The Effect of Childhood Abuse and Expert Witness Testimony on Jurors in Rape Cases: A Cultural Comparison

Abstract

This researcher would like to observes the effects of childhood abuse as an abuse excuse, expert witness testimony supporting the abuse excuse, and a differences in culture between the United States of America (U.S.A.) and Malaysia on jurors in rape cases. Rape is an ever growing problem and the increase in awareness of the severity of the issue has also promoted a multitude of research regarding its ramifications for children who were abused. James Q. Wilson (1997), in his book, criticized the U.S. courts for accepting the abuse excuse and claimed that it is a problem that plagues the court of law in other countries as well. The researcher aims to quantify the possible effect that abuse excuse and expert witnesses have on a juror’s likelihood of passing a guilty verdict to test Wilson’s argument. The hypothesis of the study is that the abuse excuse alone would increase the likelihood of receiving a guilty verdict while those backed by an expert witness should have decreased likelihood. There would be no differences between the different qualifications of expert witnesses and the abuse excuse and expert witness would have no effect on the Malaysian sample. Finally, the Malaysia sample is hypothesized to report a lower likelihood of passing a guilty verdict when compared to their American counterpart. To test the hypothesis, four different vignettes were created and distributed randomly across the two nations. The results of the study indicate that the use of the excuse alone did increase the likelihood of receiving a guilty verdict, but the expert witness testimony had minimal effect. Also, it was found that Malaysians were less likely to pass a guilty verdict for all four scenarios. However, there were certain limitations that should not be ignored too.