ABSTRACT
As the population of elderly citizens continues to increase in the United States, greater numbers of older adults will become victims of crimes and later report their experiences to police, attorneys, and juries, and perhaps attempt to identify the perpetrators (National Institute on Aging, 1996). In fact, already we know that roughly 2 million elderly individuals become victims of crime each year (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002). Likewise, older Americans will become disproportionately represented among accident victims, witnesses in civil and criminal trials, and juries. Thus, aging has an impact upon the legal system in myriad ways, from its role in generating situations subsequently litigated in the courts, to the vagaries of memory among aging witnesses, to the role of age in juror judgments.
