A Third Verdict Option: Exploring the Impact of the Not Proven Verdict on Mock Juror Decision Making

In most adversarial systems, jurors in criminal cases consider the binary verdict alternatives of "Guilty" and "Not guilty." However, in some circumstances and jurisdictions, a third verdict option is available: Not Proven. The Not Proven verdict essentially reflects the view that the defendant is indeed culpable, but that the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Like a Not Guilty verdict, the Not Proven verdict results in an acquittal. The main aim of the two studies reported here was to determine how, and under what circumstances, jurors opt to use the Not Proven verdict across different case types and when the strength of the evidence varies. In both studies, jurors were more likely to choose a Not Proven verdict over a Not Guilty verdict when the alternative was available. When evidence against the defendant was only moderately strong and a Not Proven verdict option was available (Study 2), there was also a significant reduction in the conviction rate. Results also showed that understanding of the Not Proven verdict was poor, highlighting inadequacies in the nature of judicial instructions relating to this verdict.     

The Effects of Rehabilitative Voir Dire on Juror Bias and Decision Making

During voir dire, judges frequently attempt to “rehabilitate” venirepersons who express an inability to be impartial. Venirepersons who agree to ignore their biases and base their verdict on the evidence and the law are eligible for jury service. In Experiment 1, biased and unbiased mock jurors participated in either a standard or rehabilitative voir dire conducted by a judge and watched a trial video. Rehabilitation influenced insanity defense attitudes and perceptions of the defendant’s mental state, and decreased scaled guilt judgments compared to standard questioning. Although rehabilitation is intended to correct for partiality among biased jurors, rehabilitation similarly influenced biased and unbiased jurors. Experiment 2 found that watching rehabilitation did not influence jurors’ perceptions of the judge’s personal beliefs about the case.     

The Tort Remedy in Search and Seizure Cases: A Case Study in Juror Decision Making

Civil suits for damage awards against police officers alleged to have engaged in illegal searches have long been suggested as an alternative to the exclusionary rule as a remedy for police misconduct. A review of empirical literature on the incidence and outcomes of such suits suggests that defendant officers often prevail and that the awards do not seem large enough to produce the punishment and deterrence effect often claimed by proponents of the tort remedy. Using an experimental technique involving simulated trials and adults called for jury service as subjects, we examine the effects of two procedural aspects of such suits on juror awards. The extent of municipal liability and the substitution of the U.S. government as plaintiff do not appear to affect the incidence or size of compensatory or punitive damage awards. Denying jurors information about the outcome of the search does appear likely to increase damage awards. The article both explores factors affecting juror decision-making in these cases and illustrates the utility and limitations of the experimental method for testing suggested policy innovations.     

Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment

Common wisdom seems to suggest that racial bias, defined as disparate treatment of minority defendants, exists in jury decision-making, with Black defendants being treated more harshly by jurors than White defendants. The empirical research, however, is inconsistent—some studies show racial bias while others do not. Two previous meta-analyses have found conflicting results regarding the existence of racial bias in juror decision-making (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 1315–1344; Sweeney & Haney, 1992, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 10, 179–195). This research takes a meta-analytic approach to further investigate the inconsistencies within the empirical literature on racial bias in juror decision-making by defining racial bias as disparate treatment of racial out-groups (rather than focusing upon the minority group alone). Our results suggest that a small, yet significant, effect of racial bias in decision-making is present across studies, but that the effect becomes more pronounced when certain moderators are considered. The state of the research will be discussed in light of these findings.     

Juror Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Legal Authorities and Decision Making in Criminal Cases

Literature on trust in legal authorities and institutions demonstrates that trust affects individual behavior, yet there is little research on whether attitudes toward legal authorities such as the police or courts influence juror behavior as a third party assessing evidence and determining legal outcomes for others. Additionally, the literature on juror decision making confirms that juror race is an important predictor of juror decisions, but explanations for differences among racial groups are not clear. Since minority groups hold less favorable attitudes toward legal authorities generally, legitimacy theory may help explain racial differences in decision making among jurors. Using data from nearly 2,000 jurors in felony trials, this research utilizes multilevel modeling techniques to find that jurors' trust in legal authorities is related to juror outcomes, though the effect of juror trust and confidence in the police is opposite that of juror trust and confidence in the courts. Additionally, juror race conditions the effect of trust in police and courts. Trust is a stronger predictor of both perceptions of evidence and voting for black jurors than it is for white jurors.     

侵权过失相抵规则中的“过失”研究

对过失相抵规则中“过失”的判断应当采用较为客观的善良管理人注意义务这一标准,即具有一般知识与经验的人诚实地处理事务时所应当具有的状态。在过失与重大过失之外,我国司法审判实践中还存在着一种更轻程度的过失即违反对己义务的过失。过失相抵规则在侵权领域的适用具有正当性与必要性,在适用过失相抵规则的各比较因素中,比较双方过错程度这一因素更具合理性。     

The Effects of Juror Anonymity on Jury Verdicts

This study examined the effects of anonymity on jurors' verdicts and on jurors' feelings of accountability for their jury's verdicts. Twenty four-person anonymous juries and 20 four-person nonanonymous juries rendered individual and group verdicts for three student defendants charged with selling drugs on a school campus. When unanimous guilty verdicts were reached, juries imposed one of five punishments. Finally, jurors completed postdeliberation opinion and accountability questionnaires. As predicted, anonymous juries showed a higher rate of conviction (70%) than did nonanonymous juries (40%) when the evidence against the defendant was strong, supporting the hypothesis that anonymity would have a greater effect for situations in which there was relatively strong evidence of the defendant's guilt. Anonymous juries imposed the harshest punishment (expulsion) significantly more often than did nonanonymous juries. Contrary to predictions from differential self-awareness theory, anonymous juries did not report feeling less accountable than did nonanonymous juries. However, anonymous juries did see the process as significantly more fair than did identifiable juries.     

The Uneasy Case for Comparative Negligence

This article questions, and in some contexts disproves, thevalidity of the efficiency justifications for the comparativenegligence rule. One argument in the literature suggests thatcomparative negligence is the superior rule in the presenceof court errors. The analysis here shows the analytical flawin this claim and conducts numerical simulations — a formof synthetic "empirical" tests — that prove the potentialsuperiority of other rules. The second argument in the literaturein favor of the comparative negligence rule is based on itsalleged superior ability to deal with private information. Thisarticle develops a general approach to liability rules as mechanismsthat induce self-selection among actors. It then shows thatself-selection can occur, not only under comparative negligence,but also under every other negligence rule. These conclusionsweaken the efficiency explanation for the growing appeal ofthe "division-of-liability" principle within tort law and beyond.     

Mock Juror Gender Biases and Perceptions of Self-Defense Claims in Intimate Partner Homicide

Findings are reported from an experiment that examined mock jurors’ gender biases regarding intimate homicide case adjudications. Mock jurors were more likely to convict a man than a woman who had killed an abusive partner, which was partially mediated by sympathy toward both the victim and defendant. Analyses revealed an abuser height and abuser gender interaction such that conviction rates for women defendants were higher when her abuser was taller compared to when he was shorter than she; abuser height did not influence conviction rates for men. Findings also suggested that when given information about a child being present, mock jurors perceived the killing of the abusive partner as an act to protect that child. The results are discussed in relation to how extra-legal factors impact juror perceptions of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.     

The Effects of Pretrial Publicity on Juror Verdicts: A Meta-Analytic Review

The effect of pretrial publicity (PTP) on juror verdicts was examined through a meta-analysis of 44 empirical tests representing 5,755 subjects. In support of the hypothesis, subjects exposed to negative PTP were significantly more likely to judge the defendant guilty compared to subjects exposed to less or no negative PTP. Greater effect sizes were produced in studies which included a pretrial verdict assessment, use of the potential juror pool as subjects, multiple points of negative information included in the PTP, real PTP, crimes of murder, sexual abuse, or drugs, and greater length of time between PTP exposure and judgment. The effect was attenuated with student subjects, use of general rather than specific PTP information, certain types of PTP content, a post-trial predeliberation verdict, and specific types of crimes. Implications of these results are discussed, along with possible mechanisms that underlie the PTP effect.     

The Effects of Injury Severity on Jury Negligence Decisions

According to the laws of negligence, jurors' liability decisions are to be influenced by the defendant's conduct, but not by the severity of the plaintiff's injuries. We conducted a jury simulation study to assess whether jurors reason in this manner. We manipulated the conduct of the defendant (reasonable, careless) and the severity of injuries to the plaintiff (mild, severe) in a simulated automobile negligence case. Jurors completed predeliberation questionnaires, deliberated to a verdict, and answered postdeliberation questionnaires. The defendant's conduct had a strong impact on liability judgments, but evidence related to injury severity also had an effect, albeit smaller. We analyze these findings in the context of various cognitive and motivational theories.     

Fostering Juror Comfort: Effects of an Orientation Videotape

The purpose of the present study is to assess the impact of a juror orientation videotape on juror knowledge of the legal system and comfort levels regarding jury service. Juror knowledge and comfort were measured using the Juror Knowledge and Comfort Scale (JKCS). It was hypothesized that jurors exposed to the orientation videotape would be significantly more knowledgeable about the legal system and significantly more comfortable with their role as jurors. It was further hypothesized that there would be a significant correlation between the knowledge scale and comfort scale of the JKCS. Results indicate that jurors exposed to the orientation videotape scored significantly higher on both the knowledge scale and comfort scale than jurors not exposed to the orientation videotape. There is also a significant correlation between the juror knowledge and comfort components of the JKCS. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Competence to Complete Psychiatric Advance Directives: Effects of Facilitated Decision Making

Psychiatric advance directives (PADs) statutes presume competence to complete these documents, but the range and dimensions of decisional competence among people who actually complete PADs is unknown. This study examines clinical and neuropsychological correlates of performance on a measure to assess competence to complete PADs and investigates the effects of a facilitated PAD intervention on decisional capacity. N=469 adults with psychotic disorders were interviewed at baseline and then randomly assigned to either a control group in which they received written materials about PADs or to an intervention group in which they were offered an opportunity to meet individually with a trained facilitator to create a PAD. At baseline, domains on the Decisional Competence Assessment Tool for PADs (DCAT-PAD) were most strongly associated with IQ, verbal memory, abstract thinking, and psychiatric symptoms. At one-month follow-up, participants in the intervention group showed more improvement on the DCAT-PAD than controls, particularly among participants with pre-morbid IQ estimates below the median of 100. The results suggest that PAD facilitation is an effective method to boost competence of cognitively-impaired clients to write PADs and make treatment decisions within PADs, thereby maximizing the chances their advance directives will be valid.     

The Effects of General Pretrial Publicity on Juror Decisions: An Examination of Moderators and Mediating Mechanisms

Two studies examined three moderators (gender, attitudes, and media slant) and four mediators (accessibility, evidence importance, evidence plausibility, and standards of guilt) of general pretrial publicity's influence on juror decisions. In Study 1, participants who watched a prodefense rape story were more likely to report that they would need more inculpatory evidence to convict a defendant of rape than were participants who watched a proprosecution rape story. In Study 2, participants watched news stories, one of which was a proprosecution rape story, a prodefense rape story, or a nonrape story. In an ostensibly unrelated study, participants indicated their attitudes toward rape, watched a rape trial, and provided trial and witness ratings. Accessibility did not mediate the media effects on participants' judgments of rape importance; however, attitudes moderated media effects. Rape news influenced juror ratings of the importance of evidence about the complainant's behavior. Finally, media altered the standards participants used to determine defendant guilt. Implications for understanding the mechanisms responsible for pretrial publicity effects are discussed.     

Modeling Supreme Court Strategic Decision Making: The Congressional Constraint

This paper addresses the contradictory results obtained by Segal (1997) and Spiller and Gely (1992) concerning the impact of institutional constraints on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision making. By adapting the Spiller and Gely maximum likelihood model to the Segal dataset, we find support for the hypothesis that the Court adjusts its decisions to presidential and congressional preferences. Data from 1947 to 1992 indicate that the average probability of the Court being constrained has been approximately one‐third. Further, we show that the results obtained by Segal are the product of biases introduced by a misspecified econometric model. We also discuss how our estimation highlights the usefulness of Krehbiel's model of legislative decision making.     

The Effects of British and American Trial Procedures on the Quality of Juror Decision-Making

Compared to American trial procedures, British procedures provide a less distracting environment in which jurors can process trial evidence. Relying on theories of persuasion, it was predicted that jurors viewing British procedures would be less affected by extra-evidentiary cues and would be more sensitive to evidence strength variations than jurors in American trials. Participants (N = 245) viewed a mock trial in which trial procedure, judge's nonverbal behavior, and evidence strength were varied. Participants judged the British procedures to be more civil and fair than American procedures but were less likely to find for the plaintiff. Although jurors recalled more trial facts when they viewed British procedures, they were not more sensitive to variations in evidence strength. There was some evidence that British procedures may increase the influence of judge's nonverbal behavior on juror judgments. The relative benefits of different trial procedures are discussed.     

Effects of Experiencing the Eyewitness Identification Procedure on Juror Decisions

Mistaken eyewitness identifications are believed to contribute to a preponderance of wrongful convictions, underscoring the need to identify methods to help decrease the likelihood of false convictions based on eyewitness testimony. The present study tested the hypothesis that providing jurors with first-hand experience with eyewitness identification procedures could help further sensitize them to the limitations of eyewitness testimony. Eighty college students watched a videotaped mock trial in which the prosecution’s sole evidence was eyewitness testimony. In a 2 × 2 randomized factorial design, we manipulated whether participants heard expert psychological testimony (henceforth referred to as expert testimony) on the limitations of eyewitness identification and whether they experienced an eyewitness identification procedure. As predicted, experiencing the eyewitness identification procedure had a significant impact on juror decisions, suggesting that this procedure could further help reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions.