A journey into the unknown: Pretrial publicity and capital cases

This article examines issues related to pretrial publicity's role in the free press‐fair trial debate. First, the article provides a comprehensive review of existing research examining the effects of pretrial publicity on case outcomes. Second, it examines the presentation of prejudicial publicity items in a sample of newspaper stories on capital cases, identifying the types of factual and emotional publicity presented and suggesting areas that need to be more closely scrutinized in future research. The article concludes that cases that ultimately result in sentences of death receive both more and different types of pretrial publicity than cases that result in lesser sentences. The current state of empirical pretrial publicity knowledge, and the presentation of death cases, are discussed as they relate to the balancing of First and Sixth amendment rights.