attorneys are less sensitive to prior evidence of guilt when the defendant is Black as opposed to White.

Phenotypic mismatch between suspects and fillers but not phenotypic bias increases eyewitness identifications of Black suspects.

Introduction: Despite converging evidence that people more closely associate the construct of criminality with Black people who exhibit a more African facial phenotype than Black people who express a more European phenotype, eyewitness researchers have largely ignored phenotypic bias as a potential contributor to the racial disparities in the criminal legal system. If this form of phenotypic bias extends to eyewitness identification tasks, eyewitnesses may be more likely to identify Black suspects with an African rather than European phenotype, regardless of their guilt status. Further, in cases where the witness's description of the perpetrator does not contain phenotypic information, phenotypic mismatch between the suspect and the other lineup members may bias identification decisions toward or against the suspect.

An offer you cannot refuse: Plea offer size affects innocent but not guilty defendants' perceptions of voluntariness.

Objective: We examined whether various plea outcomes-including sentence reduction size (smaller, larger), type (traditional guilty plea, Alford plea), and frame (plea discount, trial penalty)-differentially affected innocent and guilty defendants' perceptions of the voluntariness of their guilty pleas.

Hypotheses: We hypothesized (1) guilty defendants would rate guilty pleas as more voluntary than would innocent defendants; (2) defendants would rate larger sentence reductions either as more voluntary than smaller sentence reductions because they feel more fair or as less voluntary because they feel harder to reject; (3) defendants would rate guilty pleas as more voluntary when the plea offer was framed as a discount compared with a penalty; (4) penalty framing would differentially affect defendants offered large versus small sentence reductions; and (5) Alford pleas would differentially affect guilty versus innocent defendants.

Method: Adults from Qualtrics Research Panels (N = 1,518; M = 59.

Potential causes of racial disparities in wrongful convictions based on mistaken identifications: Own-race bias and differences in evidence-based suspicion.

Objective: We explored whether racial disparities in evidence-based suspicion (i.e., evidence of guilt prior to placement in a lineup) provide a better explanation of racial disparities in exonerations based on eyewitness misidentification than the own-race bias in eyewitness identifications.

From whose perspective? Differences between actors and observers in determining the voluntariness of guilty pleas.

Objective: Valid guilty pleas must be made voluntarily, yet most defendants report that they did not feel part of the decision-making process or responsible for the decision. Defendants and judges both play a role in determining whether guilty pleas are voluntary. The actor-observer bias suggests that defendants and judges perceive the decision-making process differently given the nature of their roles.

Evidence strength (insufficiently) affects police officers' decisions to place a suspect in a lineup.

Objective: We examined whether variations in the strength of the evidentiary connection between a suspect and the crime under investigation affected officers' decisions to place suspects into an identification procedure and whether education about the problems associated with base-rate neglect sensitized officers to variations in evidentiary connection.

Method: Police officers ( = 279; age range = 24-70; 86% male) read a hypothetical crime scenario, adopting the role of the lead investigator. The scenarios varied in how closely the suspect was connected to the crime (evidentiary connection: weak vs.

Diversity's Impact on the Quality of Deliberations.

The present research builds on previous models of jury diversity's benefits by exploring how diversity impacts the deliberation process. In Study 1, community members ( = 433) participated in a jury decision-making study manipulating the strength of evidence (ambiguous vs. weak) and the diversity of the jury.

Testing the waters: An investigation of the impact of hot tubbing on experts from referral through testimony.

Objective: The present research examined whether concurrent expert testimony ("hot tubbing") and court-appointed testimony reduced adversarial allegiance in clinical experts' judgments compared with traditional adversarial expert testimony.

Hypotheses: We predicted Hypothesis 1: Defense experts would render more not responsible judgments and lower ratings of criminal responsibility than would prosecution experts; Hypothesis 2: Adversarial allegiance effects on experts' judgments would be heightened for adversarial experts and attenuated for concurrent experts over time; Hypothesis 3: Adversarial and concurrent experts would report higher dissonance than would court-appointed experts and adversarial experts' ratings would increase over time, concurrent experts' ratings would decrease, and court-appointed experts' ratings would remain unchanged.

Method: Clinicians and advanced clinical doctoral students conducted simulated criminal responsibility evaluations for the prosecution, defense, or court.

Policy and procedure recommendations for the collection and preservation of eyewitness identification evidence.

Objective: The Executive Committee of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) appointed a subcommittee to update the influential 1998 scientific review paper on guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures.

Method: This was a collaborative effort by six senior eyewitness researchers, who all participated in the writing process. Feedback from members of AP-LS and the legal communities was solicited over an 18-month period.

Variations in reliability and validity do not influence judge, attorney, and mock juror decisions about psychological expert evidence.

Objective: We tested whether the reliability and validity of psychological testing underlying an expert's opinion influenced judgments made by judges, attorneys, and mock jurors.

Hypotheses: We predicted that the participants would judge the expert's evidence more positively when it had high validity and high reliability.

Method: In Experiment 1, judges ( = 111) and attorneys ( = 95) read a summary of case facts and proffer of expert testimony on the intelligence of a litigant.

Exposure to capital voir dire may not increase convictions despite increasing pretrial presumption of guilt.

During capital voir dire, prospective jurors are questioned about their views on capital punishment to determine their ability and willingness to impose the penalty as required by law. Two experiments replicated and extended Haney's (1984a) research on the effects of exposure to capital voir dire, which has been cited to support the proposition that jurors who are exposed to a capital voir dire are more prone to convict. In the first study, watching a capital voir dire increased participants' pretrial estimates of the likelihood of the defendant's guilt and conviction, replicating earlier findings.

Viewing videotaped identification procedure increases juror sensitivity to single-blind photo-array administration.

We investigated whether watching a videotaped photo array administration or expert testimony could sensitize jurors to the suggestiveness of single-blind eyewitness identification procedures. Mock jurors recruited from the community (N = 231) watched a videotaped simulation of a robbery trial in which the primary evidence against the defendant was an eyewitness identification. We varied whether the witness made an identification from a single- or double-blind photo array, the evidence included a videotape of the photo array procedure, and an expert testified about the effects of single-blind identification procedures on administrators' behaviors and witness accuracy.

Memory strength and lineup presentation moderate effects of administrator influence on mistaken identifications.

Administrator/witness pairs (N = 313) were randomly assigned to target-absent lineups in a 2 (Suspect/Perpetrator Similarity: High Suspect Similarity vs. Low Suspect Similarity) × 2 (Retention Interval: 30 min vs. 1 week) × 2 (Lineup Presentation: Simultaneous vs.

Hypothesis testing in attorney-conducted voir dire.

Attorneys may hold expectations about jurors based on stereotypes about the relationships between demographic characteristics and attitudes. Attorneys test their hypotheses about prospective jurors during voir dire, but it is unclear whether their questioning strategies are likely to produce accurate information from jurors. In 2 studies, attorneys and law students formulated voir dire questions to test a particular hypothesis about the attitudes held by a prospective juror (venireperson) and provided their subsequent inferences about that individual given certain hypothetical responses to the questions.

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.

The potentially biasing effects of voir dire in juvenile waiver cases.

An analysis of transcripts from cases in which a juvenile is adjudicated in adult criminal court showed that potential jurors may be questioned about their attitudes toward juvenile waiver during voir dire. If jurors express concerns about trying juveniles in adult criminal court, they are excused from the jury for cause (Danielsen et al., Paper presented at the meetings of the American Psychology-Law Society, 2004).

The effects of rehabilitative voir dire on juror bias and decision making.

During voir dire, judges frequently attempt to "rehabilitate" venirepersons who express an inability to be impartial. Venirepersons who agree to ignore their biases and base their verdict on the evidence and the law are eligible for jury service. In Experiment 1, biased and unbiased mock jurors participated in either a standard or rehabilitative voir dire conducted by a judge and watched a trial video.

The effects of harassment severity and organizational behavior on damage awards in a hostile work environment sexual harassment case.

Community members reporting for jury duty (N = 128) read a sexual harassment trial summary in which harassment severity and the organization's sexual harassment policy and response were manipulated. Jurors who read the severe harassment scenario were more likely to agree that the plaintiff had suffered and should be compensated for her suffering and that the organization should be punished than were jurors who read the mild harassment scenario. When the organization had and enforced a sexual harassment policy, jurors believed that the plaintiff had suffered little and the organization should not be punished compared with conditions in which the organization did not have an enforced sexual harassment policy.

Instruction bias and lineup presentation moderate the effects of administrator knowledge on eyewitness identification.

Pairs (N=234) of witnesses and lineup administrators completed an identification task in which administrator knowledge, lineup presentation, instruction bias, and target presence were manipulated. Administrator knowledge had the greatest effect on identifications of the suspect for simultaneous photospreads paired with biased instructions, with single-blind administrations increasing identifications of the suspect. When biased instructions were given, single-blind administrations produced fewer foil identifications than double-blind administrations.

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.

The effectiveness of opposing expert witnesses for educating jurors about unreliable expert evidence.

We tested whether an opposing expert is an effective method of educating jurors about scientific validity by manipulating the methodological quality of defense expert testimony and the type of opposing prosecution expert testimony (none, standard, addresses the other expert's methodology) within the context of a written trial transcript. The presence of opposing expert testimony caused jurors to be skeptical of all expert testimony rather than sensitizing them to flaws in the other expert's testimony. Jurors rendered more guilty verdicts when they heard opposing expert testimony than when opposing expert testimony was absent, regardless of whether the opposing testimony addressed the methodology of the original expert or the validity of the original expert's testimony.

The effects of attribution of responsibility and work history on perceptions of reasonable accommodations.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers must provide employees with disabilities reasonable accommodations that will enable them to perform job duties, as long as the accommodations do not financially burden the organization. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether disability origin and/or prior work history impermissibly influence the granting of reasonable accommodations under the ADA. In both studies, participants granted more accommodations for employees whose disability was caused by some external factor than for those whose disability was caused by the employee's own behavior.