Factors Influencing Expert Witnesses' Willingness to Testify in Court

Abstract

An expert witness may be called if a court case involves matters which are likely to be outside the knowledge of the average jury member. Although such a witness may be called by either the defense or the prosecution, the role of the witness is to remain neutral and simply report to the court on matters within the witness's expertise. It has been suggested that expert witnesses may sometimes be reluctant to appear because of their biases towards one side of the dispute. Previous research has highlighted the influence of factors such as believing the defendant, defendant's gender, juror's gender and defendant's conviction history on legal decision-making. There has however been no systematic study of such influences on expert witnesses. The present vignette study is the first to use a combination of survey and experimental methodologies and a crosssectional design to identify the influence of those factors on expert witness' willingness to testify. Findings revealed that respondents reported more willingness to take on a case when they believed the defendant, with male respondents showing higher likelihood of believing the defendant and female defendants being more likely to be believed. The results have potentially important implications in promoting objective decision-making among expert witnesses in the legal context.