Child Witnesses ' Realism, By Carl Allwood, Par Granhag And Anna Carin Jonsson

Throughout the history of the United States more and more teenagers and children have been put in situations where they have been tried as adults.All of these teenagers and children made a mistake which may have been because of their lack of knowledge or their curiosity as a child.

“Why Eye Witnesses Get it Wrong,” a speech by Dr. Scott Fraser explains the different aspects of the criminal trial process. More importantly, it explains the use of eyewitness testimony and its consequences on trial outcomes, and in this case a criminal trial and its portrayal of a wrongly convicted man. The presentation uses all three tools of persuasive argument ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to the audience and explains each in their own way. However, the argument tends to sway the audience towards respecting reason and information over being emotional or pathos driven.

There are numerous factors in a courtroom trial that can significantly affect the verdict reached by jurors and can potentially influence whether the perpetrator of crime is ultimately convicted or is acquitted. In this essay I will explore several of these factors including how the personal characteristics of the defendant (e.g. attractiveness, gender and race) persuasion techniques (e.g. order of testimony) and jury characteristics can determine the conviction of a criminal.

A paper published on Hoftra Law’s website claims that only six percent of cases involved prosecutorial misconduct as a predominant factor resulting in wrongful convictions. This suggests the bulk of the problem may begin with police and investigators who are the first responders to arrive on-scene. The desire to close a case often trumps aggressive and coercive tactics that are widely endorsed in the law enforcement community. Sadly, this leads to false confessions. In a third of all exonerated cases, evidence has shown there was no crime ever committed. Furthermore, in 16 percent of exoneration cases, the defendants finally pleaded guilty after being worn down and illegally interrogated by law enforcement officials. Reporter Zusha Eilson states that “Thirty-eight percent of exonerations for crimes allegedly committed by youth under 18 in the last quarter century involved false confessions.” (www.journalistresource.org) Flawed forensic work and tampering of evidence, including inaccurate collection of evidence at crime scenes is another issue on the investigation front that contributes to false

When children endure severe physical abuse, children are robbed of their normal sense of self and their normal sense of home. A Child Called “It” is a non-fiction book based on the true story of one such child, Dave Pelzer, and his lifelong struggle both to survive and to reclaim his identity and try’s to gain a normal life back. The author who is to Dave Pelzer wrote this book on his child hood. He has overcome many things since that time period in his life. He is an author of the #1 worldwide best seller. Dave Pelzer is also recognized as one of the nation most effective and well respected communicators addressing corporate groups, conventions and human-service professionals. Dave’s tremendous accomplishments have reaped personal commendations from former Presidents Ronald Raegan, and George Bush. In 1993 Dave was honored as one of The Outstanding Young Persons of the World, he was also selected as a torchbearer for the 1996 Olympics Torch Relay. Dave has now dedicated his life helping others learn how to help themselves.

The research that is present on the topic of allowing children to testify in court or being against that idea is persuasive. The literature makes taking a stance in favor of not allowing children to testify in court both easy to come by and provides an insightful knowledge base. There seems to be more evidence in favor of not allowing children to testify in court as it has been shown to have adverse effects on children who do so (Lipovsky & Stern, 1997). The amount of research that is presented is across a variety of differencing samples and differing techniques including interviews, surveys, and general observational techniques. However, one aspect of the research against allowing children to testify that does not help contribute to why

The results of this project showed that male expert witnesses were perceived more likeable to the fake jurors than the female. When people

When I planned this project, it was influenced by two TV shows documentary: “Investigation Discovery (ID) ” and “The Fifth Estate .” Some of the episodes on these TV shows (e.g., “False Confessions, Wrongful Convictions”, “Solved”, and “The Interrogation Room”), which encouraged me to learn more about mistaken within the criminal justice system, notably, youth suspects. I have taken into consideration the innocent youth years in

For instance, a 3 year old may understand that battery is wrong. However, they might not understand that different types of sexual abuse is prohibited. With that in mind, it becomes difficult to have a child testify when they're at the stage in their life where their brains are not fully developed which will cause huge problems when you ask them to recall what happened at the time of the event. To be honest, children can sometimes be undeveloped that their statements are equivalent to a bark of a bloodhound than a testimony of an adult witness. Now they have an "Objective witness test" that is used for the testimonies of the children. This test evaluates a child's age, intelligence and experience in regards to their statement. I believe this could recognize indicators that the reported conduct is wrongful or that the information provided is relevant to the criminal investigation.

Many experimenters have been interested in figuring out how well jurors can disregard inadmissible evidence in the courtroom. They want to know exactly when and what type of evidence can be omitted while in trial. Werner, Kagehiro, and Strube (1982) tested participants looking for authoritarians that would have had the anti-defendant bias. Authoritarians are more likely to be unable to disregard inadmissible evidence because have a bias against the defendant from the start. Acting like mock jurors, they all read summaries of a trial that held six pieces of circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution. An incriminating or exonerating wiretap evidence was added as a seventh item for some conditions. The evidence, ruled either inadmissible or admissible, tested the participants ability to disregard the evidence when declaring a verdict. They were randomly assigned to a condition in a between subjects design that was a 2 (admissibility or inadmissibility of the wiretap evidence) X 2 (incriminating or exonerating wiretap evidence). They were asked to estimate the probability of the defendant’s guilt and either acquit or convict the defendant. The experimenters used the Mitchell-Bryne Authoritarian Scale to see how authoritarian they were. They found that authoritarians were more likely to convict even when the judge ruled the evidence inadmissible if it was incriminating but they would not acquit when the evidence was exonerating. This shows that authoritarians are biased

I can clearly relate to David Tanklefsky’s memoire titled ‘Duties of Adulthood’ where Tanklefsky describes his experience in serving as a jury for his first time in a murder trial. Just before I turned 20, I was a member of a four-team jury for a secondary school science project competition in Buea, Cameroon. This was a renowned competition in these secondary schools because of the financial rewards and prestige that come with winning the competition. It was always every secondary school students dream to win this competition. I was randomly selected to be a member of this jury and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. Just as Tanklefsky said, “ When you’re a teenager, you don’t want to make judgments. You want to sit around and think about things

     Because of the greater involvement of child witnesses in legal settings, it is important to know whether their recollections of an event can be trusted (Koriat et. al, 2001). This is a question that obviously can not be answered with a simple yes or no answer. However we can look at the way in which children develop cognitively to help us better understand the way in which children think and understand the world around them. We know that children are lacking in experience as compared to adults. A four year old just has much less life experience than a 16 year old. Younger children are not able to detect subtle differences like, implications and sarcasm in conversation. In addition, children being less cognitively developed have immature and less concrete schemas. These schemas may change constantly through your life, but

Through the eyes of society everyone has a set role they are expected to fulfill and certain characteristics they are supposed to exemplify. These roles and characteristics, this discourse, tells everyone how they should act and speak. For women it is the role of the mother. In our culture, that means raising the children, completing the household chores, and cooking all of the meals to perfection. Women are typical thought of as being demure and polite, small in stature, and submissive to the male gender. In the reverse, men also have certain roles that they are expected to fill and characteristics they are supposed to exemplify. Men are expected to be strong, dominant, and in charge of their families. They are often depicted, both in the media and in life, as the leaders. This discourse that we all follow can frequently be seen in Svava Jakobsdottir’s “A Story for Children.” The short story tells the tale of a woman as she raises her children and takes care of her household. The mother is completely devoted to her children and seeks to fulfill her role in the home to the fullest extent. As the story progresses, the main character slowly has pieces of herself removed by her children: her toe, her brain, and finally her heart. At the end of the text, after all of the children have become adults started families of their own, the mother realizes that she now has nothing and feels useless. In her short story, Jakobsdottir uses dramatization to depict the gender stereotypes and

More overly stated by website; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/criminals-need-mental-health-care/ . There is really nothing mental institutions can do to diagnose the mental prisoner. They surpass with little success in diagnosing the mental prisoner. There is way to prevent criminal to grow according to http://www.nber.org/papers/w12171. On it article of; Does Child Abuse Cause Crime? Written by author Janet Currie and Erdal Tekin. The research article had stated out that “We find that maltreatment approximately doubles the probability of engaging in many types of crime. Low SES children are both more likely to be mistreated and suffer more damaging effects. Boys are at greater risk than girls, at least in terms of increased propensity

In the movie several of the men experienced the overconfidence phenomenon. In the text it gives a definition. The text states overconfidence phenomenon is the tendency to be more confident than correct –to overestimate the accuracy of one’s belief (pg.91). One of the actors that I found that demonstrated this the most was the one who wore glasses and was towards the end to change his vote. He was 100 % sure the boy was guilty based on what the man and the woman said in the testimony. However he started to question himself when the main character brought up things that others did not see in the trial. He then realized he overestimated how correct he thought he was. This leads me to my next topic of how others can be persuaded.