factors affecting jury decision making

Question 1

describe pre-trial publicity

Answer 1

having access to huge amounts of info before and during trial

Question 2

factual information

Answer 2

incriminating evidence into the defendant and what happened

Question 3

emotional information

Answer 3

lasts longer + no explicitly incriminating info but foes contain info likely to arouse neg emotions

Question 4

Describe how schema theory could be relevant to understanding how pretrial publicity influences decision-making

Answer 4

schemas are cognitive units about ur experiences in the world if we gaps schemas can fill it. exposure to pre-trial info may mean jurors already jabe schemas because they are involved factually and emotionally on the case and may try and make sense of info using their schemas

Question 5

evidence for pre-trial publicity

Answer 5

fein et al- used real OJ Simpson case and cutting from newspaper to set up mock jury to see if it would affect jurors decisions 80% said guilty if they had access to pre-trial publicity
thomas 2010 analysed 62 real life cases and found jurors remembered media coverage 70% if it was a high profile case 11% for jurors in low cases
steblay et al meta-analysis of 44 empirical tests representing 5755 if exposed to -ve publicity more likely to find defendant as guilty
ogloff and vidmar tv as a form of pre-trial publicity and found potential jurors did express neg bias in face of neg publicity - concluded tv has a significant influence on jurors decision making

Question 6

why evidence for pre-trial publicity is bad

Answer 6

mock trials may not generalise to real life, controlled lab experiments can increase replicability of studies and help produce consistent results which adds credibility,isolating and manipulating variables allows for cause and effect and ecological validity is low

Question 7

application of pre-trial publicity

Answer 7

allows researchers to raise evidence based concerns about increasing potential jury bias to occur in era of tv

Question 8

ethics in pre-trial publicity

Answer 8

uses mock juries and fictitious cases to allow researchers to isolate and manipluate variables that wouldnt be practical or ethical in a real trial

Question 9

methodology weaknesses in pre-trial publicity

Answer 9

cannot be exposed to real pre-trial publicity before they serve as bias may be formed therefore its ethically constrained
limited by artificial situations so mock jurors might not reflect the influence of real pre-trial publicity even in fein reserahc ppts understand theyre not a real jury so may not give a realistic verdict limiting generalisability

Question 10

characteristics of the defendant

Answer 10

feature or quality belonging typically to a person,place or thing and serving to identify them which juries can be influenced by their characteristics forming first impressions

Question 11

how does stereotyping apply to characteristics of def

Answer 11

noticing something abouta person, categorising them to a particular group of people, assuming they have charactersitics of group
so may be categorised as a criminal

Question 12

how does attractiveness of the defendant relate

Answer 12

sigall & osgrove found more attractive defendants shorter sentences for burglary but longer for fraud because of stereotypes people hold about criminals
castellow et al- guilty judgement most likely when a female secretary was attractive and male was not
abwender and houghinvestigated attractive leniency hypothesis and found attractive defendants are treated more favourably by juries
fem ppt more lenient to ttractive female
m ppt lenient towards unattractive males

Question 13

what is the halo effect

Answer 13

attractive = innocent dion et al found attractive people assumed to have attractive qualities

Question 14

how does race affect

Answer 14

stahly and walker found the role of SI and linked this to the fact viewers tended to recall certain info linked to guilt for instance white americans saw guilt was due to physical evidence, african americans saw police misconduct might have empathy with defendants similar to themselves - only 1 case study
carter and mazzula 210 mock jurros and found in group and out group bias
pfeifer and ogloff-black def guilty but bradbury and williams found juries with white jurors call balck guilty and hispanic and black jurors less likely to convict black jurors
however, skolnick and shaw 213 black and white and found black def less guilty however due to socially desirable

Question 15

how does accent affect

Answer 15

mahoney and dixon 2 min recording with 119 white non bham students and found bham accent more guilty
seggie aussie standard =white collar
aussie broad= blue collar crimes