The effect of alibi consistency, presence of physical evidence and timing of disclosure on mock juror perceptions

Inconsistent alibis often are viewed negatively, but they may be due to simple mistakes and not deception. The strength of alibi evidence also matters; alibis supported by strong corroborative physical evidence are more believable than alibis with no physical evidence. The timing at which the alibi is disclosed to the prosecution also can affect alibi believability. Two hundred and seventy online participants evaluated a consistent or inconsistent alibi that had corroborative physical evidence or not, and was disclosed early or late. Collapsing across the three conditions, more participants voted guilty than not guilty, and more believable alibis were associated with more not guilty verdicts. Consistent alibis were more believable, and the defendant was viewed more positively on five character traits than when the alibi was inconsistent. There were few effects of alibi timing. In sum, consistency led to positive views of alibis and defendants.

The importance of the smallest effect size of interest in expert witness testimony on alcohol and memory

Memory experts are sometimes asked to evaluate the validity of accounts of witnesses, victims, or suspects. In some of these cases, they are asked what effect alcohol has on the validity of such accounts. In this article, we offer a guide on what expert witnesses can reliably say about how alcohol affects memory. We do so by resorting to effect sizes from previous studies and meta-analytic work, and address this novel question: Are these effect sizes meaningful in legal cases? More specifically, we argue that any determination of whether individual studies about alcohol and memory are practically relevant for legal cases, scientists must focus on the smallest effect size of interest. We make the case that a decrease or increase of only 1 detail, especially an incorrect detail, should be regarded as the smallest effect size of interest in this line of research. In line with this idea, we show that effect sizes in the alcohol and memory literature are often larger than this smallest effect size of interest. This finding is important because it implies that alcohol often exerts a practically relevant and meaningful detrimental effect on the reporting of both correct and incorrect details, which in turn negatively affects the validity of witness testimony.

You don't know: knowledge as supportive alibi evidence

Until now, supportive evidence for alibis has been conceptualised into two distinct types: witness and physical evidence. The present study examined whether knowledge, as a third type of supportive evidence, can contribute to the understanding of evidence for alibis. Three experiments were conducted in which police detectives, laypersons and undergraduate students were asked to evaluate four alibis with witness, physical or knowledge supportive evidence, or with no supportive evidence. The results from the three experiments show that knowledge evidence is equally believable as strong witness evidence. We also found that not all items of strong physical evidence are evaluated as equally strong and believable. We therefore suggest adjusting the criteria to determine the strength of physical evidence and conducting more research on knowledge evidence.

Assessing alibi believability: the alibi story, presence of physical evidence and timing of disclosure

The content of the alibi story, corroborative physical evidence and timing of the alibi's disclosure may all affect alibi believability. CloudResearch workers (N = 276) read a mock case. The defendant's alibi story was scandalous (or neutral), included a receipt (or no mention), and was disclosed one day (or three weeks) later. Participants rated the alibi's believability, the defendant's character, and rendered a verdict. As expected, alibi believability ratings were higher when the alibi story was neutral versus scandalous (p < .01) Similarly, the defendant was viewed positively on all eight traits when the alibi story was neutral (ps < .05). The defendant was seen as more trustworthy when he did not have a receipt than when he did (p < .05). Alibi timing had little impact on the dependent measures, but participants were more certain in their verdicts when the alibi was early versus late (p < .05).

Credibility assessments of alibi accounts: the role of cultural intergroup bias

Research has shown that judges and jurors are influenced by suspect ethnicity and that they might discriminate against out-group suspects in making decisions. This study examined the tendency to favor in-group members, as predicted by social identity theory, in assessing alibi credibility. Forty Israeli-Jewish and 40 Israeli-Arab participants assessed the credibility of an alibi statement provided by a suspect who was either Israeli-Jewish or Israeli-Arab. Findings show that participants were more likely to believe the alibi when it was provided by an in-group suspect than by an out-group suspect, supporting intergroup bias in alibi credibility assessments. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

True and false alibis among prisoners and their detection by police detectives

The present study was designed to determine whether differences exist between true and false alibis and how accurate police detectives and lay people are in determining the veracity of alibis. This article provides a replication of the research by Culhane et al. (2013) with more representative participants. In the first experiment, real suspects in a remand prison generated true or false alibis. In the second experiment, a subset of those alibis were written out and were provided to experienced police officers and students for alibi evaluation and discrimination. Our results show that differentiating between true and false alibis is difficult, and even when more representative materials and participants are included, the accuracy did not exceed 60%. Interestingly we found that students and police officers focus on other aspects during the alibi discrimination. Thus, research using student participant cannot be, directly, used in alibi discrimination studies.

Emotions, Crime Seriousness, and Alibi Believability

In the current study the impact of victim age, crime seriousness, and social influence on perceptions of alibi believability, victim responsibility, confidence, and emotions was examined. Participants (N = 141) read a brief crime-scenario vignette and a summary of the suspect's alibi, followed by a series of closed-ended questions. The alibi was held constant across all conditions. Eighty percent of participants rated the suspect's alibi as moderately believable or less than moderately believable. A significant interaction of Victim Age × Crime Seriousness on perceptions of alibi believability was found. Additionally, those individuals who reported greater feelings of certain negative emotions tended to rate the crime as being more serious and the suspect's alibi as less believable. Furthermore, participants' self-reported feelings of sadness, pleasure, and fear could significantly predict participants' alibi believability ratings. These results offer additional support for the legal relevance of emotions, particularly with respect to alibi assessment.

Investigator Sensitivity to Alibi Witness Inconsistency after a Long Delay

In two studies, mock investigators conducted a computer-based investigation of a crime involving an alibi witness who varied in the consistency of his statements taken 5 years apart. Investigators showed evidence of skepticism of alibi witness statements in which major contradictions (activity, location) were present, and some skepticism of statements in which minor (activity) details were contradictory. Entirely consistent statements were judged favorably, and reduced perceptions of suspect guilt (Study 2). The age of the alibi witness did not impact judgments of suspect guilt when children (6 years) and adults (25 years) were compared (Study 1, N = 254), or when children of different ages were compared (6, 8, 11 years; Study 2, N = 234). The present data suggest that investigators were relatively more sensitive to considerations of accuracy than honesty. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Memory Errors in Alibi Generation: How an Alibi Can Turn Against Us

Alibis play a critical role in the criminal justice system. Yet research on the process of alibi generation and evaluation is still nascent. Indeed, similar to other widely investigated psychological phenomena in the legal system - such as false confessions, historical claims of abuse, and eyewitness memory - the basic assumptions underlying alibi generation and evaluation require closer empirical scrutiny. To date, the majority of alibi research investigates the social psychological aspects of the process. We argue that applying our understanding of basic human memory is critical to a complete understanding of the alibi process. Specifically, we challenge the use of alibi inconsistency as an indication of guilt by outlining the "cascading effects" that can put innocents at risk for conviction. We discuss how normal encoding and storage processes can pose problems at retrieval, particularly for innocent suspects that can result in alibi inconsistencies over time. Those inconsistencies are typically misunderstood as intentional deception, first by law enforcement, affecting the investigation, then by prosecutors affecting prosecution decisions, and finally by juries, ultimately affecting guilt judgments. Put differently, despite the universal nature of memory inconsistencies, a single error can produce a cascading effect, rendering an innocent individual's alibi, ironically, proof of guilt. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Alibis: Generation, Consistency, Corroboration, Believability, and Detection - Introduction to this Special Issue

This special issue highlights recent developments in the field of alibi research. These include a shift from self-report studies to behavioral paradigms; a broadening in the literature to study not only suspects, investigators, and legal decision makers, but also alibi corroborators; and an expansion of the research to include alibi-related memory issues rather than a sole focus on social impact factors. Additionally, this special issue addresses the many misconceptions that exist when it comes to the appraisal of consistency in the context of alibi accuracy and truthfulness. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Altruistic Lying in an Alibi Corroboration Context: The Effects of Liking, Compliance, and Relationship between Suspects and Witnesses

Police investigators, judges, and jurors are often very skeptical of alibi witness testimony. To investigate when and why individuals lie for one another, we conducted two studies in which witnesses' support of a false alibi was observed. We varied the level of social pressure exerted on witnesses and the level of affinity between suspect-witness pairs. During a study session purportedly intended to investigate dyadic problem-solving ability, a mock theft was staged. When questioned, participants were provided the opportunity to either corroborate or refute a confederate's false alibi that the latter was with them when the theft occurred. Participants were more likely to lie for the confederate when the latter explicitly asked participants to conceal his/her whereabouts during the time of the theft (Study 1). How much participants liked the suspect did not impact lying; however, participants lied for a confederate more often when the latter was a friend rather than a stranger (Study 2). Results show that alibi witnesses often lie and that investigators and jurors may not accurately estimate the likelihood that such witnesses will lie for one another. Witnesses who lied also reported doing so more often because they believed that the suspect was innocent rather than guilty. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Partners under Pressure: Examining the Consistency of True and False Alibi Statements

How to discriminate between honest and deceptive alibi statements holds great legal importance. We examined this issue from the perspective of group deception. Our goals were to (a) compare the consistency between the statements of guilty and innocent suspects and those of their respective alibi witnesses, and (b) to examine the moderating role of object-salience on the level of consistency between their statements. Pairs of truth-tellers provided honest testimonies. Pairs of liars were divided into perpetrators and alibi witnesses. Statements of lying pairs were considerably more consistent than the statements of truth-telling pairs. In addition, both truth-tellers and liars showed lower levels of within-group consistency when recalling less salient details about an event. However, truth-tellers' consistency levels were considerably more affected by salience than were liars' consistency levels. These findings contribute to deception theory and have important implications for the real-life task of distinguishing between true and false alibi statements. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.