Steve Penrod

• John Jay College of Criminal Justice

The current study examined the concurrent and predictive validity of four families of lineup-fairness measures – mock-witness measures, perceptual ratings, face-similarity algorithms, and resultant assessments (assessments based on eyewitness participants’ responses) – with 40 mock crime/lineup sets. A correlation analysis demonstrated weak or non-...

The current research conducted a three‐level meta‐analysis with a total of 159 journal articles on the other‐race bias in facial identification, which had been published between 1969 and 2021. The effect size analysis yielded moderate pooled effect sizes of the other‐race bias on face identification—people showed higher hit rates and discriminabili...

Objectives The New Jersey Supreme Court in New Jersey v. Henderson (2011) proposed judicial instructions designed to assist juries in evaluating eyewitness evidence. The current work examines the impact of the Henderson instructions on deliberating jurors, and whether the jury deliberation process helps jurors use the Henderson instructions to eval...

Although eyewitness researchers have used mock-witness measures to assess aspects of lineup fairness, they have paid little attention to their validity. The current study tested predictive validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of mock-witness measures from a meta-analytic perspective. Overall, mock-witness measures had predictive...

Lee, Khogali, Despodova, and Penrod (2019) demonstrated that American participants whose races are different from a defendant and a victim rendered more punitive judgments against the defendant in a same-race crime (e.g., White observer-Black defendant-Black victim) compared to a cross-race crime (e.g., White observer-Black defendant-Hispanic victi...

A recent New Jersey Supreme Court decision recognized the difficulty jurors have with evaluating eyewitness evidence. This decision resulted in the development of instructions that highlight factors affecting identification accuracy. Research has explored the efficacy of eyewitness instructions for improving jurors’ decision-making. Jurors in these...

Objectives: Eyewitness research has adapted signal detection theory (SDT) to investigate eyewitness performance. SDT-based measures in yes/no tasks fit well for the measurement of eyewitness performance in show-ups, but not in lineups, because the application of the measures to eyewitness identifications neglects the role of fillers. In the presen...

Prior studies investigating racial bias in legal decisions have involved race combinations of an observer, defendant, and victim where the observers’ race was the same as either the defendants’ or victims’ race. Because of the research designs employed in those prior studies, the effects of the three actors all being of different races have not bee...

In the United States, most criminal cases are adjudicated through guilty pleas; yet, little is known about the public’s perceptions of plea bargaining. Here, we applied two competing theories-- a procedural justice framework and plea-bargaining in the “shadow of the trial” theory-- to analyze the impact that process-relevant and evidence-relevant p...

In Turner v. Rogers, the U.S. Supreme Court charged judges with ensuring due process for unrepresented litigants in civil proceedings. We argue that engaged judging overlaps with the group value theory (GVT) criterion of trustworthiness, which along with respect and neutrality typically exert a direct effect on perceptions of fairness and satisfact...

Eyewitness identifications made under poor witnessing or identification conditions have resulted in numerous wrongful convictions [National Registry of Exonerations. (2017). Retrieved January 28, 2017, from http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/ExonerationsContribFactorsByCrime.aspx]. These wrongful convictions have persuaded some cour...

Evidence is mixed on whether or not laypersons have sufficient knowledge of false confession risk factors. Procedural safeguards such as judicial instructions may assist jurors who are unable to effectively evaluate confession evidence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions that varied in the quality of a confession and the...

Suspects accused of involvement in the same crime can be tried in one multiple-defendant trial. While research has long demonstrated the difficulties of being a juror, no published work has examined whether multiple-defendant trials compound these difficulties. The current research recruited both student and community samples to determine whether t...

Objectives The New Jersey Supreme Court recently determined that jurors may not be able to effectively evaluate eyewitness evidence on their own. As a result, the Court proposed the use of judicial instructions to assist jurors (called Henderson instructions) and suggested the implementation of these instructions would reduce the need for expert te...

Mistaken eyewitness identifications are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. Even with procedural safeguards (e.g., attorney argument, cross-examination of witnesses) in place, jurors still have difficulty evaluating the reliability of eyewitness identifications. The purpose of the current study was to test the New Jersey Supreme Court’s assump...

Lay knowledge concerning false confession risk factors appears to be insufficient to safeguard against wrongful convictions, and research on false confession expert testimony has not led to a clear understanding of its impact on juror decision making. Thus, the current study sought to clarify whether expert testimony can induce sensitivity to a wid...

ROC analysis has recently come in vogue for assessing the underlying discriminability and the applied utility of lineup procedures. Two primary assumptions underlie recommendations that ROC analysis be used to assess the applied utility of lineup procedures: (1) ROC analysis of lineups measures underlying discriminability, and (2) the procedure tha...

Although the courts have explicitly expressed concerns about the effects of public sentiment on juries in highly publicized cases, no research has isolated the degree to which jurors’ exposure to community outrage and/or prospective social interactions in the community independently influence judgments of guilt. In the current research, jury eligib...

Exposure to negative pre-trial publicity (PTP) can bias jurors, but the role of PTP in capital sentencing remains unclear. The goal of this study was to examine how variations in PTP concerning a defendant’s emotions prior to sentencing and variations in the defendant’s emotions during sentencing influenced sentencing decisions. One hundred death-q...

Recent Supreme Court decisions point to an increased reliance on juries to determine a defendant's sentence. Evidence is mixed on whether jurors are more likely to convict when the potential punishment is mild. The current study examined this issue, as well as the impact of legal authoritarianism (LA) (Kravitz, D. A., Cutler, B. L., & Brock, P. 199...

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of pretrial publicity (PTP) on mock juror decision making. Specifically, we examined the influence of quantity and slant of the PTP (proprosecution vs. prodefense), the persistence of PTP effects over time, and whether the PTP effects demonstrated in research laboratories would also occur in mo...

Esta investigación estudia el proceso de deliberación del jurado. Un conjunto de sujetos, representativos, miembros de distintos jurados, asistieron a la proyección de un vídeo de un juicio que presentaba tres delitos, deliberaron en grupos de seis miembros, dieron un veredicto para cada uno de los cargos, y rellenaron un cuestionario posdeliberato...

Eye-closure may help people remember live and videotaped mundane events and videotaped violent events. The present study extended this research by examining memory for a forensically relevant live event (a staged verbal altercation) and by interviewing witnesses under naturalistic conditions. Ninety-six witnesses were interviewed either inside in a...

A primary goal of this research was to empirically evaluate a set of assumptions, advanced in the Supreme Court's ruling in Buchanan v. Angelone (1998), about jury comprehension of death penalty instructions. Further, this research examined the use of evidence in capital punishment decision making by exploring underlying mediating factors upon whic...

In the present study, we conducted two separate meta-analyses in order to quantify the influence on facial identification accuracy of two variables related to initial memory strength for an unfamiliar face, specifically, length of exposure at the time of encounter and encoding operations as manipulated via stimulus processing instructions. Proporti...

Research conducted over the past 40 years demonstrates that pretrial publicity (PTP) can negatively influence jurors’ perceptions of parties in criminal and civil cases receiving substantial news coverage. Changes in the news media over the same period of time have made news coverage more accessible to the public as traditional media including news...

Based on van Koppen and Penrod (2003)’s argument that the trial system with fewer wrongful convictions should be considered the “better” system, this study compared inquisitorial and adversarial trials by evaluating the quality of legal decision making of legal professionals and lay people in relation to the assessment of trial evidence and guilt p...

In this article we consider a number of legal responses to the problem of media violence. We underscore the tension between evidence collected by social scientists and traditional First Amendment (free speech) protections, noting several criticisms of media violence research that challenge the use of this research to establish legal harms. The seco...

Purpose. The objective of this review was to give a broad overview of various biases associated with jury decision making. Specifically we review research on the impact of pretrial publicity, jury instructions, inadmissible evidence, and scientific evidence. This article elucidates various challenges jurors may face across systems around the world...

Mistaken eyewitness identificationsRecommendations for collecting eyewitness evidenceDouble-blind vs. single-blind line-up administrationThe state of eyewitness identification science and practiceReferences

A problem that recently has been the focus of the debate over expert testimony is its reliability, largely due to a group of Supreme Court cases that attempted to clarify the standards for the expert testimony admissibility. Judges are given the authority to admit or exclude expert evidence, which may cover a broad range of topics. In rendering adm...

Traditional measures used by eyewitness researchers often paint an incomplete picture of the complex process that is an eyewitness identification. We seek to answer the following questions: 1) What proportion of suspect identifications are simply guesses, and what is the source of these guesses? Are they rooted in blind luck or do they stem from a...

Hugo Münsterberg is widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of psychology and law, and the publication of his book On the Witness Stand (1908) is considered the signal event in its founding. However, numerous other researchers were conducting and publishing research on psycholegal topics in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and at least one...

The fidelity of an eyewitness's memory representation is an issue of paramount forensic concern. Psychological science has been unable to offer more than vague generalities concerning the relation of retention interval to memory trace strength for the once-seen face. A meta-analysis of 53 facial memory studies produced a highly reliable association...

Four experiments examined the role of costs and benefits versus procedural and distributive justice for procedural fairness and procedural evaluations among decision makers and decision recipients. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the responses of actual judges in a 2 (high versus low benefit) x 2 (search procedure conducted respectfully versus disresp...

The criminal justice system relies heavily on eyewitnesses to determine the facts surrounding criminal events. Eyewitnesses may identify culprits, recall conversations, or remember other details. An eyewitness who has no motive to lie is a powerful form of evidence for jurors, especially if the eyewitness appears to be highly confident about his or...

We investigate the possibility that the degree to which female abuse victims are held accountable by other women who have been exposed to sexually violent mass media is primarily dependent upon 3 factors: situational relevance, personal similarity, and emotional arousal. Female subjects participated in an experiment. Factors were: film dose; film v...

Third parties in dispute settings often make predictions to disputants regarding the likely outcome of their dispute at arbitration. However, virtually no research has examined the impact of predictions on disputant satisfaction with dispute resolution procedures and outcomes. One explanation for the lack of attention to this variable may be that c...

Tested the effects, on juror decision making, of court-appointed expert testimony and judge's instructions designed to sensitize jurors to eyewitness evidence. Subjects (N= 144) viewed a videotaped trial in which the primary evidence was the testimony of and identification by an eyewitness. Three levels of expert advice (court-appointed expert, jud...

The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography was asked by the president of the United States to “review the available empirical evidence on the relationship between exposure to pornographic materials and antisocial behavior [and to explore] possible roles and initiatives that the Department of Justice and agencies of local, State, and federal g...

More than 25 years of research has accumulated concerning the possible biasing effects of mugshot exposure to eyewitnesses. Two separate metaanalyses were conducted on 32 independent tests of the hypothesis that prior mugshot exposure decreases witness accuracy at a subsequent lineup. Mugshot exposure both significantly decreased proportion correct...

Attitudes toward the death penalty are multifaceted and strongly held, but little research outside of the death-qualification literature has focused on the role that such attitudes and beliefs play in jurors' capital sentencing verdicts. A single item is insufficient to properly measure attitudes toward the death penalty; therefore, a new 15-item,...

In the past 30 years researchers have examined the impact of heightened stress on the fidelity of eyewitness memory. Meta-analyses were conducted on 27 independent tests of the effects of heightened stress on eyewitness identification of the perpetrator or target person and separately on 36 tests of eyewitness recall of details associated with the...

Previous research has made a beginning in addressing the importance of methodological differences in Web-based research. The present paper presents four studies investigating whether sample type, financial incentives, time when personal information is requested, table design, and method of obtaining informed consent influence dropout and sample cha...

In the previous chapters it has been demonstrated that quite a few differences exist between the adversarial criminal justice system as it is commonly practiced in the United States and the form of inquisitorial system as it is practiced in the Netherlands.1 It has been argued that these systems are somewhere at opposite extremes of the adversaria...

The most extensive reforms in criminal justice probably took place during the last decade in England and Wales. Following well known miscarriages of justice as the Guildford Four (Jessel, 1994) and Birmingham Six (Gilligan, 1990), the commission chaired by Runciman proposed a host of legislation (Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure, 1993). The o...

This is the first volume that directly compares the practices of adversarial and inquisitorial systems of law from a psychological perspective. It aims at understanding why American and European continental systems differ so much, while both systems entertain much support in their communities. In the chapters it is demonstrated how the different sy...

Appellate opinions were evaluated on variables related to expert admissibility to assess the effects of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in criminal cases. Analysis reveals changes in appellate courts' consideration of Frye v. United States, the 4 Daubert criteria, and several Federal Rules of Evidence. The importance of Frye and the...

Appellate opinions were evaluated on variables related to expert admissibility to assess the effects of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in criminal cases. Analysis reveals changes in appellate courts' consideration of Frye v. United States, the 4 Daubert criteria, and several Federal Rules of Evidence. The importance of Frye and the ge...

Two studies test the hypothesis that trust, neutrality, and standing influence procedural justice because of their relation to resource motives as well as the relational motive posited by the Group Value Theory. In Study 1, El Salvadorons were asked to evaluate a procedure for seeking redress for a rights violation and the current national governme...

Researchers considering novel or exploratory psycholegal research are often able to easily generate a sizable list of independent variables (IVs) that might influence a measure of interest. Where the research question is novel and the literature is not developed, however, choosing from among a long list of potential variables those worthy of empiri...

Although research examining the effects of pretrial publicity (PTP) on individuals' appraisals of a defendant and verdict decision making generally has been found to be internally valid, the external validity has been questioned by some social scientists as well as lawyers and judges. It is often proposed that the verisimilitude (or ecological vali...

There are many methodological differences between Web-based studies, differences that could substantially affect the results. The present study investigated whether sample type, offering payment through a lottery, and requiring participants to enter personal information would affect dropout rates and/or the substantive results in a study of jury de...

There are many methodological differences between Web-based studies, differences that could substantially affect the results. The present study investigated whether sample type, offering payment through a lottery, and requiring participants to enter personal information would affect dropout rates and/or the substantive results in a study of jury de...

This brief addresses the issue of jury performance and jury responses to expert testimony. It reviews and summaries a substantial body of research evidence about jury behavior that has been produced over the past quarter century. The great weight of that evidence challenges the view that jurors abdicate their responsibilities as fact finders when f...

When a case has received pretrial publicity which has the capacity to bias potential jurors in the trial venue, a change of venue is one means of attempting to ensure that the defendant receives a fair trial. Content analysis of the pretrial publicity surrounding a case can provide the court with important information to consider when determining w...

This brief addresses the issue of jury responses to expert testimony.

It is clear that eyewitness testimony and eyewitness identifications play important roles in the apprehension, prosecution, and adjudication of criminal offenders. Police rely on eyewitness statements in their initial investigations; eyewitness identifications from lineups and photospreads are common; and the eyewitness is probably the most common...

There is increasing evidence that false eyewitness identification is the primary cause of the conviction of innocent people. In 1996, the American Psychology/Law Society and Division 41 of the American Psychological Association appointed a subcommittee to review scientific evidence and make recommendations regarding the best procedures for construc...

As media coverage becomes more extensive and accessible, it is likely to become more difficult to find jurors who have not been exposed to relevant pretrial publicity. Courts' assessments of the likelihood that pretrial publicity has resulted in prejudice against a defendant and of jurors' ability to disregard any prejudice are often based on judic...

Jurors, juries, and jury verdicts are subject to regular attacks by legal, media, and other critics. Many of the critics believe that jurors are incompetent to handle their decision-making tasks, and some would dispense with juries altogether. Defenders and some critics prefer to consider less drastic measures, and some offer suggestions about proc...

Although eyewitness identifications are among the most common forms of evidence presented in criminal trials, both archival studies and psychological research suggest that eyewitnesses are frequently mistaken in their identifications (B. L. Cutler & S. D. Penrod, 1995). In recognition of this problem, the legal system has established a number of sa...

As media coverage becomes more extensive and accessible, it is likely to become more difficult to find jurors who have not been exposed to relevant pretrial publicity. Courts' assessments of the likelihood that pretrial publicity has resulted in prejudice against a defendant and of jurors' ability to disregard any prejudice are often based on judic...

Although eyewitness identifications are among the most common forms of evidence presented in criminal trials, both archival studies and psychological research suggest that eyewitnesses are frequently mistaken in their identifications (B. L. Cutler & S. D. Penrod, 1995). In recognition of this problem, the legal system has established a number of sa...

PIP This study examines the potential harm of sexually explicit and/or violent films to women viewers. More specifically, it investigates the idea that the visual media contribute to a cultural climate that is supportive of attitudes facilitating violence against women, diminish concern for female victims (desensitization), and have a negative impa...

Two studies examined the effectiveness of the Mac-a-Mug Pro, a computerized facial composite production system. In the first study, college freshmen prepared from memory composites of other students and faculty from their former high schools. Other students who had attended the same high schools could not recognize the composites of either students...

Mock jurors' use of probabilistic evidence was examined in a fractional factorial design manipulating 7 variables: strength of nonstatistical evidence; quantification of nonstatistical evidence; strength of statistical evidence; combination of 2 pieces of statistical evidence; instruction in use of Bayes' theorem; and presentation of fallacies (bot...

Jurors overbelieve eyewitnesses, have difficulty reliably differentiating accurate from inaccurate eyewitnesses, and are not adequately sensitive to aspects of witnessing and identification conditions. A major source of juror unreliability is reliance on witness confidence, a dubious indicator of eyewitness accuracy even when measured at the time a...

There is widespread agreement among researchers that the correlation between identification accuracy and confidence in identification judgments is weak. For this reason, many experts caution against heavy reliance on confidence when evaluating identification accuracy. The authors present a meta-analytic review of 30 studies using staged-event metho...

This article examines the legal and scientific issues inherent in the use of expert psychological testimony on the factors that affect eyewitness reliability. First, the history of the use of such expert testimony is traced. Next, we look at the criteria that state and federal courts have used in determining whether to admit such testimony, as well...

This paper examines the legal and scientific aspects of expert psychological testimony in the United States and discusses the possible implications for such testimony of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. We consider expert testimony on eyewitness identification issues as an illustration of the reaction of the courts to, particul...

Examined the effects of varying the type of expert testimony, the strength of an expert witness's cross-examination (CE), and gender on 161 undergraduates' (aged 18–47 yrs) perceptions of the expert, the alleged victim, and the defendant in a child sexual abuse (CSA) trial. Ss viewed a control version of the trial (no expert testimony) or 1 of 6 ve...

This study examines three previously unexplored aspects of the biasing impact of pretrial publicity. First, this study tests the differential effects of several different types of pretrial publicity on juror decision making. Second, this study explores the impact the presentation of trial evidence has on biases created by pretrial publicity. Finall...

Examined the advantages and disadvantages of juror notetaking and question asking in 160 trials. At the end of each trial, jurors, both lead attorneys, and the judge completed a questionnaire regarding their evaluations of the trial, the actors, and the experimental procedures employed. Jurors did not overemphasize the evidence they noted, and thei...

Adult Eyewitness Testimony: Current Trends and Developments provides an overview of empirical research on eyewitness testimony and identification accuracy, covering both theory and application. The volume is organized to address three important issues. First, what are the cognitive, social and physical factors that influence the accuracy of eyewitn...

A field experiment examined effects of trial complexity and trial procedures on jury performance. Juror question asking and notetaking were randomly assigned to 75 civil and 85 criminal trials. Analyses of judges' responses revealed 3 components of trial complexity: evidence complexity, legal complexity, and quantity of information. None of these c...

We presented participants with syndromal, witness credibility, or anatomically detailed doll evidence to determine (a) whether these different types of expert evidence exert differential influence on participants' judgments and (b) whether the influence of this evidence could be better explained by the relative scientific status or the probabilisti...

Three experiments explored the jury selection strategies of trial attorneys (TAs) and novices. Exp 1 elicited 19 TAs' (aged 30–50 yrs) reactions to 11 juror characteristics. In rating juror desirability, TAs emphasized only 2 or 3 characteristics. In Exp 2, 16 hypothetical jurors were described to 15 TAs and 20 university students in terms of occup...

A mock-jury study was conducted to examine juror sensitivity to eyewitness identification evidence. Subjects were 129 eligible and experienced jurors from Dane County, Wisconsin, who viewed a videotaped trial that involved an eyewitness identification. Ten factors associated with the crime and the identification (e.g., disguise of the perpetrator,...

The propriety of psychological testimony concerning factors that influence eyewitness reliability has been challenged on the grounds that the research methods and populations used in eyewitness research may not generalize. The present experiment examines one aspect of the generalizability issue and tests whether a number of factors that have produc...

Examined the merits of 2 jury instruction procedures: written instructions from the judge prior to deliberation and oral instructions from the judge prior to the evidence portion of the trial. The presence or absence of both procedures was randomly assigned to 34 civil and 33 criminal trials in circuit courts. Questionnaires administered to judges,...

The admissibility of expert psychological testimony on eyewitness matters is currently in debate. In this research we bring data to bear on some of the critical issues underlying the debate, specifically, jurors' understanding and use of expert testimony. Mock jurors viewed a realistic videotaped trial centered around eyewitness evidence. Several a...

Meta-analyses of 9 studies were conducted that all assess the association between pre-lineup confidence and identification accuracy; the association between post-lineup confidence produces a stronger correlation with identification accuracy than does pre-lineup confidence. In 5 of these studies the difference between correlations is statistically s...

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books , 1989, Vol 34(8), 738-740. Reviews the books, In the Jury Box: Controversies in the Courtroom edited by Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Saul M. Kassm, and Cynthia E. Willis (1987); and On the Witness Stand: Controversies in the Courtroom edited by Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Cynthia E. Willi...