Jury nullification

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of nullification information to the jury from two sources, judge's instructions and lawyers' arguments, on juries' verdicts and decision making in three criminal cases. In addition, the research tested the impact of challenges to nullification information on trial outcomes. The results, gathered from 144 six-person juries, indicated that when juries are in receipt of nullification information from the judge or defense attorney they are more likely to acquit a sympathetic defendant and judge a dangerous defendant more harshly than when such information is not present or when challenges are made to nllification arguments. Analysis of the juries' decision-making processes suggested that nullification information may alter the way in which juries perceive and use the trial evidence. In those trials in which a nullification defense was successful, juries used the outcome of the case, as well as the intent of the defendant, to evaluate the worth and weight of the evidence. Pronullification conditions devalued the currency of the evidence and permitted juries to utilize nonevidentiary factors in deciding the cases used in this study.This research was supported by a grant from The University of Toledo Graduate School.     

Chaos in The Courtroom Reconsidered: Emotional Bias and Juror Nullification

A widespread presumption in the law is that giving jurors nullification instructions would result in "chaos"-jurors guided not by law but by their emotions and personal biases. We propose a model of juror nullification that posits an interaction between the nature of the trial (viz. whether the fairness of the law is at issue), nullification instructions, and emotional biases on juror decision-making. Mock jurors considered a trial online which varied the presence a nullification instructions, whether the trial raised issues of the law's fairness (murder for profit vs. euthanasia), and emotionally biasing information (that affected jurors' liking for the victim). Only when jurors were in receipt of nullification instructions in a nullification-relevant trial were they sensitive to emotionally biasing information. Emotional biases did not affect evidence processing but did affect emotional reactions and verdicts, providing the strongest support to date for the chaos theory.     

Convenient and Inconvenient Truths in Family Law: Preventing Scholar‐Advocacy Bias in the Use of Social Science Research for Public Policy

This is the second of two articles on the risks of advocacy bias in the reporting of research findings when boundaries are blurred between social science research and advocacy in the pursuit of public policy. In the first article we identify common ways in which social science researchers and reviewers of research—wittingly or unwittingly—can become advocates for ideological positions and social policies at the expense of being balanced reporters of research evidence. The first article discusses the difference between truth in social science and truth in law and identifies a range of scholar‐advocacy strategies that bias research evidence, illustrated by recent debates about overnight parenting of infants and toddlers. In this second article we show how biased research evidence by scholar advocates results in increased confusion and controversy that diminishes the credibility of all parties and stalemates progress in the field, using a case illustration of intimate partner violence in family court. We also show how adherence to scientific methods prevents the misuse of research and suggest a number of collaborative, integrative measures that can help transcend the adversarial stalemate. In a look to the future we consider some unbiased, standardized ways of assessing the strength and generalizability of research evidence.     

A Randomized Comparative Effectiveness Trial of Two Court‐Connected Programs for High‐Conflict Families

Parents who experience great amounts of legal conflict as they dissolve their relationship and arrive at their parenting arrangements require an outsize proportion of courts’ time and resources. Additionally, there is overwhelming evidence that conflict has a deleterious effect on their children. We partnered with the family court to conduct a study comparing the effectiveness of two programs for families deemed by their judge to be high conflict and thereby mandated to a program. Both involved one 3‐hour session; the existing program, Parent Conflict Resolution (PCR), used exhortational lecture and video; the newly designed experimental program, Family Transitions Guide (FTG), based on motivational interviewing, employed exercises attempting to get parents to decide for themselves what they needed to do for the sake of their children. Parents were assigned at random to one of the two programs (the literature often terms this a randomized clinical trial) and were interviewed just before it began and 9 months later, as was a child. Results showed that child's report of their own well‐being was significantly improved by FTG as compared to PCR and that these effects were mediated by children feeling less caught in the middle. On several variables, parent report showed that parents in PCR as compared to FTG felt decreased problems in co‐parenting and less interparental conflict, although the effects were not consistent across mother and father report. There was also evidence of diminished legal conflict over 9 months in FTG as compared to PCR.     

Waging War on Poverty: Poverty Trends Using a Historical Supplemental Poverty Measure

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the March Current Population Survey, we provide poverty estimates for 1967 to 2012 based on a historical supplemental poverty measure (SPM). During this period, poverty, as officially measured, has stagnated. However, the official poverty measure (OPM) does not account for the effect of near‐cash transfers on the financial resources available to families, an important omission since such transfers have become an increasingly important part of government antipoverty policy. Applying the historical SPM, which does count such transfers, we find that trends in poverty have been more favorable than the OPM suggests and that government policies have played an important and growing role in reducing poverty—a role that is not evident when the OPM is used to assess poverty. We also find that government programs have played a particularly important role in alleviating child poverty and deep poverty, especially during economic downturns.     

Quality of Social Relationships and the Development of Depression in Parentally-Bereaved Youth

Fear of abandonment has been found to be associated with mental health problems for youth who have experienced a parent’s death. This article examines how youth’s fears of abandonment following the death of a parent lead to later depressive symptoms by influencing relationships with caregivers, peers, and romantic partners. Participants were 109 youth ages 7–16 (50% male), assessed 4 times over a 6-year period. The ethnic composition of the sample was non-Hispanic Caucasian (67%), Hispanic (16%), African American (7%), Native American (3%), Asian (1%), and Other (6%). Youth’s fears of abandonment by their surviving caregiver during the first year of data collection were related to their anxiety in romantic relationships 6 years later, which, in turn, was associated with depressive symptoms measured at 6 years. Youth’s caregiver, peer, and romantic relationships at the 6-year follow-up were related to their concurrent depressive symptoms. The relationship between youth’s attachment to their surviving caregiver and their depressive symptoms was stronger for younger participants. Implications of these findings for understanding the development of mental health problems following parental bereavement are discussed.     

Analysis of artificially degraded DNA using STRs and SNPs--results of a collaborative European (EDNAP) exercise

Recently, there has been much debate about what kinds of genetic markers should be implemented as new core loci that constitute national DNA databases. The choices lie between conventional STRs, ranging in size from 100 to 450 bp; mini-STRs, with amplicon sizes less than 200 bp; and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). There is general agreement by the European DNA Profiling Group (EDNAP) and the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) that the reason to implement new markers is to increase the chance of amplifying highly degraded DNA rather than to increase the discriminating power of the current techniques. A collaborative study between nine European and US laboratories was organised under the auspices of EDNAP. Each laboratory was supplied with a SNP multiplex kit (Foren-SNPs) provided by the Forensic Science Service, two mini-STR kits provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a set of degraded DNA stains (blood and saliva). Laboratories tested all three multiplex kits, along with their own existing DNA profiling technique, on the same sets of degraded samples. Results were collated and analysed and, in general, mini-STR systems were shown to be the most effective. Accordingly, the EDNAP and ENFSI working groups have recommended that existing STR loci are reengineered to provide smaller amplicons, and the adoption of three new European core loci has been agreed.