Imperial A Hilton San Francisco and Towers Ballroom Level
Joint Program of Sections on Criminal Justice and Evidence Richard Daniel Klein, Touro College, and Chair, Section on Criminal Justice Robert P. Mosteller, Duke University, and Chair and Program Chair, Section on Evidence
What Have We Learned about Children as Victims and Witnesses in the Criminal Trial Process?
Moderator:
Robert P. Mosteller, Duke University
Speakers:
Richard D. Friedman, The University of Michigan [View Program Materials] Gail S. Goodman, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, Davis, California Thomas D. Lyon, University of Southern California Lucy S. McGough, Louisiana State University Jean Ramirez Montoya, University of San Diego John E.B. Myers, McGeorge School of Law Amye R. Warren, UC Foundation Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Over the past two decades courts and scholars have grappled with how to meet the unique challenges posed to the criminal adjudication process by children when they appear either as victims or witnesses. This program is designed to look back across that period and, as to a set of central challenges, assess the lessons learned and the questions still unanswered.
The program will center upon three sets of issues: The extent to which children are suggestible when questioned by adults or resistant to suggestion, and the circumstances under which distortions of testimony are most likely. Suggestibility questions are at the core of many of the issues involving evidence coming from children. Mechanisms to develop and present testimony of children are less traumatic and more effective but still fair to the accused. Growing out of the suggestibility research have been lessons about interviewing techniques. In addition, courts, legislatures, and scholars have experimented with various techniques for recording and presenting testimony by children, such as videotaping the testimony or screening children during live testimony from the accused and the jury. Several types of questions arise as to each of these efforts – how effective are they in helping the children involved, do they affect outcomes, and are they fair to the accused? New evidentiary rules, principally new hearsay exceptions or expansions of established exceptions. Because children are recognized as different, courts and legislatures have been particularly willing to experiment with evidentiary rules. Both standard evidentiary concerns of trustworthiness and constitutional issues under the Confrontation Clause are involved.
One particularly interesting aspect of the retrospective examination of developments in this area is the ebb and flow of societal concern with effective prosecution and protecting children in one period against a focus on questions of fairness to the accused in another. This conflict occurs in cases where the stakes and the emotions are high. Concern for and skepticism of children are in constant battle.