The line between medicine and law has never been exactly bright. Yet when physical violence occurs, it naturally implicates both disciplines. This interdisciplinary blend is particularly evident in the case of child abuse. Thus, as child abuse became a recognized phenomenon in medical science, it also became a subject of criminal prosecution. As the scientific definition of child abuse has expa...

PURPOSE To examine legal professionals' knowledge of a wide range of factors that affect eyewitness accuracy in China. METHODS A total of 812 participants, including 210 judges, 244 prosecutors, 202 police officers, and 156 defense attorneys, were asked to respond to 12 statements about eyewitness testimony and 3 basic demographic questions (i.e., gender, age, and prior experience). RESULTS...

Much empirical analysis has documented racial disparities at the beginning and end stages of a criminal case. However, our understanding about the perpetuation of - and even corrections for - differential outcomes as the process unfolds remains less than complete. This Article provides a comprehensive examination of criminal dispositions using all DWI cases in North Carolina during the period 2...

Classical probability theory (CPT) has represented the rational standard for decision making in human cognition. Even though CPT has provided many descriptively excellent decision models, there have also been some empirical results persistently problematic for CPT accounts. The tension between the normative prescription of CPT and human behavior is particularly acute in cases where we have high...

Prior research has established that crime victims’ and defendants’ demographic traits affect the sentence criminal defendants receive. In addition, previous studies have found judges’ juries’ biases outcomes in cases. Yet, despite significant scholarly attention to effect of race gender on sentencing, no study explored whether prosecutors’ influence outcome This is surprising, given prosecutors...