Well ... ah...: Hesitations and hedges as an influence on jurors' decisions

Hispanic jurors' verdicts and whether these decisions were related to juror s' judgments of the credibility of the witness were the focus of this exper iment. A prosecution witness testified in English or in Spanish with interp retation in English. Witnesses' speaking style systematically included hedg es and hesitations or did not. Guilty verdicts were independent of language of testimony. Within Spanish-interpreted conditions, jurors convicted the defendant 47% of the time in the absence of hedges and hesitations. When he hedged and hesitated, they convicted 34% of the time. This effect was comp licated by a reliable Witness Hesitation x Juror Language Dominance interac tion. These results are interpreted in the context of the courtroom impact of non-English-speaking witnesses and the impact of interpretation.