It's not, but it may work for the Defendant testifying. http://dev.cjcenter.org/_files/apcj/APCJ SPRING 2015-Heath.pdf_1433368056.pdf
Participants (N = 160) read scenarios in which a defendant’s guilt status (guilty, not guilty); type of emotion judgment made (feeling, displaying); and defendant/victim relationship (husband and stranger) were varied to determine their influences on expectations for defendants’ emotional responses. In a second experiment, we presented these same variables between-subjects to 324 online participants. In a third experiment, 329 online participants provided expectations for a defendant’s crying behavior when defendant gender, guilt status, and defendant/victim relationship varied. Generally, more emotion (e.g., sadness) was expected when a spouse versus stranger was killed, but only when the defendant was not guilty. Expectations varied with defendant gender and participants’ self-reported emotionality. The implications of having defendant emotion expectations are discussed within a wrongful conviction context.
. . . Why does seeing an emotional defendant lead to people making more favorable decisions? Bond et al.’s (1992) idea of expectancy violation certainly is in line with the above results (Heath et al.,2004; Salekin et al.,1995); violate expectations for emotion level, and you are more likely to be seen as guilty