Legal Trends of In-Court Accommodations

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Legal Trends
Comparison of Research Methods Used
Possible Solutions
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Cases involving physical and sexual abuse are usually very sensitive and complex, especially where children are the victims. The complexity may come in since the only witness to the crime may be the child who has been abused. Testifying in court is stressful for many witnesses, but in this case, it may be even more stressful to the child or even traumatizing. The child must relive the painful experience in front of an audience and the alleged abuser. They may, therefore, be reluctant in narrating the ordeal, causing them to leave out essential details or give a false statement. Therefore, there is the need to come up with methods to make the child more comfortable in court to tell the details as required without making the accused guiltier than they are. Hence, this has led to incorporating in-court accommodations to achieve more fair judgments in courts of law. This paper highlights the legal trends related to these accommodations, research methods on whether they compromise a fair trial, and possible solutions to make them work favor all case stakeholders.

Legal Trends

The in-court accommodations put in place to ensure that a fair trial is mainly referred to as legal trends. One of them is taint hearings that determine whether the witness’s testimony is tainted. If a certain degree of tainting is found out, the witness is seen not feasibly to narrate their knowledge and will not be allowed to testify. The taint hearings need to be recorded and later analyzed to determine whether or not testifying will take place. The primary purpose of taint hearings in cases of abuse against children is to determine whether these children’s allegations are due to thorough questioning rather than facts (McWilliams et al., 2020). The assumption is that once the child goes through excessively suggestive questioning, their testimony is permanently tainted, and they can not testify in court. This method still faces resistance in many regions since the witnesses and the defendants disapprove of it. Most of them are not usually made aware that they are being recorded during the taint hearing, which later becomes an issue.

Although children may give false statements due to overly suggestive questions directed towards them, studies have shown that the false memories of most children do not last. A study showed that many of these children could recall correct details from 2 years back and denied most of the false information presented. Therefore, they may be brought back to court after a suitable period and under different conditions to determine the honesty of their previous statement (Robins, 2019). Screens and CCTV cameras may significantly affect children who testify in court because they feel under pressure to give certain information, altering their statements. The presence of the alleged abusers in the court or if the children see them through the screens may inflict fear and make them resistant to narrate everything.

However, including screens and CCTV cameras in the courtroom is argued to be effective in cases of abuse as it makes it easy for the jury to go through it later. Going through the footage ensures that they make an informed decision by going through the statements and body language used without all the courtroom pressure. It also provides security in court as chances of stolen pieces of evidence in the courtroom are reduced. The use of screens also enables the easy display of the evidence for easy viewing of the jury and other members that may be present. The display may be an issue that needs to be addressed as such display of evidence may trigger the traumatic experience (abuse) for the witness, which is the child in most cases.

Comparison of Research Methods Used

One research method involved studying the behavior of the witnesses in the courtroom when facility dogs are included. Certain courts applied the usage only for children with psychological, physical, or emotional difficulties and analyzed the outcome. The study by Burd (2019) uses paradigms of a mock trial involving child witnesses while exploring the use of teddy bears compared to facility dogs compared to no use of accommodations. The study goes further ahead and analyzes the effect of the usage of accommodations on the judgment of the mock jurors about the child witness and the defendant. It was found out that teddy bears were prejudicial to the defendants in one experiment and that neither teddy bears nor facility dogs were prejudicial to them. This study concluded that the accommodations did not influence the jury’s perception of the witness; hence they do not influence the verdict or the sentencing.

A similar study looked into the case of a sixteen-year-old who her father had abused since she was eleven years old. This case was particularly different from other similar cases as the girl narrated the traumatic experience in front of her family and her abuser accurately and clearly. The behavior is owed to the golden retriever (courtroom canine) present during this trial, as Englund (2021) explained. This courtroom canine is specifically trained to assist child victims in giving testimony in court as it senses an increase in anxiety and stress of the child. It will then respond by sitting up and putting its head on the child’s lap, giving them a sense of security and comfort, and hence the testifying can continue smoothly.

Another study looked at children with sexual abuse accommodation syndrome (CSAAS) and their behaviors analyzed. This research by Weiss and Alexander (2022) explains that CSAAS describes the situation whereby the victims of child sexual abuse recant their complaints or end up not reporting the incidents at all. They explain that this is not a diagnostic term like PTSD hence should not be used as evidence. One Supreme Court ruled that statistical evidence on CSAAS implied that the honesty of a child has a risk of confusing jury members and making their bias against a defendant. This study concluded that the jury should not be use statistics on CSAAS to conclude the victim’s honesty or guilt of the accused.

Another study involved sampling victims of child abuse and dividing them into two groups. One group had victims who recanted their first abuse disclosure, while the other group was for victims who admitted to the integrity of their first report at later investigations. The researcher compared the child’s characteristics, family, and abuser in the two groups. This study by Celik (2018) owes that disclosure of cases of child sexual abuse is directly related to the individual and environmental factors in different age groups. The result was that all social interactions by the victim of child abuse after the incident were higher in the first group. Hence, such victims mostly keep the incident a secret, and they do not disclose the event immediately.

A New Jersey Supreme court study found that sexually abused children often deny the abuse, but it was yet to be established. Lyon et al. (2020) studied three possible reasons: disclosure substantiation bias, the ground truth problem, and the disclosure suspicion bias. This research identified groups of children whose abuse can be proven without relying on disclosure and found out that most abused children deny the sexual abuse.

Lastly, the fast-growing cases of child sexual abuse due to the pandemic have caused concern among people worldwide. This increase is attributed to increased isolation, the increased burden for children who require caregivers as they would otherwise be in school, and increased economic hardships. Despite all this, Font (2021) highlights that fewer cases are reported to the child welfare systems. Therefore, activists are pushing for cases to be dealt with accordingly by child welfare systems in courts and not virtually as is being done. Dealing with the cases online is found to cause laxity on the part of the jury; hence more people do not see the need to report these cases.

Possible Solutions

Having a children’s professional available when the child is testifying is also essential. The professional may be a psychologist specified in children’s mental health, a pediatrician, or a therapeutic animal. These professionals help notice when the child is upset or triggered, and they can advise on the next step (Finkelhor, 2019). In addition to taint hearing, the psychologist may be able to tell when the child is being sincere and when the child is not fit to be involved in the trial. They may also help the child calm down in case of remembrance of the traumatic experience.

It is also essential for the child to be around a friendly or familiar face during questioning. The familiar face may be a parent, a sibling, or a favorite teacher with whom the child readily shares their stories. The presence of such a person helps the child to be comfortable enough to share their ordeal and at the same time makes them feel safe. The law enforcers should follow laws concerning such practices closely to ensure that the presence of the child’s ‘friend’ does not interfere with what is intended to be said. This involvement may include keeping a suitable distance between them or closely monitoring both parties’ body language.

Lastly, the proper authorities should do appropriate training of the members of the jury and the advocates. Acquiring such a position should involve following the correct procedures under strict monitoring. Violating the rules of law that are in place by any of the case stakeholders should be followed by severe consequences. All of this ensures that the jury, advocates, lawyers, judges, witnesses, and the defendant do not practice partiality or engage in anything that may cause a fair judgment not to be achieved.

Conclusion

In-court accommodations are not a disadvantageous thing despite all the challenges. Addressing these challenges through the possible solutions above ensures that their use continues for the betterment of the judicial system. The law enforcers need to know which method of accommodation to use according to the ongoing case to achieve fairness. The children and their parents should also be properly engaged to determine which solutions are more comfortable for them. The jury and all stakeholders of the law should improve the judicial system and achieve maximum fairness. In most cases, they help the child witness narrate the entire ordeal effectively; hence their use is effective and does not compromise the fairness of the reading in most cases.

References

Burd, K. A. (2019). Facility dogs in the courtroom: comfort without prejudice? Criminal Justice Review 44(4), 515-536.

Celik, G. (2018). Recantation of sexual abuse disclosure among child victims. Journal of child sexual abuse 27(6), 612-621.

Englund, A. (2021). Canines in the courtroom: A witness’s best friend without prejudice. J. Animal and Nature Resource Limited, 17-45.

Font, S. (2021). What lessons can the child welfare system take from the COVID-19 pandemic? American Enterprise Institute.

Lyon, T. D., Williams, S., Stolzenberg, S. N. (2020). Understanding expert testimony on child sexual abuse denial. Behavioral sciences and the law 38(6), 630-647.

McWilliams, K., Hobbs, S. D., Gardner, D. B., Bakanosky, S., Goodman, G. S. (2020). I Bulletin review, the review of children testifying in courts of law regained. Development Psychology: Revisiting the Classic Studies, 135.

Robins, S. K. (2019). Confabulation and constructive memory. Synthese 196(6), 2135-2151.

Weiss, K. J., Alexander, J. (2022). Sex. Lies and statistics: Inferences from the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 41, 412-420.

Click Here To Order Now!