While age-related changes in memory have been well documented, findings about jurors' perceptions of older witnesses are conflicting. We investigated the effect of victim age (25 vs. 75 years old) and crime severity (victim injured vs. not injured) on mock jurors' decisions in a robbery trial. Jury-eligible participants (120 women; 84 men) read a mock trial summary and delivered their verdicts online. Mock jurors believed the young victim more than the older victim when the crime was severe, while no age differences emerged for the less severe crime. Whereas previous research demonstrated that juror characteristics were generally associated with culpability, we demonstrated that with case-specific information, these general views became less important. In all, mock jurors were aware of age-related decline in memory provided by eyewitnesses only to a limited extent. Accordingly, in trials involving older witnesses, jurors will benefit from educative information about age-related memory changes.
Keywords: crime severity; extra-legal factors; juror attitudes; juror decision-making; old age; perceived identification accuracy; probability of guilt; witness credibility.
© 2020 The Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.