Jury Decision Making Flashcards
Describe the role of the jury
Twelve adults will be asked to be jury members for one criminal case. There are strict rules they have to follow in order to make sure the case is confidential. This also protects the jury members from any influences on their judgement other than the evidence presented in court.
The main role of the jury is to decide as a group whether they believe the defendant is guilty or not guilty.
What is racial bias?
Means not treating minority group defendants equally
E.g. Black defendants being treated more harshly by jurors than white defendants.
State 2 points that show race does affect jury decision making
👍🏼Mitchell et als meta analysis shows that there is a racial bias in the American justice system reporting that black male drug users are 13 times more likely to be sentenced to jail that white male drug users. Mitchell et al also looked at 16 mock jury studies and found that longer sentences were given to defendants of a different racial group from the juror suggesting there is an in group favouritism and out group hostility bias.
👍🏼Glaser et al gave pps a case summary of a triple murder trial that gave the possibility of the death sentence of life in prison without parole, they also manipulated the defendants race. The four conditions were maximum sentence being death sentence or life without parole. They found 25% more black defendants than white were convicted when the maximum sentence was the death sentence.
State 2 points that show race does not affect jury decision making
👎🏼Paulson found that white defendants were treated more harshly than black defendants using mock jury decision making. 🥊However it was argued that white jurors did not want to come across as racist and so demand characteristics could have affected the results.
👎🏼Williams and Holcomb found race did not predict death sentences in Ohio, implying race is not always an influencing factor and that the area the trial takes place may affect the decision.
State other factors affecting whether race influences the jury decision making
The type of crime committed seems to affects the jury decision when combined with race, black defendants were given longer sentences for homicide crimes while white defendants were given longer sentences for fraud.
Sweet and Haney looked at 14 studies and found a small significant racial bias however differences in findings depended on other factors as well as race of the defendant e.g. The year the study was published and the region the study was carried out in.
Describe the attractiveness of the defendant in jury decision making
Lot of research into the notion that a more attractive defendant will be treated more leniently than an unattractive one.
Dion et al (1972) suggests that it is the belief that ‘what is beautiful is good’ that leads to lenience being shown to attractive defendants. Plus attractive defendants are seen as more likeable and jurors treat them more leniently.
Describe how the attractiveness of the defendant can affect jury decision making in terms of the type of crime
Signal and Ostove (1975) found that when a crime is not related to attractiveness such as burglary, an attractive defendant received a more lenient sentence compared to a non attractive defendant. When the crime was related to attractiveness such as fraud or swindling someone out of money the attractive defendant received a harsher sentence. E.g. Physical attractiveness clearly affects jury decisions however it does depend on the crime committed.
E.g. If the jurors believe the defendant has used their attractiveness to their advantage to commit the crime then they will be treated more harshly.
Describe how the attractiveness of the defendant can affect jury decision making in terms of mock jurors
Taylor and Butcher (2007) carried out a mock juror study in the U.K to research defendant attractiveness. Pps were given a fictitious write up of a mugging with a photograph of the defendant attached. The photos the defendant varied either an attractive or non attractive defendant. They found that the pps were more likely to find the less attractive defendants guilty. Race had no effect on the verdict.
Describe how the attractiveness of the defendant can affect jury decision making in terms of gender
Abwender and Hough (2001) showed that male pps recommended longer sentences for the attractive defendant than the unattractive one. Female pps recommended longer sentences for the unattractive defendants. This shows that denial pps showed evidence of ALE (attractiveness leniency effect) and punished the unattractive defendant more whereas males tend to follow the view that attractive people have higher expectations placed on them and will punish them more harshly.
State two strengths of supporting the view that characteristics of the defendant have an influence on jury decision making
👍🏼The use of mock jury studies allow for scientific credibility to be high. This is because extralegal variables such as race and attractiveness can be easily manipulated in the studies, with controls over variables allowing for cause and effect conclusions to be drawn. E.g. Taylor and Butcher (2007) were able to manipulate the attractiveness and the race of the defendant while keeping all other factors such as type of crime, gender age and the amount of evidence seen as the same for all pps.
👍🏼It has contributions to society there is an important need to know and understand the factors that can influence jurors and discussion about such factors should be thought about if there can be an ALE or a race bias. A jury decision should be a fair one and research into characteristics of the defendant implies it can often not be fair, this research can now be used to ensure the decision process is improved.
State two weaknesses of supporting the view that characteristics of the defendant have an influence on jury decision making
👎🏼The use of mock jury studies lack mundane realism as they do not involve the real stress and responsibility of an actual trail where someone may be convicted and that has huge implications for them. As a result the validity of findings from these studies can be questioned as they cannot be applied to real life trials.
👎🏼Lacks generalisability to real life jury trials due to the unrepresentative samples that are often used. Students are often used which means they are highly educated and often from similar backgrounds whereas a real life jury will be made up of the community and samples should reflect this to increase generalisability.
What is pre trial publicity?
The media of a case and a defendant before the trail takes place.
Describe pre trail publicity
The issue with pre trail publicity is that the defendant can argue that what a jury has read and heard about their case could prejudice their view when the case goes to trail.
The exposure to jury members to pre trail publicity can prevent a fair trail.
It could give jurors misinformation about the jurors and that they could then recall this misinformation as trail evidence essentially creating a false memory.
Describe how pre trail publicity can affect jury decision making
Thomas (2010) looked at real life high profile long cases as well as shorter local cases. She found that juror in high profile cases were 70% more likely to recall media coverage than standard cases (11%). In high profile cases 20% of jurors who did remember media coverage found it hard to put reports out of their mind while serving as a juror.
Ruva and Guenther (2015) used 320 university students to act as mock jurors to investigate pre trail publicity. They found that negative pre trail publicity led jurors to vote guilty more often, to make memory errors and to rate the defendant lower in credibility. It was concluded that jury deliberations and instructions are not enough to reduce bias from pre trail publicity.
Describe how pre trail publicity can affect jury decision making
Steblay (1999) carried out a meta analysis of 44 studies investigating the effects of pre trial publicity. They believed that negative pre trail publicity leads to more guilty verdicts. They found that 23 studies support d this view and 20 found no significant difference with 1 study finding the opposite. The overall findings suggests that there’s is no significant pre trail publicity effect on jury decision making.
