The Impact of Negative Forensic Evidence on Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of a Trial of Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault

Legal concerns with regard to the adverse impact of a negative toxicological screening for date-rape drugs in a case of drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) were the focus of a recent Canadian case (R. v. Alouache, 2003). To assess the impact of a negative forensic report, as well as the impact of expert testimony explaining the many factors that may contribute to a negative outcome, participants (N=171) received a written trial stimulus in which the forensic evidence (negative report, negative report plus expert testimony, no negative report and no expert testimony control) and the complainant's beverage consumption (alcohol, cola) were systematically varied. Results indicate that a negative finding in the absence of expert testimony produced greater verdict leniency and more favourable evaluations of the defendant's case. In contrast, no differences were found between the case in which the expert testified and a case in which the negative report and expert testimony were omitted.

---

     

Effects of an Alibi Witness’s Relationship to the Defendant on Mock Jurors’ Judgments

Two studies tested the impact of an alibi witness’s relationship to a defendant on the perceived credibility of that witness. In the first study, 291 mock jurors estimated the frequency with which individuals would invent alibis, the frequency they themselves would do so, and the frequency of interpersonal contact among individuals of varying relationships. The degree of relationship between an alibi witness and a defendant remained a predictor of witness credibility when contact frequency was controlled. In the second study, 512 mock jurors were randomly assigned to case scenarios. Skepticism toward witnesses who are biologically or affinally related to a defendant was greater than skepticism toward a socially linked witness. Both studies supported predications from kinship theory and reciprocal altruism.     

The Influence of Accounts and Remorse on Mock Jurors’ Judgments of Offenders

Defendants often provide accounts that minimize their responsibility for the accused offense. Jurors attribute responsibility to defendants and decide legal outcomes based on the given account. The current research examined the effects of accounts (i.e., excuse, justification, denial, and no explanation) and the defendant’s remorse display (i.e., remorseful, remorseless) on mock jurors’ judgments. Participants acquitted the defendant in the denial condition most often and recommended the most lenient punishment in the justification condition. The remorseful defendant was found guilty more frequently than the remorseless defendant in the no explanation and (marginally) excuse conditions. Limitations and future research are discussed.     

The Impact of the Registered Intermediary on Adults’ Perceptions of Child Witnesses: Evidence from a Mock Cross Examination

Registered intermediaries are communication specialists appointed to facilitate the communication of vulnerable witnesses participating in the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Intermediaries assess the vulnerable individual’s communication and provide recommendations to practitioners for how to obtain the individual’s ‘best evidence’ during police interviews and in court. The scheme was implemented nationally in 2008, but has not been subject to rigorous research. The aim of the current article is to provide an account on adults’ perceptions of the vulnerable individual when an intermediary assists their communication in court. In the present study 100 participants viewed a mock cross examination of a child witness either with or without an intermediary present. Participants rated the child’s behaviour and communication, and the quality of the cross examination, across a number of different variables. The age of the child was also manipulated with participants viewing a cross examination of a four or a 13 year old child. The results showed the children’s behaviour and the quality of the cross-examination were more highly rated when the intermediary was involved during cross-examination. The older child’s cross-examination was rated as more developmentally appropriate, however no other age differences or interactions emerged. The findings have positive implications for jury perceptions of children’s testimony when they are assisted by an intermediary in court, regardless of the age of the child witness. The success of the intermediary scheme in England and Wales may encourage the implementation of intermediaries internationally.     

Science in the Jury Box: Jurors’ Comprehension of Mitochondrial DNA Evidence

Questions about how jurors understand and apply scientific evidence were addressed in a mock jury study in which 480 jury pool members watched a videotaped mock trial that included expert testimony about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evidence purportedly linking a defendant to a crime. Collectively, jurors showed moderately good comprehension of the mtDNA evidence, although some made definitional and inferential errors. Comprehension was better among jurors with higher educational attainment and more mathematics and science courses. Lower comprehension was associated with jurors’ reservations about science and concerns about the contamination of mtDNA evidence. The results suggest that most jurors are capable of comprehending and employing scientific evidence presented during trial, although errors and doubts about the evidence should be anticipated.     

The Impact of Psychological Injury Evidence and Jurors’ Schemas on Civil Case Decisions

Psychological injury evidence is at the heart of many civil claims. Due to the recent burgeoning of sexual harassment and assault claims which predominantly involve psychological distress, it is especially important to understand how jurors process this evidence at the most basic (or schema) level, and how these preconceived notions influence processing of trial evidence and subsequent legal judgments. As a result, the present paper explores rarely addressed—but fundamental—issues regarding how jurors perceive psychological injury evidence. Specifically, do jurors have psychological injury schemas? And if so, what injuries do these schemas contain, how stable are they, how are they evaluated, and how do they affect jurors’ case perceptions and legal decisions? A review of relevant theory and empirical research reveals that jurors have psychological injury schemas, but they are often poorly developed and susceptible to the influence of prompts used to retrieve these schemas (e.g., questions posed by attorneys during voir dire, the actual injuries adduced by the plaintiff). Also interesting is that despite the relative importance of psychological injury evidence, tremendous gaps remain regarding what actual types of psychological injuries jurors believe typically result in civil cases, how stable these injury schemas are, and precisely how they affect jurors’ decisions. This paper addresses these important issues to help organize and direct future research on the subject, including proposing a model for how psychological injury schemas interact with jurors’ perceptions of the plaintiff’s alleged injuries to affect their legal decisions.     

I Spy with My Little Eye: Jurors’ Detection of Internal Validity Threats in Expert Evidence

This experiment examined whether jury-eligible community members (N = 223) were able to detect internally invalid psychological science presented at trial. Participants read a simulated child sexual abuse case in which the defense expert described a study he had conducted on witness memory and suggestibility. We varied the study’s internal validity (valid, missing control group, confound, and experimenter bias) and publication status (published, unpublished). Expert evidence quality ratings were higher for the valid versus missing control group version only. Publication increased ratings of defendant guilt when the study was missing a control group. Variations in internal validity did not influence perceptions of child victim credibility or police interview quality. Participants’ limited detection of internal validity threats underscores the need to examine the effectiveness of traditional legal safeguards against junk science in court and improve the scientific reasoning ability of lay people and legal professionals.     

Poetic Justice: An Interpretation of Lawyers’ Reactions to Verse Judgments

This article offers an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments, being judicial decisions rendered in rhymed poetry form. While, in recent history, there has been an unexplained break in the close historical connection between poetry and law, some judges nevertheless continue to render their judicial decisions in verse. This has met strong criticism from fellow judges, inevitably, but also from lawyers. However, there is no evidence in academic writing of anyone attempting to explain why lawyers are having these reactions. Endeavouring to fill that void, this research employs hermeneutics to offer an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments. The article analyses the varied opinions uncovered in five qualitative interviews with lawyers of different backgrounds, and contends that a movement of poetry back towards its utilitarian origins would see lawyers change their reaction to verse judgments, instead viewing them as an appropriate form of judicial expression.     

Effects of Defendant Sexual Orientation on Jurors’ Perceptions of Child Sexual Assault

We examined mock jurors’ reactions to a sexual abuse case involving a male teacher and a 10-year-old child. Because gay men are sometimes stereotyped as child molesters, we portrayed defendant sexual orientation as either gay or straight and the victim as either a boy or girl. Jurors made more pro-prosecution decisions in cases involving a gay versus straight defendant, particularly when the victim was a boy. In boy-victim cases, jurors’ emotional feelings of moral outrage toward the defendant mediated these effects. On average, women jurors were more pro-prosecution than were men. Results have implications for understanding social perceptions of cross- and same-gender child sexual abuse and juror decision making in child sexual assault cases perpetrated by homosexual and heterosexual men.

Investigating Investigators: How Presentation Order Influences Participant–Investigators’ Interpretations of Eyewitness Identification and Alibi Evidence

Presentation order of ID and Alibi evidence was manipulated for undergraduate participants who conducted a simulated police investigation. Experiment 1 found a recency effect when an eyewitness rejected the investigator’s suspect. Experiment 2 also examined order effects, exploring how participant–investigators evaluated alibi information in addition to eyewitness ID information. When investigators saw the witness identify the suspect but also received a strong alibi for that suspect a recency effect occurred, such that whichever piece of information occurred at the end of the procedure had the strongest impact on investigators. Thus, type of evidence and evidence order both had a dramatic influence on participant–investigators’ decisions.     

How Much Does Effortful Thinking Underlie Observers’ Reactions to Victimization?

From blaming to helping innocent victims, just-world research has revealed that observers react to victimization in a variety of ways. Recent research suggests that such responses to victimization require effortful thought, whereas other research has shown that people can react to these situations intuitively. Along with manipulating just-world threat, across seven experiments, we manipulated or measured participants’ level of mental processing before assessing judgments of victim derogation, blame, willingness to help, and ultimate justice reasoning. The effect of just-world threat on these responses held constant over a range of manipulations/measures, suggesting that the processes involved in maintaining a belief in a just world are not restricted to the rational, deliberative level of mental processing but also occur intuitively.     

Hearsay Versus Children's Testimony: Effects of Truthful and Deceptive Statements on Jurors’ Decisions

Researchers and courts are focusing increasing attention on the reliability of children's out-of-court statements, especially in relation to trials of child sexual abuse. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of presentation of children's out-of-court statements (e.g., hearsay) on jurors' perceptions of witness credibility and defendant guilt, and on jurors' abilities to reach the truth. Child participants experienced either a mock crime or were coached to say they experienced the crime when in fact they had not. During elaborate mock trials involving community member jurors, children's testimony was presented either: (1) live, (2) on videotape, or (3) via a social worker. Analyses revealed that testimony format directly influenced jurors' perceptions of child and social worker credibility (e.g., children were perceived as less likely to provide false statements if they testified live) as well as jurors' sympathy toward the child, all of which then predicted jurors' confidence in defendant guilt. Jurors had difficulty discerning accurate from deceptive child statements regardless of testimony format. Implications for psychology and the legal system are discussed.     

The Consequences of Victim Physical Attractiveness on Reactions to Injustice: The Role of Observers’ Belief in a Just World

Two studies explored Dion and Dion’s (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 775–780, 1987) suggestion that the belief in a just world may contribute to the “beauty is good” stereotype. In Study 1, we found that participants rated the death of a woman as more tragic and unfair when she was physically attractive than less attractive. Participants were also more punitive towards agents of harm when the victim was physically attractive. In Study 2, we varied the extent to which a woman suffered from a house fire and asked participants to later recognize the woman’s picture among several choices varying in physical attractiveness. Participants who learned that the woman suffered a great deal remembered her to be less physically attractive than when her suffering was minimal. The results are discussed in terms of how the justice motive contributes to the evaluative and moral importance attached to physical attractiveness.

The Relationship of Personal, Family, and Abuse-Specific Factors to Children’s Clinical Presentation Following Childhood Sexual Abuse

Past literature has proposed potential variables (e.g., age, gender, attributional style) that may relate to clinical presentation following childhood sexual abuse (CSA). However, few studies have tested these relationships. The current study examined multiple factors related to clinical presentation following CSA in 101 children and adolescents presenting for treatment at Project SAFE, a parallel group treatment for children/teens and their nonoffending parents. Using clusters developed in a previous study, relationships between proposed variables and pretreatment clinical presentation were examined. Results indicated that attributions about the abuse, parental mental health, and severity of abuse related to the differentiated clinical presentation. These results are important because pinpointing correlates to clinical presentation following CSA helps elucidate differences among those with a history of CSA and gives greater insight into the impact sexual abuse has on children. Knowing these differences may also benefit treatment providers in the development of individual treatment goals during therapy.     

Mock terrorists decisions’ concerning use of the internet for target selection: a red-team approach

In this study we sought to identify which locations appear more, or less, attractive to a terrorist in planning an attack and to investigate what attributes of those locations influence preferences. A sample of undergraduate university students (N?=?147) were given the role of terrorists, and provided with five potential attack locations, including a pedestrian mall, a shopping center, a train station, a university and an airport. After using the Internet to learn about the target locations, participants placed the locations in rank-order from most to least preferred as targets and indicated why they had selected those targets. Results showed both a clear rank-order of target preferences: locations perceived as being more crowded were more preferred, while locations with a greater security presence were less preferred. Results also demonstrated a moderate positive correlation between the amount of online information viewed for a specific location and the preference for that location as a terrorist target, where participants who viewed more online content for a particular location were more likely to also prefer that location as a terrorist target. Findings from this study can potentially be used to reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack occurring on specific locations, by altering the publicly available information on that location regarding the security and how crowded that location is.