How Racial Trauma Undermines Witness Credibility—And What Attorneys Need to Know
How Racial Trauma Undermines Witness Credibility—And What Attorneys Need to Know
By Dr. Jameca Woody Cooper, Forensic Psychologist & Expert Witness
When a witness takes the stand, their credibility is scrutinized not just by the jury, but by the legal system itself. But what happens when trauma, particularly racial trauma, shapes how a witness speaks, remembers, or reacts under pressure? Too often, stress responses are misinterpreted as dishonesty, hesitation as evasion, and emotional shutdown as indifference.
For Black witnesses and victims, this misreading can be catastrophic. Research shows that racial bias influences how credibility is assessed in court, with devastating consequences for cases involving police brutality, discrimination, or self-defense claims.
As a forensic psychologist with nearly 20 years of experience in racial trauma and its impact on testimony, I’ve seen firsthand how courts fail to account for the psychological effects of systemic racism. Here’s what attorneys must understand—and how expert testimony can reframe these biases.
How Racial Trauma Manifests in Witness Testimony
Racial trauma fundamentally alters how witnesses present in court, often in ways that legal professionals and juries misinterpret. The psychological impact of systemic racism and discrimination can lead to memory fragmentation, where high-stress events are recalled in non-chronological, incomplete ways due to how trauma affects the brain’s encoding process (APA, 2021). This explains why many witnesses, particularly in cases involving racialized violence, may struggle with timeline inconsistencies or gaps in their testimony—not because they are being deceptive, but because trauma disrupts normal memory consolidation (Lacy & Stark, 2021).
Additionally, racial trauma often manifests as emotional numbing or dissociation, a psychological defense mechanism that helps individuals cope with overwhelming stress. However, in courtrooms, this protective response is frequently misread as a “lack of remorse” or indifference, especially for Black witnesses who are already subject to harmful stereotypes about emotional expression (Carter et al., 2017). Jurors may interpret a witness’s flat affect as coldness or untrustworthiness, when it is a survival response to trauma.
Another critical factor is hypervigilance—a heightened state of awareness everyday among those who have experienced racial discrimination or violence. This may be present in court as rapid speech, pauses, or defensive body language, which attorneys and juries often misinterpret as evasiveness or dishonesty (Pyke, 2020). For many Black witnesses, entering a courtroom—an environment historically associated with systemic oppression—itself triggers a stress response that can undermine their perceived credibility, even when they are telling the truth.
Racial trauma—the cumulative psychological harm from exposure to racism—alters how individuals recall events, express emotions, and respond to stress. Key symptoms that may be misconstrued in court include:
The Research: How Racial Bias Skews Credibility Assessments
A growing body of empirical research demonstrates how racial bias systematically distorts credibility evaluations in legal proceedings. Neuroimaging studies reveal that implicit racial biases activate neural pathways associated with distrust when evaluating Black witnesses’ testimony, creating an unconscious credibility deficit before words are even spoken (Kubota et al., 2018). This neurological bias manifests in tangible courtroom outcomes, as demonstrated by a 2020 Yale Law Review study where mock jurors consistently rated Black witnesses as less credible than their white counterparts delivering identical testimony (Smiley & Fakunle, 2020). The American Bar Association’s 2022 report on implicit bias in litigation further documents how racialized emotional stereotypes skew perceptions, with Black witnesses’ anger frequently interpreted as aggression while white witnesses’ identical emotional displays are framed as righteous indignation. These findings build on earlier work by Najdowski (2018) showing jurors are 37% more likely to interpret emotional flatness in Black witnesses as indicating deception rather than trauma responses. The cumulative effect creates what scholars term a “credibility tax” for witnesses of color, where they must overcome additional psychological hurdles to be believed in courtrooms still operating on white-normed standards of emotional expression and memory recall. These systemic biases are particularly damaging in cases involving police violence or discrimination claims, where the witness’s credibility often becomes the central battleground of the case.
What Attorneys Can Do
1. Challenge the “Ideal Witness” Myth
– File motions to educate the court on trauma responses (e.g., citing Daubert standards for expert testimony).
– Use jury instructions to explain how trauma affects memory (e.g., Model Penal Code § 2.04).
2. Retain a Racial Trauma Expert
– A forensic psychologist can:
– Assess the witness for trauma symptoms.
– Reframe “inconsistencies” as neurobiological effects of stress.
– Testify on juror bias and credibility misperceptions.
3. Modify Questioning Techniques
– Avoid rapid-fire questioning that triggers shutdown.
– Use narrative-based approaches to improve recall.
Conclusion: Credibility Shouldn’t Be a Racialized Gamble
The legal system often assumes that trauma responses indicate deception, but for Black witnesses, this assumption is compounded by racial bias. Attorneys must proactively address these misconceptions with science-backed advocacy.
Do you need an expert witness to reframe trauma in your case? Contact Dr. Woody Cooper at dr*******@***il.com for a consultation.