Instructing jurors

This field experiment examines the advantages and disadvantages of two jury instruction procedures: instructing the jury prior to the evidence portion of the trial and providing the jury with a written copy of the judge's instructions to take with them to their deliberations. The presence or absence of both procedures was randomly assigned to 34 civil and 33 criminal trials in Wisconsin circuit courts. Following the trials, questionnaires were administered to judges, lawyers, and jurors. Overall, the findings do not provide any support for the hypotheses that written instructions would help the jurors to recall the judge's instructions, that they would increase the jurors' satisfaction with the trial, or that they would shorten the trial. The written copy did appear to reduce disputes among jurors about the judge's instructions. No evidence was found to support the notion that written instructions would reduce the amount of time that juries devoted to the evidence, that they would lengthen deliberations, or that they would place excessive demands on the resources of the court. The findings also did not support the hypotheses that preliminary instructions would assist the jurors with recall of the judge's instructions or the evidence, or that they would reduce juror confusion about the trial procedure, but did support the hypotheses that preliminary instructions would assist the jurors with following legal guidelines in their decision making and would increase the jurors' satisfaction with the trial process. No evidence was found to support the hypotheses that preliminary instructions would be an impractical procedure or that they would place excessive demands on the judge.Northwestern University     

Media effects on jurors

This article examines the impact on jurors of exposure to media coverage of legal issues. Jurors' decisions may be influenced by a broad range of legally relevant information gleaned from media sources, including newspaper reports, radio and television news, advertising, movies, and televised crime shows and courtroom scenes. The article gives examples of these influences from real-world cases and from simulated research studies. It focuses on the impact of trial-relevant publicity on jurors in cases unrelated to the one being publicized; the ways that media representations of the justice system may influence jurors' expectations and decisions; the influence of insurance company advertisements on jurors' damage awards; and the impact of viewing pornography on jurors' decision making. The paper also explores the psychological processes by which each of these effects may occur and evaluates proposed remedies.I thank Alan Siegel for his comments on an earlier draft.     

The impact of pretrial publicity on jurors

Previous research on how jurors are prejudiced by pretrial publicity (PTP) has focused on the impact of print media (i.e., newspapers). However, in this “television age”, we are exposed to compelling and vivid images of crimes and cases. This raises the question of whether potential jurors may be more influenced by television media (e.g., news programs or televised hearings) then print media (e.g., newspaper and magazine articles). Using an actual case involving extensive PTP, the present study varied the type of medium (print articles, video, articles+video) presented to potential jurors. The results indicated that exposure to the various media had a prejudicial impact on people, and that they were unaware of their biases. As hypothesized, television exposure and television plus print articles biased potential jurors significantly more than exposure to print media alone.     

How jurors construe “insanity”

Historically and currently, jurors who have rendered verdicts in insanity cases have themselves been criticized and maligned-accused of being simplistic and biased, of lacking understanding, and of disregarding or nullifying the judge's instructions. Are the critics right? In this study, 263 mock jurors (141 adults and 122 students) were asked to decide four insanity cases without instructions, using their own best judgment, and to identify the determinative facts for them, and the meaning of those facts. Those determinative factors were then categorized, using a seven construct schema for NGRI and guilty verdicts. The results show that jurors do make discriminations among cases in terms of constructs, and that these constructs are relevant, complex, and flexible; furthermore, the jurors' lay constructs of insanity are more complex than the legal constructs of insanity. The “simplism,” it seems, lies not with the jurors but with the insanity tests.     

Do jurors share a common understanding concerning eyewitness behavior?

It would seem that the American judiciary have traditionally viewed knowledge of variables affecting eyewitness behavior as a part of common understanding. The presumption would then be that there is a body of knowledge in this regard that is indeed shared and that this shared understanding conforms substantially to objective reality. Multiple-choice format questionnaires designed to tap such knowledge were administered to two somewhat disparate samples of college students (n=176) and two samples of the citizenry at large in Washington D.C., 46 of whom had not had criminal trial jury experience in the previous five years and 43 of whom had. Across samples the typical respondent's performance was significantly above chance but not at all high in absolute terms. This typical performance involved well above chance levels of accuracy on about half the items and not different from chance accuracy on the others. At least within the college student samples, certain demographic variables were not related to accuracy of response. Likewise, previous criminal trial jury experience did not improve accuracy for the Washington D.C. respondents by an amount that would be practically significant. It was concluded that the common understanding doctrine cannot in general be supported.The work in this report was partially supported by an NSF grant to the second author. Thanks are also due the Washington D.C. Public Defender's Office for their assistance in data collection. The comments and suggestions of Gary Wells and an anonymous reviewer are gratefully acknowledged as well.     

A note on taking account of the automatic death penalty jurors

The California Supreme Court'sHovey opinion identified a separate group of “automatic death penalty” (ADP) persons whose exclusion had been overlooked in previous studies of death qualification. Using data unavailable at the timeHovey was decided, this brief article estimates the effect of excluding this group on the attitudinal skewing and conviction-proneness of death-qualified jurors. It concludes that the impact of excluding the ADPs is negligible.     

Complex scientific testimony: How do jurors make decisions?

Critics of the civil jury system question whether jurors can adequately evaluate complex expert testimony. Based on current models of research in persuasion, we hypothesized that when expert testimony is complex, factors other than content will influence persuasion. Participants, serving as mock jurors, watched a videotaped trial in which two scientists provided evidence on whether PCBs could have caused a plaintiff's illness. The complexity of the expert's testimony and the strength of the expert's credentials were varied in a 2×2 factorial design. After watching the videotape, mock jurors rendered a verdict and completed a number of attitude measures related to the trial. Overall, consistent with our prediction, we found that jurors were more persuaded by a highly expert witness than by a less expert witness, but only when the testimony was highly complex. When the testimony was less complex, jurors relied primarily on the content of that testimony, and witness credentials had little impact on the persuasiveness of the message.     

The socialization of jurors the voir dire as a rite of passage

The socialization of jurors, which takes place as a latent function of the voir dire, is described in terms of the distinct experiences that constitute the passage from the status of “ordinary citizen” to membership in the courtroom social setting. Implications of the lack of this voir dire socialization on mock jury research are discussed. Future research on the significance of the juror role and the extent to which the socialization during voir dire helps jurors set aside their normal decision-making rules are also discussed.     

A comparison of three studies of the influence of expert testimony on jurors

Three conceptual replications of the effects of expert testimony on jurors' decisions and behaviors were compared. Taken together, these studies demonstrated significant increases in jurors' scrutiny of the evidence presented to them and significant reductions in their beliefs in the general accuracy of eyewitness testimony. The overall effect of expert testimony had a combined probability ofp=.0000084. This means that these combined results would occur by sampling bias alone less than one time out of 100,000. Expert testimony accounted for 3% of the variance in verdicts and 68% of the variance in the time jurors deliberated about eyewitness testimony. Several implications of these findings for psychologists investigating eyewitness identification and for the criminal justice system are discussed.I would like to thank James V. Devine, Judith P. Goggin, Elizabeth F. Loftus, and Gary L. Wells for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article.     

Inducing jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence: A legal explanation does not help

Three experiments investigated mock jurors' ability to disregard inadmissible prior conviction evidence and hearsay. In Experiments 1 and 2, college students listened to an audiotape enacting a theft trial. The critical evidence favored the prosecution and was objected to by the defense. In three different conditions the judge either ruled the evidence admissible, ruled it inadmissible, or ruled it inadmissible and explained the legal basis for the ruling. In a fourth condition no critical evidence was presented. The critical witness' credibility was also manipulated. With prior conviction evidence but not hearsay the legal explanation “backfired.” In addition, the critical witness' credibility did not affect subjects' ability to disregard inadmissible evidence. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the legal explanation may have affected the use of hearsay and prior conviction evidence differently because of subjects' dissimilar preconceptions of the fairness of using the two evidence items to assess guilt.     

The effects of defendant dress and supervision on judgments of simulated jurors: An exploratory study

Two studies explored the biasing effect of defendant dress (personal/institutional) and supervision (armed/no supervision) on juror judgments of guilt and recommended sentence using 2×2 between-subjects factorial designs. University students in study 1 and registered voters in study 2 watched a videotape of a reenacted criminal trial, then made judgments of defendant guilt and recommended sentences. Results in both studies revealed significant bias against defendants in personal dress with armed supervision and institutional dress with no supervision. Discussion focuses on the appropriateness of models of attribution and equity in describing subjects' discretionary processes, the nature of an unexpected sympathy effect for the defendant in institutional dress with armed supervision, and the practical implications of the findings. Specific needs for future research in this area are also addressed.Funds for both studies were provided by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The authors wish to thank Edwina Dorch and Devin Powers for their assistance with data collection.     

The effectiveness of judicial instructions on eyewitness evidence in sensitizing jurors to suggestive identification procedures captured on video

Journal of Experimental Criminology - One of the legal safeguards designed to educate jurors about eyewitness evidence is judicial instructions. However, their effectiveness in sensitizing jurors...     

Reactions of potential jurors to a hypothetical malpractice suit: alleging failure to perform a prostate-specific antigen test

We conducted focus groups with 47 potential jurors who were presented with different scenarios in a hypothetical malpractice case involving failure to order a PSA test. Better documentation that a patient made an informed decision to decline a PSA test appeared to provide more medical-legal protection for physicians, especially with the use of a decision aid.     

论协同治理与诉讼合作主义的同质性

协同治理的核心要旨是国家与国民交织而成共同治理者,协同为社会提供契合需要的公共产品。努力建构起来的多元治理与协同合作的立体图景成为协同治理理论的重要贡献,它在很大程度上颠覆了国家与社会的二元政治结构,并为诉讼合作主义的生成奠定了坚实的政治学基础。诉讼合作主义将合作的精神引入诉讼,重视程序主体间的协同共治,促使程序主体在多元的诉讼合作中发现真实和解决纠纷,与协同治理理论具有极强的同质性。为满足协同治理理论与诉讼合作主义的现实要求,法院必须摈弃单向的管理者思维,应以司法服务者的姿态与国民协同治理多项司法事务,输出符合当事人正当利益诉求的司法产品,切实尽到相应的公共责任。     

What does “unwilling” to impose the death penalty mean anyway? another look at excludable jurors

The debate regarding the death qualification of juries usually concerns (a) whether death-qualified jurors have different attitudes and values to excludable jurors, or (b) whether death-qualified juries are more prone to convict. A pivotal question is whether excludable subjects in fact willever impose the death penalty. Subjects were presented with five grisly murder vignettes. Only 40% of excludable subjects refused to consider the death penalty in all of the cases, with the remaining 60% indicating they would consider the death penalty in one or more of the cases. It is argued that the majority of individuals currently being excluded from capital trial juries based on their reservations about the death penalty actually would impose the death penalty for serious enough offenses and that they should therefore be allowed to serve on such juries.     

法文化共性、相异性与我国刑事诉讼模式转型

我国现行刑事诉讼属于强职权主义诉讼模式。从法文化的共性要求出发,我国应改变现行刑事诉讼中权力控制的方式,即将权力控制的主要方式从单向度的纵向权力控制转变为以同位权力之间的制衡,同时在立法中贯彻权利保障的非纯功利思想。但与此同时,法文化的相异性要求我国修改刑事诉讼法必须要考虑本国的国情。将刑事诉讼模式定位于以职权主义为基础,同时吸收当事人主义的混合模式,是比较现实的选择。     

Predictors of Group Performance in a Police Criminal Investigation Department: the Role of Gender Homogeneity,Leadership and Team Characteristics

The Netherlands’ Ministry of Security and Justice has agreed on performance targets with the country’s police departments. Introducing the targets created a shift to controlling performance in team management focus. This empirical study of police teams in Utrecht in the Netherlands (N = 134) focuses on the influence of leadership style, gender and psychosocial team factors when teams are required to achieve agreed performance objectives. We address calls in the literature for more research into (objective) measures relating to effective police leadership and existing (police) management practices. Gender homogeneity, a combination of charismatic, empowering and transactional leadership styles, and team members’ awareness of team achievements were found to be relevant. The practical implications of these results are discussed.