Child Witnesses’ Experiences of Distress in Criminal Court: Sources, Consequences, and Solutions (2024)

FAQs

Should child witnesses be used in criminal cases? ›

Child witnesses can play a role in various types of criminal defense cases, not just those involving alleged offenses against minors. While their testimony may be presented with the best of intentions, the reliability of such accounts is often open to question.

Getting child witnesses to tell their stories

Typically, police begin a forensic interview by asking witnesses, including children, to freely recall everything they remember about the event. During this stage of the interview, even young children can be just as accurate as adults, but they often miss many details.

Getting child witnesses to share their experiences

Even young toddlers can be just as accurate as adults during this portion of the interview, but they frequently overlook numerous details.

These cases include allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and domestic violence, the types of cases in which child witnesses are most often called to testify.

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment3 normally precludes the state from offering the child's "testimonial" hearsay statements into evidence if the child does not testify.

The best evidence rule applies when a party wants to admit the contents of a writing, recording, or photograph at a trial, but that the original is not available. In the event that the original is unavailable, the party must provide a valid reason why.

In the witness identification literature, the consensus is that children are unreliable witnesses, because their confidence judgments do not reflect their memory accuracy (Keast et al., 2007; Powell et al., 2013).

If the judge believes the witnesses, the judge will rule favorably for the convincing witnesses. If the witnesses appear to be uninformed or dishonest, the judge will likely rule the other way. And if a jury finds a witness to lack credibility, that witness hurts their own side.

For short-term consequences, in a matched control study in 218 children, those who testified, compared with those who did not testify, were more likely to experience anxiety and indicated that delay in testifying increased their anxiety.

Use positive, active language – “One study found that children's answers are correct only 50 percent of the time when answering a question that used either single or double negatives, but are correct between 70 and 100 percent of the time when the question used positive language,” report Thumma and Braddock.

Why is child eyewitness testimony important? ›

Because a child's brain is not yet fully developed, each child witness must be assessed by the proper authorities to determine their reliability as a witness and whether they are mature enough to accurately recall the event, provide important details and withstand leading questions.

Because the ability to extract meaning from experience develops slowly, children are less likely to produce these false memories than adults, and are more likely to give accurate testimony when properly questioned.

Children should also be called if their testimony is vital for corroboration of other, perhaps less believable, evidence, or to reduce to certainty events which otherwise would be vague or circ*mstantial. If the judge rules that the child is not a competent witness, the child's testimony will not be heard.

Research establishes that while children can be reliable witnesses, children's memories are less well developed than adult memories.

The concern about eyewitness testimony of children is that children are often suggestible and seek to please adults when answering questions. Research indicates that children are more prone to making incorrect identifications and may even form false memories under suggestion.

California does not have a minimum age requirement in order for a child to be permitted to testify in court. Instead, judges are given discretion to determine whether a child is competent to testify.

Expert-Verified Answer. The use of videotaped testimony for child witnesses is allowed in all 50 states in the United States. All 50 states in the United States have enacted laws or provisions that allow for the use of videotaped testimony for child witnesses.