Finnish district judges' assessments of live versus video‐mediated party statements in court

Abstract

The increase in remote hearings after the COVID‐19 pandemic presents an urgent need to examine how judges assess video‐mediated witness and party statements compared with live statements. There is currently a limited body of research on this subject. As for the assessment itself, professionals within the judicial system sometimes believe they can detect deception based on visible cues such as body language and emotional expression. Research has, however, shown that lies cannot be detected based on such cues. The Finnish Supreme Court has also given rulings in accordance with the scientific literature. In this study, we used a survey to investigate how much importance a Finnish sample of district judges (N = 47) gave to several variables pertaining to the statement or the statement giver, such as body language and emotional expression. We also investigated the association between the judges' beliefs about the relevance of body language and emotional expression and their preference for live statements or statements via videoconference. The judges reported giving more importance to body language and emotional expression than legal psychology research and Finnish Supreme Court rulings would call for. Our results also indicated that there was a slight bias to assess live statements more favorably than statements given via videoconference, as well as a slight bias in favor of the injured party. More effort must be put into making judges and Supreme Courts aware of findings in legal psychology to avoid biases based on intuitive reasoning where it is contrary to scientific evidence.