Jury Decision Making Processes
Open access
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Abstract
Witness testimony has remained a central component of adjudication despite persistent concerns regarding its reliability. This article examines the historical regulation of witness testimony and its relevance to contemporary criminology and criminal justice. Rather than presenting legal history as a linear development, the article adopts a comparative approach focused on recurring safeguards against unreliable testimony, including corroboration, witness qualification, oath-taking, questioning, and sanctions for false evidence. Selected examples from ancient, medieval, and early modern legal traditions demonstrate that legal systems have long confronted problems involving deliberate fabrication, conflicting testimony, social status, coercion, and unequal allocation of testimonial credibility. The article then connects these historical concerns with contemporary research in law and psychology concerning memory distortion, suggestive questioning, weapon focus, cross-racial identification, eyewitness misidentification, expert evidence, and wrongful convictions. Particular attention is given to the distinction between deliberately false testimony and sincerely held but inaccurate recollection. The article further considers emerging evidentiary technologies, including blockchain-based evidentiary systems and facial recognition, with emphasis on reliability, bias, transparency, privacy, provenance, and accountability. The article argues that the historical evolution of witness testimony reveals a persistent tension between the necessity of testimony as a source of proof and the risks inherent in its production and interpretation. Historical legal systems developed procedural mechanisms to control those risks; contemporary criminology and psychology provide empirical explanations for why such risks arise and why traditional safeguards may sometimes be insufficient. Understanding this historical continuity can therefore strengthen contemporary criminal justice by encouraging critical assessment of evidence, appropriate corroboration, scientifically informed identification procedures, and greater attention to the prevention of wrongful convictions.
Direct answer
What can I do from this paper page?
Use this page to scan "Witness Testimony from Legal History to Contemporary Criminal Justice: Reliability, Bias, and the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions" quickly: start with the summary and abstract, then check the authors, source, topics, and related papers. From here, open Scollr to follow Jury Decision Making Processes research, save the paper, or map adjacent work.
Research areas
Follow related topics
Citation
BibTeX
@article{Stamelos2026Witness,
title = {Witness Testimony from Legal History to Contemporary Criminal Justice: Reliability, Bias, and the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions},
author = {Charalampos Stamelos},
journal = {International Journal of Criminology and Sociology},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.6000/1929-4409.2026.15.15},
url = {https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-4409.2026.15.15}
}FAQ
Using this paper in a discovery workflow
How do I find related work for this paper?
Use the related papers and topic links on this page as starting points. In Scollr, you can also open the paper and build a literature map around its references, citing papers, and related work.
How can I keep up with new Jury Decision Making Processes research papers?
Follow Jury Decision Making Processes research in Scollr. New papers from the topic flow into a personalized feed, and you can save useful studies to revisit later.
Can I cite this paper from this page?
This page includes a static BibTeX block for Witness Testimony from Legal History to Contemporary Criminal Justice: Reliability, Bias, and the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions. Always verify the DOI, source, and publication details against the publisher record before submitting a manuscript.
Follow this research in Scollr
Follow the topics and authors behind this paper, save useful studies, and build a literature map when you are ready to go deeper.
Get the app