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This study examined the effect of a child passing or failing the UK truth and lies discussion (TLD) compared with the Canadian promise to tell the truth on mock jurors' decisions regarding witness credibility and truthfulness and defendant guilt. Ninety-two participants read a vignette that described a child witnessing his father physically attacking his mother. The vignette was manipulated for witness age (age 4 years and age 8 years) and TLD performance/promise. Supporting the hypotheses, participants rated the witness's credibility and truthfulness significantly higher after a witness passed a TLD and after promising to tell the truth. The age of the child witness did not significantly affect jurors' decision making. The results are discussed in relation to arguments regarding the abolition of the UK's TLD in favour of introducing a promise to tell the truth.

This paper examines 90 UK police officers’ perceptions of characteristics of interviews with suspects of rape and murder involving child and adult victims. Officers rated their beliefs about how stressful they would find such interviews, the importance of confessions, their likely emotional involvement and how much empathy they would show towards the suspect. Murder cases were reported to be more stressful than rape, and confessions were deemed to be less important for respondents compared to ‘other’ officers. Officers reported that they would become more emotionally involved in cases involving children, and they would show more empathy in murder cases than rape cases. Officers were unable to provide clear and unambiguous definitions of ‘empathy’ or ‘sympathy’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]