Juries that don't understand forensic science can send innocent people to prison − a short training video could help

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Ledura Watkins was 19 years old when he was accused of murdering a public school teacher.

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Jeudi, septembre 28, 2023

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Ledura Watkins was 19 years old when he was accused of murdering a public school teacher.
In 1976, Ledura Watkins was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Ledura Watkins lost over 41 years of his life to a wrongful conviction based on improper forensic testimony.

Jurors tend to rely heavily on forensic evidence when making decisions in a case, despite struggling to understand the statistical analyses and language used to explain forensic science.
They might ignore the differences between appropriately worded forensic testimony and testimony that violates best-practice guidelines, fail to grasp the limitations of forensic science in expert witness testimony and overly rely on an expert’s experience when evaluating the evidence.
These guidelines aimed to lessen misleading statements in forensic testimony and outlined five statements forensic experts should not make.

Inspired by one court’s use of videos to help train jurors on relevant concepts, our team developed what we call the forensic science informational video.
In the FSI video, a narrator explains what a forensic expert is and how they might testify in court.
In two different studies, we recruited jury-eligible adults to test whether our video had any effect on how jurors judged forensic testimony.

Participants learned how to identify low-quality forensic testimony and how to adjust their evaluations of the expert and their testimony accordingly.
Our study is a promising first step in exploring ways to help jurors understand complex forensic testimony.
A brief video like ours can provide standardized information about forensic experts and types of appropriate and inappropriate testimony to jurors across courts, much like similar videos about implicit bias already being used in some courts.