Concurrent Expert Testimony as a Potential Remedy for Expert Witness Partisanship

专家证人同时作证作为专家证人党派之争的潜在补救措施

• 批准号: 1023796
• 负责人: Margaret Bull Kovera
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1023796&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Concurrent; Expert; Testimony; Potential; Remedy

When evidence is technical or difficult to understand, experts may provide testimony that assists jurors in evaluating the evidence. However, experts may become biased toward the side that has hired them and attorneys may seek experts who will deliberately bias their testimony or may make experts seem untrustworthy through cross-examination. Concurrent testimony is a practice that is presumed to remedy expert partisanship: experts for both sides in a case meet to discuss the case and generate a joint report, they testify together during trial, and are cross-examined by one another and the attorney for the opposing side.Relying on theories of attitude-behavior relationships and persuasion, the PI proposes three studies to examine the effects of this concurrent testimony technique on the behavior of experts, jurors, and attorneys. In the first study, experts will generate forensic reports and testify under adversarial or concurrent procedures. The experts' products will be coded for indications of extremity and bias. In the second study, community members will act as mock jurors in a trial simulation containing adversarial or concurrent expert testimony to examine whether concurrent expert testimony reduces jurors' reliance on heuristic cues (e.g., source credibility) and increases sensitivity to variation in the strength of the evidence supporting a particular verdict. In a third study, the PI will investigate whether attorneys select different (perhaps less impartial) experts or change their examination strategies when using concurrent rather than adversarial expert procedures.The results of these studies will provide valuable information about effectiveness of the concurrent expert remedy for expert partisanship and elucidate the psychological mechanisms underlying the reduction in expert bias and the improvement of fact-finder decision making when this remedy is implemented. These studies will evaluate the effectiveness of a remedy for expert partisanship and provide evidence on which future policy decisions could be made.

当证据是技术性的或难以理解的时，专家可能会提供证词，以帮助陪审员评估证据。但是，专家可能会偏向雇用他们的方面，律师可能会寻求专家，这些专家会故意偏见他们的证词，或者通过盘问使专家显得不信任。并发证词是一种假定是为了补救专家党派的做法：双方的专家在案件中讨论案件并产生共同的报告，他们在审判期间共同作证，并被彼此盘问，律师对相对的副检察官进行了对态度 - 行为关系的理论，以验证态度，以验证态度，以验证这一效果，以这种方式进行效果，该研究的效果是效果，该研究的效果是效果，该效应是在范围内进行的，该效应是在效果的行为。陪审员和律师。在第一项研究中，专家将产生法医报告并在对抗或并发程序下作证。专家的产品将被编码为肢体和偏见的迹象。在第二项研究中，社区成员将在包含对抗性或并发的专家证词的试验模拟中充当模拟陪审员，以检查并发的专家证词是否会降低陪审员对启发式提示（例如源信誉）的依赖（例如，来源信誉），并增加了对支持特定判决的循环差异的敏感性。在第三项研究中，PI将调查律师在使用并发而不是对抗专家程序时选择不同的（也许不太公正）专家或更改其检查策略。这些研究的结果将提供有关专家党派专家的有效性的有效性信息，以实现专家的临界机制，并阐明了在专家偏见和改进方面实现了事实的降低。这些研究将评估补救措施专家党派的有效性，并提供证据，以做出未来的政策决策。