They investiagted the influence on jurors of expert testimony about eyewitness identification. They conducted a laboratory experiment with two experiments, in experiment 1, where participants were allocated to four conditions, half of the particpants read the expert psychological testimony introduced by the defence, half didn't. In the expert tesitmony there was information included about the recognising memebers of In these conditions, half read out a more violent condition and the other read out a less violent version which recieved less guilty verdicts. Expert testimony lead to a 12% reduction in guilty verdicts.
In experiment 2, all particpants read the violent version of the crime, and half of the participants read the expert testimony whule others did not. All groups then deliberated for 30 minutes and decided on the verdict. In conclusion, the absence of expert testimony lead to seven juries voting to convict, two to acquit and one failed to reach a verdict. When expert testimony was heard it lowered the conviction rate.
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