psychology of jurors

Question 1

jurors

Answer 1

• legal laypersons who are expected to: hear evidence, evaluate the credibility and reliability of evidence, reach a verdict in a fair and impartial manner

Question 2

exclusion criteria to help ensure jurors are legal laypersons

Answer 2

• member of police service
• probation officer
• employee of alberta department of justice or department of the solicitor general of canada
• barrister or solicitor
• justice of the court
• medical examiner under the fatality inquiries act

Question 3

jury: criminal case

Answer 3

• decide whether the prosecutor has proven guilt beyond reasonable doubt
• must be unanimous decision (if not reached, judge may discharge the jury or order a new trial)
• not permitted to disclose information about the discussions of the jury
• cannot choose judge or jury, have a jury if the sentence is 5 years or more

Question 4

jury: civil case

Answer 4

• decide whether the plaintiff has proven that the plaintiff is liable/responsible, based on the balance of probabilities
• 5-6 jurors need to agree on the decision

Question 5

jury process

Answer 5

• selection: chosen randomly
• evidence: witnesses, accused person speech, video/photos, forensic evidence
• deliberation: together as a full jury, determine guilt, innocence or reliability
• verdict: guilty or innocent, reliability

Question 6

trial participants

Answer 6

• jurors will be exposed to various people with different functional roles such as :
• other jurors
• defendants
• victims
• witnesses
• judges
• attorneys
• court staff
• spectators

Question 7

observable participant characteristics

Answer 7

• race
• gender
• age
• socioeconomic status
• attractiveness
• doesn’t change who we choose for juries

Question 8

psychological participant characteristics

Answer 8

• intelligence: profession; exposure to biases
• need for cognition: wanting to engage in more effortful cognitive activities
• personality traits: openness to experience, can hear other perspectives, neuroticism (low emotional stability), more prone to emotional cases
• moral values: what they believe in, right or wrong?
• trust in and attitudes about the legal system
• political ideology: authoritarianism
• acceptance of myths: the rape myth (victim shouldn’t have been wearing certain clothing)

Question 9

extralegal influence

Answer 9

• exposure to information prior to trial: ie. on social media, hard to control
• courtroom practices and procedures: being told to disregard evidence when you can’t unhear something
• exposure to information at trial: ie. inadmissible evidence and family reactions

Question 10

jury decision-making models

Answer 10

• focuses on motivations and intentions of the accused— it’s way more than that though
• focuses on jurors and life experience
• stories: mental representations of trial-related events featuring people with intentions and who engage in goal-directed behaviour
• jurors develop narratives that explain the event as one cohesive story
• based on probative value

Question 11

director’s cut model

Answer 11

• jurors initial representations of trial-related events are determined by:
• juror characteristics (their own negative schemas)
• defendant characteristics (things that people take in and make assumptions about, like physical attractiveness)
• information acquired pre-trial (ie. media)
• nature of the charges
• attorney’s opening statements

Question 12

director’s cut model pt 2

Answer 12

• interaction between juror and defendant characteristics:
• outgroup severity bias
• jurors were more likely to find members of their outgroup guilty, particularly in high importance situations
• consistent with social identity theory

Question 13

director’s cut model pt 3

Answer 13

• stories are then developed as the initial mental representations interacting with incoming information, such as evidence
• then translated into mental models of evaluation: how well do the stories stand up to mental simulations? implications for verdict

Question 14

devine and caughlin conceptual model

Answer 14

• existing cognitive structures (ie. stereotypes) give us the framework for interpreting information
  + incoming trial related information (a person cannot interpret information without existing cognitive structures)
  = initial mental representations of the trial

Question 15

devine and caughlin conceptual model pt 2

Answer 15

• influential cognitive structures: stereotypes of “criminals”, scripts associated with different criminal cases
• stereotypes and scripts develop based on: life experiences, media representation, nature of the crime

Question 16

guilty or not guilty

Answer 16

• higher conviction preference was correlated with: lower need for cognition (weak but significant), female (except in death penalty cases and homicide of abusive male by female), higher authoritarianism, higher trust in the legal system

Question 17

guilty or not guilty: jurors

Answer 17

• in addition to the relationship between authoritarianism and conviction preference, higher authoritarianism is related to: longer sentencing decisions, preference for death penalty, higher likelihood of convicting in homicide and adult sexual assault cases

Question 18

guilty or not guilty: defendants

Answer 18

• higher conviction preference was correlated with the following defendant characteristics: female with dichotomous verdicts, male with continuous ratings of guilt, lower socioeconomic status, known prior criminal history

Question 19

guilty or not guilty: defendants pt 2

Answer 19

• slight tendency across all jurors to show favouritism toward defendants of the same race (outgroup severity bias)
• not significantly present with white mock jurors and black defendants
• modest bias with white mock jurors and hispanic defendants
• modest bias black mock jurors and white defendants
• present with property crime or adult sexual assault (not violent crime or homicide)