L3 In Court Roles and Decision Making

Question 1

What are the two systems of justice?

Answer 1

Adversarial (UK & US)
- dispute between two sides theoretically equal in standing
- court decides outcome
- judge decides on what is allowed as evidence
Inquisitorial (Europe)
- judge arrives at a decision via evidence
- full investigation prior to trial
- trial is an investigation not a dispute

Question 2

What is a burden of proof?

Answer 2

Beyond all reasonable doubt
But what is reasonable doubt?

Question 3

What is the jury?

Answer 3

Electors between 18-75
Cannot serve on jury if life imprisonment, extended sentence etc.
Excused - in hospital, family event, urgent work commitment, exempt, don’t jury in past 2 years, armed forces

Question 4

Who is on the jury?

Answer 4

Selected randomly
12 people
Males are over-represented
BAME are under-represented
Ethnic minorities are less likely to register

Question 5

What are threats to the legal system and fairness?

Answer 5

Porter and Brinke 2009
- Cannot evaluate the accuracy of outcome
- Beyond reasonable doubt?
- Human decision making is irrational

We have to accept that accuracy cannot be tested, only a few errors occur, believe that judges can overcome biases

Question 6

What do Porter and Brinke 2009 think about jury decision making?

Answer 6

The legal decision process may be fundamentally flawed
Decisions of innocence/guilty driven by subjective decisions

Question 7

What is credibility and how can it be judged?

Answer 7

How believable a person is
Most trials have contradictory evidence and there is no correct answer
Judges have pointed out the natural ability for people to make credible judgements

Question 8

What is the story model of juror decision making?

Answer 8

Pennington and Hastie
An explanatory/cognitive based model rather than mathematical
Those making decisions create narratives of the string of the events
Not necessarily accurate
Evaluated based on how coherent they are with evidence

Question 9

What is the elaboration likelihood model as a model of persuasion?

Answer 9

Petty and Cacioppo 1986
Motivation and ability feed into persuasion then you go down the central or peripheral route

Central - carefully consider evidence, evaluate content, focus on detail, be analytical
Peripheral - use heuristics to evaluate content, easily swayed by unrelated content such as attractiveness of victim

Question 10

What did Kassin, Reddy and Tulloch 1990 find about the elaboration likelihood model?

Answer 10

Mock jurors who scored high on a measure of need for cognition were more influenced by earlier information
- make up mind early (first impression)
- select hypothesis-confirming evidence
- interpret ambiguous evidence as confirmatory

Question 11

What is the dangerous decision theory?

Answer 11

Porter and Brinke 2009
Create an initial judgement off first impression and try to fit all evidence into that narrative
Supporting evidence adds to the confidence of first impression
Contradictory evidence is ignored and undervalued

Wills and Todorvo 2006 found that initial judgements are not always accurate

Question 12

What is a bias?

Answer 12

Hastie and Rasinski 1988
Systematic deviation of evaluations away from a standard
- Rely on the use of heuristics
- Biases committed by jurors often involve failure to comply with court mandates

Question 13

What did Kaufmann et al 2003 find out about emotion biases in juries?

Answer 13

People in mock injuries were highly influenced by the emotional aspect of a rape complaint
We were not aware that this influenced their decision making this much

Question 14

What are the effects of different emotions?

Answer 14

Feigenson 2016
More certainty leads to reduced systematic processing - already confident in knowing what is needed
Anger = certain
Sadness = uncertain

Supporting research - the sad version on a mock jury created a more systematic information processing (more inconsistencies)

Question 15

What is the affect as information?

Answer 15

Emotion cues judgement
Bright, Goodman-Delahunty 2006
Mock jurors who saw gruesome photographs of evidence were more angry
- higher conviction rate
- increased weight of evidence

But how well can these be generalised????

Question 16

What are the stereotypical biases in legal decision making?

Answer 16

Vrij 2000
- White participants tend to see eye gaze aversion as a sign of deception
- Other cultures see direct eye gaze as a sign of disrespect and insolence

Question 17

What are the racial biases in legal decision making?

Answer 17

Mock jury found mixed evidence

Mitchell et al 2005
- meta analysis
- racial bias out group in verdict and sentencing
- moderators included measure of guilt (continuous vs dichotomous)

Question 18

What are the stereotypes about facial characteristics?

Answer 18

Baby faced defendants get a less harsh sentence
Those with more Afrocentric features receive higher sentences
Attractive defendants receive not guilty verdicts and shorter sentences

Question 19

What are the challenges when researching the jury?

Answer 19

Closed jury - can’t record
Debate on how best to replicate

Question 20

How does Bornstein suggest researching the jury?

Answer 20

Direct observations
Case studies or post trail interviews
Archival analysis of data
Experimental simulations or mock jury studies
Field studies

Question 21

What is internal validity?

Answer 21

Cook and Campbell 1979
Ability of research to eliminate alternative explanations and allow interpretation of results permitting a causal link
- statistical power
- random allocation
- experimental control
- standardised instructions
- statistical ability to account for multi-level influences

Question 22

What are the impacts of methodological challenges?

Answer 22

Lockhart 1986 - dismissed 15 studies due to lack of methodological rigor and unrealistic procedures/stimuli
Mock studies comprising only students are not given weight because of the lack of scientific proof (students are such a small number of the jury)

Question 23

What was Bornstein’s meta-analysis in 1999?

Answer 23

26 studies
Only 6 showed main effects and fewer interactions with study variables
Most often cited articles
BUT - only 26 studies, not true meta-analysis, varied in offence but did not consider everything else

Question 24

What are the race biases when comparing samples?

Answer 24

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Mitchell et al 2005
- meta-analysis of race biases in mock jury
- jury verdicts and sentencing in student vs community
- community samples demonstrate more racial biases

Question 25

What are the affective biases when comparing samples?

Answer 25

McCabe and Krauss 2011
Legally irrelevant but highly emotional info can bias juror
Intervention to correct affective biases
1 - student jurors were more lenient and intervention worked
2 - not replicated in community sample

Question 26

What are the jury attitudes when comparing samples?

Answer 26

Keller and Wiener 2011
Examined decisions in sexual assault and homicide
Community - higher bias against defendants (not for students)
In homicide students were more lenient

Question 27

What is group decision making?

Answer 27

Nunez 2011
Group decisions differ in terms of process
Process loss in group decision
- important info not shared due to failed communication, social loafing etc

Question 28

Who can be an expert witness?

Answer 28

Assistant to the court
Relevant expertise
Expert is impartial
Expert’s evidence is reliable

Question 29

What did Blandon-Gitlin 1999 find out about the impact of expert witness?

Answer 29

Bias reduced after hearing an expert witness testimony
Reduce guilty verdicts
Made aware of false confessions and interrogations

Question 30

What is the prosecutor’s fallacy?

Answer 30

Probability of innocence given the evidence mistakenly assumed to equal the probability that the evidence would occur if the defendant is innocent
Given that they are annoyed with me, response is delayed
Failure to account for the relevant probabilities

Question 31

What was Cramer 2009 mock jury study?

Answer 31

Expert witnesses expressing their view on the likelihood that a homicide defendant will commit future violent acts
1. unconfident
2. confident
3. high confident
- perceive expert witness credibility
- sentencing recommendation based upon the expert witness testimony

Question 32

What are the pros of expert witnesses?

Answer 32

Expert can alert the court to common problems with human processes such as EWT
Expert witness knowledge is not the same as common sense
Expert witnesses prepared to make case give clarity
Sound expert testimony can help jury decide

Question 33

What are the cons of expert witnesses?

Answer 33

Experts may introduce unnecessary doubt
Apparent disagreement between experts and non-experts are eliminated if don’t know was an option
Experts who feel more equivocal do not offer themselves for the role
Poor testimony can result in miscarriages of justice