Pretrial publicity,judicial remedies,and jury bias

Although past research has established pretrial publicity's potential to bias juror judgment, there has been less attention given to the effectiveness of judicial remedies for combatting such biases. The present study examined the effectiveness of three remedies (judicial instructions, deliberation, and continuance) in combatting the negative impact of different types of pretrial publicity. Two different types of pretrial publicity were examined: (a) factual publicity (which contained incriminating information about the defendant) and (b) emotional publicity (which contained no explicitly incriminating information, but did contain information likely to arouse negative emotions). Neither instructions nor deliberation reduced the impact of either form of publicity; in fact, deliberation strengthened publicity biases. Both social decision scheme analysis and a content analysis of deliberation suggested that prejudicial publicity increases the persuasiveness and/or lessens the persuasibility of advocates of conviction relative to advocates of acquittal. Acontinuance of several days between exposure to the publicity and viewing the trial served as an effective remedy for the factual publicity, but not for the emotional publicity. The article concludes by discussing the potential roles of affect and memory in juror judgment and evaluating the available remedies for pretrial publicity.     

Assessing Cumulative Disadvantage against Minority Female Defendants in State Courts

Abstract

Prior sentencing research, especially research on cumulative disadvantage, has mainly focused on the treatment of male defendants. Little attention has been paid to female defendants, particularly minority female defendants. Drawing on the selective chivalry, evil women, and focal concerns perspectives and using data from the 1990–2009 State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS), this paper investigates the impact of race/ethnicity for female defendants across individual and successive stages in the sentencing process. The results indicate that ethnicity does not operate via indirect or direct pathways, and therefore no evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Hispanic female defendants was detected. The results, however, do suggest that race operates through direct and indirect pathways to cause more punitive sentencing outcomes for Black female defendants compared to White female defendants, thus providing evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Black female defendants. Theoretical, research, and policy implications are discussed.     

When is an assault not an assault? The Canadian public's attitudes towards wife and stranger assault

There is no distinction in the Canadian Criminal Code between assaults committed on strangers and assaults of spouses. Traditionally, however, wife assault has been considered a private affair, and it has been argued that this attitude continues to be reflected in the police response to domestic disputes. In this study of 240 adults'written responses to assault scenarios, the victim-offender relationship produced variations in ratings of seriousness, in the relative amounts of blame attributed to the victim and offender, and in the recommended police response. In general, nondomestic recidivist offenders tended to be treated most harshly by the subjects, as did offenders who assaulted their victims inside a private house. Additionally, female subjects gave higher ratings of seriousness of the offense, and considered future violence by the offender to be more likely, than did male subjects. The findings are explained in terms of the subjects' ability to identify with the offender, although the decision-making process in judging cases of assault is evidently complex. The implications of these findings for police officers with discretionary powers are considered.