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. 2023 Jul 2;31(4):659–670. doi: 10.1080/13218719.2023.2206869

The effect of alibi consistency, presence of physical evidence and timing of disclosure on mock juror perceptions

Meredith Allison a,✉, Sandy Jung b, Scott E Culhane c
PMCID: PMC11580147  PMID: 39575444

Abstract

Inconsistent alibis often are viewed negatively, but they may be due to simple mistakes and not deception. The strength of alibi evidence also matters; alibis supported by strong corroborative physical evidence are more believable than alibis with no physical evidence. The timing at which the alibi is disclosed to the prosecution also can affect alibi believability. Two hundred and seventy online participants evaluated a consistent or inconsistent alibi that had corroborative physical evidence or not, and was disclosed early or late. Collapsing across the three conditions, more participants voted guilty than not guilty, and more believable alibis were associated with more not guilty verdicts. Consistent alibis were more believable, and the defendant was viewed more positively on five character traits than when the alibi was inconsistent. There were few effects of alibi timing. In sum, consistency led to positive views of alibis and defendants.

Keywords: alibi believability, alibi consistency, disclosure timing, jury decision-making, juror perceptions

Alibis are often regarded with scepticism by law enforcement, prosecutors and juries (e.g. Crozier et al., 2017; Dysart & Strange, 2012; Olson & Wells, 2004) even though alibi evidence can be exonerating (e.g. Lindsay et al., 1986). Errors in the criminal justice system do occur, and alibis have been dismissed by triers-of-fact when they should have been believed (e.g. Wells et al., 1998). Alibis may be viewed with scepticism because they lack corroborative physical evidence, like a time-stamped card from an employer (Olson & Wells, 2004). They also may not be believed because the suspects’ recollections of their whereabouts may contain inconsistencies across retellings (Culhane & Hosch, 2012). For example, in Ronald Cotton’s case in North Carolina, he initially told investigators that he was out with friends on the night that two women were raped. Later, his family reminded him that he had his weekends mixed up and that he was in fact at his mother’s house on the night of the assaults. Even though Mr. Cotton had multiple witnesses verify his alibi, including non-family members, the eyewitness testimony against him was so compelling that he was found guilty (Thompson-Cannino et al., 2009). Later DNA evidence exonerated Mr. Cotton and pinpointed the actual perpetrator of the crimes.

Alibi consistency

Why are some alibis, like Mr. Cotton’s, inconsistent across retellings? It is possible that some suspects’ alibis are inconsistent due to lying (Dysart & Strange, 2012). A guilty suspect may tell officers at the first interview that he was shopping and then tell officers at the second interview that he was at home alone, because he had forgotten the earlier lie, or because he adjusted his alibi as a result of new evidence emerging in the investigation. For example, police may interview the suspect’s alibi corroborator and find that the corroborator’s story does not match the suspect’s (Cardenas et al., 2022). When confronted, a new lie may be generated by the suspect. On the other hand, an innocent suspect may similarly tell inconsistent alibi stories due to a memory mistake. It may be difficult for triers-of-fact to distinguish between lying suspects and mistaken suspects. While it is well established that eyewitness memory is fallible and can contain inconsistencies and inaccuracies (e.g. Loftus & Palmer, 1974), innocent suspects may also be prone to inconsistencies and inaccuracies as occurred in Mr. Cotton’s case. Because innocent suspects are often asked about a time or date when nothing of importance happened, it may be the case that these individuals are more apt to make mistakes than eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses may be asked about a salient event because the crime they witnessed will stand out from other events that day. Thus, innocent suspects likely will have to retell events from a relatively mundane day or time. It is unlikely that the innocent suspect will have encoded all details from that day, making it difficult to recall where they were for long stretches of time, particularly if they are asked about a day long ago (Crozier et al., 2017). Instead, these people may simply rely upon a schema model for what they would typically be doing on such a day at such a time (Charman et al., 2019). Further, exposure to misinformation, repeated questioning by officers and an over-reliance on schemas can also lead to distorted memory (Crozier et al., 2017).

Suspects’ alibis may be inconsistent for a variety of reasons, but how are these inconsistencies perceived by law enforcement and juries? One survey of police officers showed that the majority of participant officers thought that a change in an alibi story was due to the suspect lying, rather than being mistaken (Dysart & Strange, 2012). Similar results have been found with mock investigators. Participants in Price and Dahl’s (2017) study evaluated alibi witnesses whose videos were supposedly filmed 1 week and 5 years after the crime. The alibi testimony across videos either was consistent or contained major or minor contradictions. The investigators’ ratings of suspect guilt and arrest rates were affected by alibi consistency. When there were major contradictions (alibi activity and location changed), investigators were much more likely to rate the suspect as guilty and were more likely to seek arrest. The alibi witness was rated as less credible, accurate and honest where there were major contradictions as well.

A series of experiments comparing law enforcement officers and undergraduates found that both were sceptical of inconsistent alibis (Culhane & Hosch, 2012). In the first experiment, participants evaluated alibis that changed in terms of the corroborator’s relationship to the defendant, and the changed alibis were either strengthened or weakened. Strengthened alibis involved a change from a weaker alibi corroborator (e.g. friend) to a stronger alibi corroborator (e.g. neighbour). Weakened alibis changed in the opposite direction, and consistent alibis involved no change to corroborator type. These manipulations were based on past research showing that alibis corroborated by strangers are more believable than alibis corroborated by close friends or family members who may be motivated to lie for the suspect or defendant (e.g. Olson & Wells, 2004). Culhane and Hosch’s (2012) study showed that alibi believability ratings were higher when the alibis were consistent rather than changed. What was remarkable about their findings was that even when change involved strengthening the alibi (e.g. alibi corroborator changed from close friend to stranger), the alibi was not viewed positively by police officers or students. Their second experiment also recruited police and student participants and revealed similar results. Alibi change led to more guilty verdicts than when the alibi was consistent, and the findings further showed that any kind of change may be seen more negatively by both police and potential jurors.

Only one study has found some positive views of alibi change (Nieuwkamp et al., 2016). In this online study, participants read about a suspect’s alibi that sometimes included a change due to misremembering or lying. The changed alibis also were sometimes salacious and sometimes not (e.g. being with mistress at hotel), and in all conditions the suspect’s cousin supported his alibi because he ran into him in the hotel lobby. Participants rated the alibi that changed because of a lie as more believable than alibis that changed due to a memory error. Alibis that were changed to be salacious were also seen more positively than alibis that were changed to be non-salacious (in both misremembered and lie conditions). The authors suggested that participants viewed alibis that changed to become salacious more positively because participants likely expected that a person would want to cover up embarrassing and intimate details about an affair and thus hide the affair in the first telling. One study found no impact of alibi change on undergraduates’ ratings of alibi believability or likelihood of guilt (Keeping et al., 2017). Participants’ decisions in that study were more affected by the legality and salaciousness of the alibi activities. The authors suggested that the small impact of alibi change on the dependent measures may be because the manipulations were not strong enough or because the participants were more concerned with what the suspect said he was doing at the time of the crime than how the alibi was presented (Keeping et al., 2017). To date, these studies suggest that alibi inconsistency is typically viewed negatively by mock jurors and law enforcement alike, although there may be unusual circumstances when inconsistency may be evaluated positively or ignored entirely.

Corroborative alibi evidence

Another factor that can affect alibi believability and perceptions of the suspect or defendant is the presence of corroborative alibi evidence. Olson and Wells (2004) identified two types of evidence used to corroborate alibis: person and physical evidence. Person evidence (the alibi witness or corroborator) is more commonly used to support alibi claims in actual cases (Dysart & Strange, 2012). Alibis are more believable when they are corroborated by people versus when there is no one to corroborate the suspects’ whereabouts (e.g. Hosch et al., 2011; Olson & Wells, 2004). As stated earlier, how well the alibi witness and suspect know one another reliably affects perceptions of alibis and suspects. Several researchers have found that alibis are more believable when they are corroborated by people who do not know the suspects well (e.g. store clerk or strangers) than by family members or romantic partners (e.g. Dysart & Strange, 2012; Eastwood et al., 2020; Lindsay et al., 1986; Olson & Wells, 2004; Snow & Eastwood, 2021). Participants in these studies likely inferred that close friends and family members are motivated to lie for the suspects and may falsely claim to have been together at the time of the crime when they were not.

Corroborative physical evidence is rarely used to support alibis in alibi generation studies and in surveys of law enforcement perceptions of cases they have dealt with, perhaps because it is difficult to obtain (Burke & Turtle, 2003; Dysart & Strange, 2012; Olson & Charman, 2012; Strange et al., 2014). Examples of physical alibi evidence that is difficult-to-fabricate are prison records, security camera footage from a store or ATM, work timecards and phone records (Dysart & Strange, 2012). In contrast, receipts are easily fabricated physical alibi evidence (Olson & Wells, 2004). Alibis corroborated with difficult-to-fabricate physical evidence are more believable than alibis corroborated with receipts (Allison et al., 2020; Olson & Wells, 2004). But even receipts lead to higher alibi believability ratings (and sometimes lower guilt ratings and more positive views of the suspect) versus having no physical evidence at all (Allison et al., 2020; Jung et al., 2013; Olson & Wells, 2004; Pozzulo et al., 2015). Thus, the presence of any kind of physical evidence, even if it is easily fabricated, can lead to more positive views of alibis and suspects.

Alibi timing

The impact of the timing of an alibi’s disclosure on believability has also been examined in a few studies. Suspects may give up the alibi right away to proclaim their innocence while being questioned by law enforcement. However, defendants may choose to remain silent and later decide on an alibi defence at trial. In many U.S. jurisdictions, the defence attorney must let the prosecution know of their plans to pursue an alibi defence before the trial starts in order to give the prosecution time to investigate the claim (Connelly, 1983; Williams v. Florida, 1970). The prosecution must prove that the alibi is false – it is not the defendant’s job to prove that the alibi is true (Gooderson, 1977).

Four studies have included timing manipulations. In Sommers and Douglass (2007), the suspect’s alibi was revealed either in the police investigation or at trial. Participants perceived the alibi as stronger and more credible in the context of the investigation than of the trial. The participants may have inferred that the earlier disclosure was a sign of honesty, while the late disclosure was a sign of deception and that the alibi was possibly fabricated. Fawcett (2016) similarly manipulated timing where the alibi was disclosed either in the investigation phase or at trial. She did not find many effects of timing on the dependent measures with the exception of alibi witness reliability: the alibi witness was seen as more reliable when the alibi was disclosed in the investigation rather than at trial. Positive perceptions of early disclosure were also found in Allison et al. (2020). In that study, the defendant presented his alibi to the prosecution 1 day after the date was set for trial or 19 days later. Defendants whose alibis were disclosed 1 day later were seen as more trustworthy and confident than defendants whose alibis were disclosed later. Similarly, participant-jurors were more confident in their verdicts when the alibi was disclosed early (1 day after trial date set) rather than late (20 days after trial date set; Allison & Hawes, 2023). Together, these studies suggest that it may be advantageous for suspects and defendants to disclose their alibis earlier rather than later.

Current study

To date, no one has examined the impact of alibi consistency together with alibi timing and the presence of physical alibi evidence. We created a mock investigation and trial description in which a burglary and assault took place, and we manipulated these three variables in a 2 × 2 × 2 random design (discussed below). Participants from CloudResearch completed the study online. The alibi was either given right away – 1 day after the initial court proceeding when the trial date was set (early disclosure) – or several weeks later (late disclosure). The defendant told the prosecutors that he was at home with a friend and was shopping online. In half of the scenarios, the defendant’s alibi corroborator was consistent from the initial alibi disclosure and later while testifying at trial. However, in the other conditions the defendant explained on the stand that he had made an error and he was actually with a different friend. Also either the defendant had a receipt as proof of his online purchases or no receipt was mentioned.

Participants completed several measures, including alibi believability, verdict and perceptions of the defendant’s character. Based on past research, we predicted that mock jurors would make verdict decisions that would be associated with alibi consistency, presence of physical evidence, timing of alibi disclosure and their ratings of the alibi and the defendant. Specifically, we expected that jurors would view the alibi as less believable and the defendant as guilty when the alibi was inconsistent (Culhane & Hosch, 2012), had no supportive physical evidence (Olson & Wells, 2004) and was disclosed late (Sommers & Douglass, 2007). Similarly, we expected that the defendant’s character traits would be rated less positively if alibis were inconsistent, lacked physical evidence and were disclosed late.

Method

Participants

U.S. residents over age 18 years (N = 270) were recruited through CloudResearch (formerly Turk Prime, Litman et al., 2017). This website uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk workers. Participants were ‘master workers’, which indicates that they have high success ratings from past jobs on the site. They all had received 70% approval ratings or higher from their past MTurk jobs and had completed at least 100 such jobs. Further, their IP addresses were restricted to the United States. About half of the participants identified as female (48.5%), with 1.9% not identifying as either male or female. Participants selected their age category, with 26–34 years being the most frequently selected (34.1%), followed by 36–45 years (21.9%) and 46–55 years (17.8 years). Participants came from 38 U.S. states, with New York (10%), California (9.3%), Florida (8.1%) and Texas (7.8%) being the most common. All participants were compensated with $1 USD for their participation, and they took 10.11 (SD = 6.40) minutes on average to complete the study.

Materials and procedure

The following procedure was approved by the first author’s university’s Institutional Review Board. Participants completed the study on Qualtrics. After viewing a consent form and agreeing to participate, participants read a one-page description of a mock legal case involving a burglary and felony assault. In the case, a victim was physically assaulted in his apartment and caught a brief glimpse of his attacker. The perpetrator left with several electronics and apparently left a gun at the scene. The investigation started with other residents of the building due to all residents being aware of faulty apartment door locks that needed to be repaired. One resident was found selling items similar to those that were stolen online. The resident also had an empty gun safe. The victim identified the resident’s voice after listening to a recording of several people stating the same words as those the perpetrator had screamed during the assault, but he did not identify him in a photo lineup.

The three independent variables were manipulated between participants (33–34 participants per cell) in a 2 (alibi consistency) × 2 (presence of corroborative physical alibi evidence) × 2 design (timing of alibi disclosure), resulting in eight versions of the crime description. In half of the conditions, the defendant claimed to be at home, shopping online with his work friend both in the first court proceeding and later at trial (consistent alibi). In the other conditions, the alibi corroborator was identified as his gym friend at the time of the trial (inconsistent alibi). Here, the defendant stated that he had ‘got it wrong’ before when he said he was with his work friend and was actually with his gym friend. The alibi witness took the stand in all conditions and confirmed that he was with the defendant. Either the alibi was corroborated by a receipt for the online shopping (physical alibi evidence present) or there was no mention of a receipt (physical alibi evidence absent). The defendant provided his alibi either the day after the initial court proceeding when the case was set for trial (early alibi disclosure) or 3 weeks after (late alibi disclosure).

After reading the crime scenario, participants moved on to the dependent measures. Participants first completed brief demographic information (age, gender, state of residence). They then rated the alibi’s believability from 0 to 10 (I do not believe the alibi at all – I believe the alibi completely). Participants also evaluated the defendant on eight character trait measures (e.g. credible, honest, likeable) from 0 to 10 (does not describe at all – describes perfectly). Participants then made a dichotomous verdict decision (guilty/not guilty) and rated their certainty in their decision (0 very uncertain – 10 very certain). If they chose guilty, participants also selected a sentence length from a drop-down menu (less than 3 months – more than 15 years).

Participants next answered eight manipulation check and motivation questions. All of the questions were multiple choice, with seven having four answer options and one having three answer options. The questions asked about the date of the crime, what the crime was, the defendant’s name, what the defendant said he was doing at the time of the crime, the physical alibi evidence he provided for his whereabouts, the person alibi evidence he provided and when he provided the court with information concerning his whereabouts (alibi timing). The last question asked whether his alibi was consistent from the initial court proceeding to trial (consistent, not consistent, not sure). Participants whose summed score across all eight questions was lower than 50% were removed and excluded from the results described below (n = 17, not included in N = 270). Finally, participants read a debriefing form, submitted their survey, and were compensated on MTurk.

Results

To examine the influence of alibi consistency, corroborative physical alibi evidence and alibi disclosure timing on dependent variables that included verdict, alibi believability and perceptions of the defendant, chi-square (χ2) analyses, a logistic regression, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and univariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were conducted.

For the overall sample, more participants voted guilty (63.7%; n = 172) than not guilty (36.3%; n = 98), χ2(1) = 20.28, p = .000, ɸ = .27. For those who voted guilty, most sentences (n = 115) ranged between 6 months to 4 years. Chi-square analyses of the verdict decision did not reveal any significant differences for alibi consistency, χ2(1) = 2.82, p = .093, ɸ = .10, presence of physical evidence, χ2(1) = 0.58, p = .448, ɸ = .05 or disclosure timing, χ2(1) = 0.06, p = .800, ɸ = .02. However, a logistic regression with verdict certainty as predictor and verdict as output found that participants were more certain in their verdicts when they voted guilty rather than not guilty (odds ratio, OR = 0.637, p = .000). Another logistic regression showed that participants who rated the alibi as more believable were more likely to find the defendant not guilty (OR = 1.655, p = .000). Logistic regression analyses of the verdict were conducted on each of the eight character traits; only defendant credibility was associated with verdicts. Specifically, participants rated the defendant as more credible when they voted not guilty than when they voted guilty (OR = 1.591, p = .012).

A factorial ANOVA was conducted on alibi believability with the three independent variables. One main effect emerged; as expected, consistent alibis (M = 3.96, SD = 2.62) were found to be more believable than inconsistent alibis (M = 2.88, SD = 2.12), F(1, 262) = 14.01, p = .000, η2p = .05. Surprisingly, all other main effects and interactions on alibi believability were not significant (ps > .05).

Intercorrelations were calculated for the eight defendant characteristics, and these are reported in Table 1, showing significant correlations among all eight traits. To examine the influence of the independent variables on the ratings of the eight defendant characteristics, a MANOVA using Wilks’ lambda (with the three independent variables as fixed factors) showed that there was a significant multivariate effect of alibi consistency, F(8, 255) = 2.50, p = .012, η2p = .073. Once again, alibi consistency led to positive views of the defendant. Specifically, alibi consistency univariately affected five of the defendant character trait ratings (credible, honest, persuasive, knowledgeable, trustworthy; ps < .05, see Table 2 for means and standard deviations).

Table 1.

Intercorrelations among alibi and defendant characteristics (dependent variables).

  2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 Alibi believability .839 .853 .746 .719 .633 .747 .467 .830
2 Credible   .932 .827 .778 .666 .795 .542 .849
3 Honesty     .809 .771 .674 .804 .531 .883
4 Persuasive       .728 .670 .739 .613 .794
5 Knowledgeable         .775 .780 .568 .795
6 Intelligent           .819 .574 .768
7 Likeable             .588 .874
8 Confident               .601
9 Trustworthy                
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Note: All characteristics refer to defendant, unless otherwise noted. N = 270. All ps < .001.

Table 2.

Univariate effects for alibi consistency on defendant character trait measures.

Character trait rating Alibi story
 F p [η2p]
Consistenta
M (SD)		 Inconsistentb
M (SD)
Credible 3.76 (2.39) 2.88 (2.09) 10.21 .002 [.038]
Honest 3.53 (2.50) 2.77 (2.14) 7.24 .008 [.027]
Persuasive 3.60 (2.66) 2.84 (2.19) 6.50 .011 [.024]
Knowledgeable 3.81 (2.44) 3.24 (2.32) 3.94 .048 [.015]
Trustworthy 3.32 (2.53) 2.52 (2.28) 7.50 .007 [.028]
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Note: Only significant univariate analyses for independent variable, alibi consistency, are listed.

an = 136. bn = 134.

Although the presence of physical evidence and alibi timing did not directly affect views of the defendant’s character, a significant interaction emerged between alibi consistency and timing of the alibi disclosure, F(8, 255) = 3.39, p = .001, η2p = .096. Univariate analyses revealed a single significant finding with the rating of the defendant’s confidence, F(1, 134) = 9.24, p = .003, η2p = .034 (see Figure 1). When the alibi did not change (i.e. was consistent), the defendant was viewed as more confident if his alibi was early (M = 4.81, SD = 2.30) than if his alibi was given late (M = 3.93, SD = 2.62), F(1, 134) = 4.36, p = .039, η2p = .031. Surprisingly, when the alibi was changed and therefore inconsistent, the defendant was rated as more confident when his alibi was disclosed late (M = 4.44, SD = 2.46) rather than when he gave his alibi early (M = 3.50, SD = 2.42), F(1, 132) = 5.04, p = .026, η2p = .037. No other main effects or interactions emerged from the MANOVA.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Interaction between the consistency of the alibi and the timing of the disclosure for rating of the defendant’s confidence as perceived by participants.

Discussion

Our hypotheses were partially supported by this study’s findings – namely, those that pertain to the influence of the alibi features manipulated in our vignettes on mock jurors’ perceptions of the alibi and defendant. However, our predictions regarding verdict decisions were not supported. We predicted that verdict decisions would be associated with the nature of the alibi, in terms of consistency, presence of physical evidence and timing, and we were unable to conclude that these elements impacted the participants’ decisions. What did materialize was that the decision of a guilty verdict was associated with greater verdict certainty, lower ratings of alibi believability and more negative ratings of the defendant’s credibility. Although not explicitly noted in our initial hypotheses, these findings are consistent with what would be expected; that is, those who chose a strong statement that the defendant was guilty of the crimes were more inclined to feel more certain, and this was associated with the evidence on the alibi and defendant’s character.

Consistent with our expectations, alibis were deemed more believable if they were presented by the defendant in a consistent manner. In this instance, when the alibi witness remained the defendant’s work friend throughout all court proceedings (vs. changing to a gym friend at trial), mock jurors believed the alibi more and gave the defendant higher scores on five character trait measures. These findings support several past studies that also found that consistency leads to more positive views of alibis (e.g. Culhane & Hosch, 2012). Interestingly, alibi consistency did not affect verdicts, indicating that although consistency was a good thing for evaluating the alibi, the jurors likely weighed incriminating evidence quite heavily when deciding verdicts because the majority of participants voted guilty. We did not ask participants to explain which evidence contributed to their verdict decisions. A voice identification and an empty gun safe may not be particularly reliable or strong incriminating evidence, but perhaps the stolen items that were sold online and closely resembled those that were stolen led to more guilty votes. Another sign that participants viewed the defendant negatively is that the alibi believability ratings and defendant character trait ratings were low overall. The mean for alibi believability was 3.42 (SD = 2.44), collapsing across conditions. The means for the defendant character traits ranged from 2.92 (trustworthy) to 4.17 (confident). These measures were on a 0–10 scale, and these scores indicate that participants clearly did not view the alibi or suspect positively.

In contrast to our initial hypotheses, timing of alibi disclosure did not affect alibi believability ratings. Several past studies have found that earlier disclosure leads to positive views versus later disclosure (e.g. Sommers & Douglass, 2007). It is possible that the timing manipulation was not salient enough or it may be that the timing of an alibi’s disclosure just does not matter: alibi consistency may matter more. Even though there are legal statutes stipulating when alibis must be disclosed to the prosecution, as long as the defendant’s disclosure falls within the legal window, mock jurors may tend to dismiss that information and focus more on the evidence that supports the alibi. What was surprising was the significant interaction found between alibi consistency and timing when it came to rating the defendant’s confidence. When the alibi was consistent, early disclosure led to higher confidence ratings than late disclosure. This finding made sense and was expected; that is to say, having a consistent alibi corroborator and disclosing the alibi right away may have led jurors to infer that the defendant was confident in his alibi. However, in contrast and unexpectedly, alibi inconsistency led to higher defendant confidence ratings when the alibi was disclosed later rather than earlier. The interaction seems counterintuitive because inconsistency and late disclosure usually lead to negative views. This finding needs replication before more definitive conclusions about it can be reached.

In contrast, physical evidence did not influence participants’ ratings of the alibi or defendant. As described in the introduction, past studies have consistently found that having corroborative physical evidence boosts alibi believability ratings (e.g. Jung et al., 2013). The defendant in the current study had a receipt of an online purchase or there was no mention of a receipt. Perhaps participants were attuned to the fact that an online shopping receipt can be easily fabricated, although past studies have shown that any kind of physical evidence is usually helpful (e.g. Olson & Wells, 2004). Similarly, they may have realized that a time-stamped receipt confirms the time that a purchase was made, but not the location of that purchase. Had there been videotaped footage confirming the time and location of the suspect, then perhaps consistent and strong corroborative evidence would have led to the highest ratings.

Limitations, strengths and future directions

As with other studies, this study was limited by its experimental approach and recruitment. The mundane realism was limited, given our employment of a vignette rather than a ‘real-case scenario’ that may have increased our study’s external validity. However, this approach was employed to ensure control of the independent variables manipulated in our study. Recruitment of participants through an online crowdsourcing platform also served as a limitation. There are caveats in online recruitment, such as the potential for lower motivation of online workers, which is likely less than that of actual jurors (e.g. salience of crime information is very low in an online study). Future studies could, however, make the stimulus materials more ecologically valid by employing deception of participants, suggesting they are reading a real case, or conducting the study in-person and having participants view a mock videotaped case. Further, having a more ambiguous case that resulted in guilty/not guilty votes being more balanced (50% guilty instead of 63% guilty) would have been preferable. In future studies, researchers should pilot test the prosecution and alibi evidence to try to find that balance.

There were several strengths to our study. Attempts were made to ensure these issues were limited through the recruitment of ‘master workers’ who were workers deemed by the platform as more motivated than the average worker on this platform. Furthermore, we included a series of manipulation check and motivation questions, in order to help identify less reliable cases. These checks led to the removal of 17 participants (e.g. low scores showed that they likely read through the crime description too quickly and were not paying close attention to the details). We ensured that the change from one corroborator to another (work friend to gym friend), rather than someone who may show substantially more or less bias based on the nature of the relationship (e.g. changing from a friend to a stranger), was unremarkable to ensure we were truly examining consistency rather than a boost in corroborator credibility.

It is important to continue to examine alibi consistency and its interaction with other factors present in a criminal case. Of particular note, the use of varied methodologies allows us to find converging evidence pertaining to alibi evidence. In this study, we operationally defined consistency to mean that the alibi witness/corroborator was consistent from the initial court proceeding to trial. However, alibi consistency could be manipulated in other ways. For example, a suspect at first may claim to have a receipt to support his whereabouts, but at trial has no receipt. Or a suspect could claim to have been at work at the time of the crime, only later to have no evidence of where she was at the time. Research by Laliberte and colleagues (2021) have suggested that the data accumulated by location tracking software in cellular telephones often contradict the ‘memories’ participants had for their whereabouts when presenting an alibi statement. Would this Global Positioning System (GPS) data offset the potential negative outcomes for inconsistent testimony? Hence, future studies should continue to investigate the impact of alibi consistency on perceptions of the alibi and defendant.

Conclusion

Psychological research is essential when examining influential factors in the courtroom, such as alibis, given the decision-makers’ reliance on defendants’ memories, which may be fallible, and social cues (e.g. consistency, timing), which may not provide a sensible reason to evaluate positively or negatively. The current study supports previous work showing that alibi consistency matters. Mock jurors interpret alibi consistency positively. This can be concerning because a defendant’s alibi may change for a variety of reasons, and change is not always a sign of deception. On the other hand, alibi timing matters less when jurors evaluate a defendant’s alibi or the defendant’s character. Our findings also suggest that the extant research is far from definitive regarding the presence of physical evidence, and more research is needed.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Elon University for its support of this project.

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Meredith Allison has declared no conflicts of interest

Sandy Jung has declared no conflicts of interest

Scott Culhane has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (Institutional Review Board, Elon University, #20-016) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study

References

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