4. Strategy to influence jury decision making Flashcards
Which one do you think would be most effective? How could both be used to try to persuade juries? (2 things)
Story order- This is where evidence is presented in the order that it occurred, it is therefore chronological from beginning to end.
Witness order- that is the order in which the witnesses in the original trial presented the information.
Application 1: Present evidence in story order - Pennington & Hattie - Hypothesis
Nancy Pennington and Reid Hastie (1992) have proposed the story order model of presenting evidence, which can be argued to be one of the most influential approaches to jury decision-making. They suggest that counsel for the prosecution and counsel for the defence should present their evidence items in a coherent chronological order
Pennington & Hattie - steps to story order model (describe and explain)
Lawyers create a timeline
It is the job of the lawyer to create a ‘timeline or story’ by organising the presentation of the evidence into a ‘story order’ so that jurors can use this narrative to enhance their memory of the events surrounding the crime.
Jurors develop a coherent story
- Jurors actively make sense of the trial information that has been presented to them and attempt to make their own story based on their knowledge of the events given to them at the trial.
- Each juror’s individual story may be slightly different taking into consideration their own understanding and perception of events.
- Jurors may have more than one story because of hearing different versions of events from the prosecution and defence lawyers. Jurors tend to accept the story that is most complete in the sense that it covers the greatest amount of information from the trial and is the most coherent.
Judge gives direction
- At the end of a criminal trial the judge sums up the evidence and advises the jury on how to come to a verdict.
- Directions from the judge usually come in the form of instructions on the law and can include information such as the presumption of innocence and the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Juror matches story to possible verdicts
- The process begins with a judge providing one or alternative verdict decisions.
- Jurors then must match the account they have constructed to a possible verdict decision.
- If a lawyer has created a clear timeline of events then it is thought that jurors are likely to believe that version of events and return a verdict in favour of that lawyer.
- However, if the jury does not feel that any version of events would lead to one of the judge’s suggested verdicts then they have to say not guilty
Pennington and Hastie ’92 - Aim
To investigate whether or not story evidence summaries are true causes of the final verdict decisions and the extent to which story order affects confidence in those decisions.
Pennington and Hastie ’92 - Method and Design
Laboratory experiment, independent measures design.
Pennington & Hastie - Participants
130 college students from Northwestern University and Chiacago University who were paid for their participation in the hour long experiment.
Pennington & Hastie - Procedure
- Participants listened to a tape recording of a stimulus trial (Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs Caldwell) and then responded to written questions. This was a 1 hour long audio recording of a real trial.
- The participants were told to reach either a guilty or a not guilty verdict against a murder charge on the defendant. The participants reached their verdict independently and did not confer with any of the other participants, they were separated by a partition.
- In the audio recording there was 39 pieces of evidence that the defendant was guilty and 39 pieces that the defendant was innocent.
- The evidence was either presented in story order, that is the chronological order of the actual events, or witness order, that is the order in which the witnesses in the original trial presented the information.
Pennington & Hastie - Findings
Percentage of participants choosing a verdict of guilty of murder by prosecution and defence order conditions:
Pennington & Hastie - Conclusion
Story order presentation enables jurors to more easily construct a narrative for themselves so that they understand the case. But this strategy only provides an advantage if one side uses it!! If both prosecution and defence use story order then neither side gains the persuasive advantage over the jury.
Pennington & Hastie - Audiotaped court hearing
Table of results
2) Using expert witnesses
What is an expert witness?
Examples of them?
Cutler?
What did the results show?
An expert witness is a person whose level of specialized knowledge or skill in a particular field qualifies them to present their opinion about the facts of a case during legal proceedings.
Examples: Psychologist (Loftus has been an expert witness several times), forensic scientist, social worker, psychiatrist, fingerprint analysist.
Cutler (1989) carried out an experiment to investigate the influence of expert psychological terminology on juror decision making in eyewitness identification cases. They used experienced jurors and undergraduate mock jurors who viewed versions of a videotaped trial. Participants were asked to rate the credibility of the eyewitness and the strength of the prosecutions and defences cases and to give verdicts.
The results showed that in the absence of expert testimony jurors were insensitive to eyewitness evidence, however expert psychological testimony improved juror sensitivity to eyewitness evidence. Cutler clarified that sensitivity in this context refers to the knowledge of how a factor influences memory and also the ability to use that knowledge when making a judgment about eyewitness accuracy. This therefore supports the use of expert psychological witnesses in court.
Findings
Percentage of participants choosing a verdict of guilty of murder by prosecution and defence order conditions:
