The role of defendant race, expert testimony and interrogation coerciveness on Canadian mock jurors’ perceptions of recanted confessions

Abstract

Purpose

In some contexts, US-based White jurors appear to exhibit a heightened focus on legally relevant information when the defendant is Black as compared to White. The current study tested this ‘watchdog’ effect in the Canadian context by examining mock jurors’ decisions using a trial involving a recanted confession with an Indigenous or a White defendant. We also aimed to enhance our understanding of whether expert testimony sensitizes jurors to issues surrounding confessions, or if such testimony engenders a general scepticism towards this form of evidence.

Methods

White Canadian jury-eligible community members (N = 762) read a trial transcript in which we manipulated interrogation coerciveness (high/low), expert testimony (present/absent) and defendant race (Indigenous/White), and then rendered a verdict and responded to a questionnaire about the trial.

Results

Mock jurors were significantly less likely to convict the defendant in the high as compared to low coercion conditions. Expert testimony had no significant effects on verdict or perceptions of the confession. Participants seemed more sceptical of the Indigenous defendant’s confession, perceiving it to be less truthful (only in high-coercion conditions, providing the only evidence of the ‘watchdog’ effect in this study), voluntary and honest than that of the White defendant. However, defendant race had no effect on the verdict.

Conclusions

Participants were sensitive to differences between high and low coercions without the assistance of expert testimony. Furthermore, our results concerning the Indigenous defendant suggest participants’ verdicts were influenced by factors beyond their perceptions of the confession evidence.