When a Battered Victim Kills Their Abuser: The Impact of Child and Expert Testimony on Mock Jurors' Decision-Making.

The article investigates how child witness testimony and two types of expert witness testimony—Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) and Social Agency (SA)—affect mock jurors’ verdicts, sentencing decisions, and perceptions in cases where a female defendant claims self-defense after killing her abusive male partner in an intimate partner homicide (IPH). Using a 3×3 experimental design with 370 jury-eligible participants, the study found no main effects of either expert or child testimony alone on verdicts or sentencing; however, an interaction revealed that jurors exposed to BWS expert testimony and an 8-year-old child witness perceived the defendant as more guilty and imposed harsher sentences compared to other conditions. Jurors rated child witnesses as credible regardless of age, but the presence of an older child witness combined with BWS testimony appeared to increase juror culpability judgments, possibly because jurors viewed the child as a victim rather than a neutral observer. The findings suggest that expert testimony presenting general IPV research without defendant-specific evaluation may have limited influence on juror decisions, and highlight the complex role child witnesses play in juror perceptions in IPH cases involving female defendants.