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PI Brief Update

How to Assess Credibility in the Courtroom? - Dr Ben Goodall, Dr Hugh Koch & Poppy Gould

30/11/12. Review of publication by Porter S & Brinke L.T (2009). Dangerous Decisions: A theoretical framework for understanding how judges assess credibility in the courtroom. The civil and criminal legal system relies on making fair and accurate decision concerning reliability, truthfulness, guilt and lying (Koch and Kevan (2005)). It is not possible to empirically evaluate the accuracy of outcomes in court. Whereas with psychological science and experiments which relies on an acceptable error rate of 5%, court decisions typically use ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ or ‘on the balance of probability’ as their criteria. We know that...

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The opinions expressed in the articles are the authors' own, not those of Law Brief Publishing Ltd, and are not necessarily commensurate with general legal or medico-legal expert consensus of opinion and/or literature. Any medical content is not exhaustive but at a level for the non-medical reader to understand. 

Professional advice should always be obtained before applying any information to particular circumstances.

Excerpts from judgments and statutes are Crown copyright. Any Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland under the Open Government Licence.