Dr Siobhan Weare (co-investigator), Professor Vanessa Munro (principal investigator, University of Warwick), and Dr Madeleine Millar (research and innovation associate), have been awarded £719,909 in funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The funding is for their project, ‘Delivering Justice in a Digital Age: Exploring the Impact on Mock jurors of Pre-Recorded Evidence in Sexual Offences Trials’, which will begin in September 2026.

The project will explore the impact on mock-jurors of the use of the new special measure under section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which allows for the complainant’s evidence-in-chief and cross examination to be pre-recorded and played back to the court. More details on the project can be found below.

In England and Wales, the jury plays a crucial role in the administration of justice in serious criminal cases. However, the ability of jurors to effectively discharge their role has been the subject of concern for scholars and practitioners, particularly where factual issues are complex, weight of evidence is finely balanced, or extra-legal biases might frame how evidence is evaluated. Nowhere has this been more documented than in rape cases.

Courtroom initiatives have been introduced to mitigate the stress and trauma associated with giving testimony as a rape complainant, including ‘special measures’ that allow witnesses to give evidence behind a screen, via live-link, or by use of a pre-recorded police interview, which can now be supplemented by pre-recorded cross-examination. Though well-received by many complainants and their supporters, these innovations have been met with concern amongst criminal justice practitioners and some scholars in respect of their impacts on jurors. More specifically, it has been suggested that removing witnesses from the courtroom will make it difficult for jurors to connect with witnesses and assess the credibility of their accounts. These concerns are particularly acute in relation to the most recently introduced special measure that allows rape complainants to also prerecord their cross-examination, under s.28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (YJCEA 1999). It enables all a witness’ testimony to be taken ahead of trial, and to be presented via a video recording to jurors who evaluate its content, whilst the defendant (whether or not they give evidence) remains a constant and visible presence to the jury throughout the trial process.

This innovative study will be the first of its kind to use highly realistic mini-trial simulations to explore the impact on mock-jurors of the use of pre-recorded cross-examination under s.28. Trial simulations will involve practising prosecution and defence barristers, a sexual offences-ticketed judge, and actors as the complainant and defendant. Each will be reconstructed in real time and observed by jury-service-eligible volunteers from the local community whose verdict deliberations will be recorded and analysed. Findings from this project will not only inform current debates in England and Wales about the future of the s.28 special measure specifically, but also ongoing debates in other jurisdictions about the use of pre-recorded evidence and, more broadly, about the role and future of juries in serious sexual offence trials.