During trial Flashcards
factors influencing during the trial
defendant characteristics
expert witness testimony
story models
witness characteristics
defendant characteristics (race)
Race
Bradbury and williams - 2013 - black defendant more likely to be convicted by white and hispanic jurors and less likely by black
Skolnick and shan 1997 - jury and defendant same ethnicity = less likely to find defendant guilty. White jurors were more likely to find a black not guilty (don’t want to be seen as racist)
Abwender and Hough 2001
- black ppts showed leniency to own race
- hispanics showed opposite
- white didn’t show any racial bias
3 defendant characteristics
race
attractiveness
accent
defendant characteristics (attractiveness)
Abwender and Hough - female jurors were found to be harsher to an unattractive defendant males opposite (villains in films portrayed as unattractive)
Sigall and Ostrove 1975 - 120 ppts make sentence recommendations for fraud or burglary. ppts asked to rate Barbra Helms attractiveness then give prison sentence 1-15 years. Barbra Helms sentenced longer for fraud and shorter for burglary
defendant characteristics (accent)
Dixon and Mahoney 1997- ppts given transcript and tape to listen to different accents
- strong brume accent considered more guilty
- black with brummie were more guilty
- ppts were white and non brummie
- study repeated un 2002 and 2004 and same outcome
evaluation of defendant characteristics
- lab settings so lacks ecological validity
- too many controlled variables so not applicable
- other factors influence jury decision making such as past experience
expert witness testimony
often used to give scientific credibility to evidence
- experts warn jury about reliability of witness evidence
- this reduces trust in some evidence
- but does not distinguish good from bad
Cutler et al 1989 - jurors more likely to give guilty verdicts when the expert witness used easy-to-understand language
story models
complex info = jurors pick out key facts and create story to make sense
Pennington and Hastie 1990
- jury given account in easy to understand order = 78% of ppts gave guilty verdicts
- account not in logical order = 31% ppts gave guilty verdicts
- legal representatives should consider how they structure legal arguments
witness characteristics
confident authoritarian witness may influence jury as more persuasive