406 Forensic Psychology
of the community or to safeguard group deliberation pro-
cesses. The Court apparently misread the data and declared
that the difference in effects between 6- and 12-member
juries to be only “negligible.” The “naivete and ignorance of
the Court” (Bersoff, 1986, p. 155) stimulated social scientists
to conduct more research on the effects of jury size, espe-
cially differences between 6- and 12-person juries.
In a subsequent case, Ballew v. Georgia(1978), more sci-
entific data (based on 18 studies) were submitted bearing on
the differences between 6- and 12-member juries. The Court
referred to these studies in its decision but ignored any dif-
ference between 6- and 12-person juries, focusing its atten-
tion on 5-member juries (which had notbeen studied in the
research) and finding them unconstitutional. Although these
jury-size cases are sometimes cited by psychologists as illus-
trating that the Supreme Court may pay close attention to em-
pirical research, it is instructive that in a portion of the Ballew
opinion, three justices expressed their “reservations as to
the wisdom—as well as the necessity—of Mr. Justice
Blackmun’s heavy reliance on numerology[emphasis ours]
derived from statistical studies” (p. 246). As Loh (1981,
p. 340) summed it up, “The data were apparently used to
ornament a decision reached on other legal and policy
grounds.... The opinion used social science the way a drunk
uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination.”
Perhaps researchers need to realize that attorneys and
judges, who are not strongly socialized in the value of empir-
ical research as psychological researchers are, will take a dif-
ferent perspective on the utility of empirical evidence.
Bersoff (1986, pp. 155–156) stated it well: “It is relatively
clear, then, that the relationship between experimental psy-
chologists and the courts is less than perfect. In fact, if that re-
lationship were to be examined by a Freudian, the analyst
would no doubt conclude that it is a highly neurotic, conflict-
ridden ambivalent affair (I stress affair because it is certainly
no marriage). Like an insensitive scoundrel involved with an
attractive but fundamentally irksome lover who too much
wants to be courted, the judiciary shamelessly uses the social
sciences. Courts cite the result of psychological research
when they believe it will enhance the elegance of their opin-
ions but empiricism is readily discarded when more tradi-
tional and legally acceptable bases for decision making are
available.”
Advances in Forensic Psychology Research
The past three decades saw a substantial growth in research
directed specifically toward improving psychologists’ capac-
ities to provide courts with psychological information rele-
vant to legal questions. Examples of these advances include
research in eyewitness testimony, research to improve clini-
cal forensic evaluations, and research on legal issues pertain-
ing to children and adolescents.Eyewitness MemoryThe issue of the accuracy of eyewitness memory did not re-
ceive much attention from researchers from the 1920s until
the late 1960s, when legal interest was sparked by three
Supreme Court decisions relating to eyewitness evidence
(Gilbert v. California,1967;Stovall v. Denno,1967;United
States v. Wade,1967) and by legal writers’ suggestions that
eyewitness errors had led to more convictions of innocent
persons than all other judicial factors combined (e.g., Wall,
1965). Consequently, research interest increased dramati-
cally in the 1970s (e.g., see Buckhout, 1974; Loftus, 1979;
Yarmey, 1979 for reviews of this early work). By the end of
this decade, Yarmey (1979, p. 228) argued that it was already
the most advanced area of psycholegal research and the one
“most able to make a significant contribution to the legal sys-
tem.” In fact, there was such an explosion of eyewitness re-
search in the 1970s and early 1980s that Michael Saks, editor
ofLaw and Human Behavior,felt compelled in a 1986 edito-
rial to remind readers that “the law does not live by eyewit-
ness testimony alone” (Saks, 1986, p. 279).
Eyewitness researchers studied aspects of the acquisition
(encoding) phase,such as the witness’s opportunity to ob-
serve the criminal, level of stress, presence of a weapon, age
and race of the witness, and characteristics of the criminal.
Studies also analyzed the retention phase,the period between
witnessing an event and trying to retrieve the memory by
making an identification. Researchers studied how the length
of this interval affected memory accuracy and also looked at
effects of events that happened during this period, such as
potentially confusing or suggestive postevent information
that might cause “unconscious transfer” or memory blending.
Important aspects of the retrieval phasehave included the
type of identification procedure used (e.g., showup, simulta-
neous lineup, sequential lineup), the effect of suggestive in-
structions or procedures, and the overall relationship (or lack
of it) between witnesses’ accuracy and confidence in their
identifications.
A great deal of pertinent research data have been accumu-
lated about eyewitness memory, but despite the plethora of re-
search (e.g., see Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Sporer, Malpass, &
Koehnken, 1996, for summaries), judicial acceptance of the
testimony of researchers on eyewitness memory has been
slow in coming (Brigham, Wasserman, & Meissner, 1999).
Many jurisdictions regularly rejected proposed “educational”
expert testimony by eyewitness researchers, although by 1993