PTP- 16 marks (in class)

Question 1

What is Pre trial publicity? (ao1)

Answer 1

Is information in the media baout a crime before the trial begins, it may include facts about the crime and suspect, including details of past offences (factual PTP) as well as comments and opinions e.g an interview of a neighbour (emotive PTP)
PTP can be positive and negative

Question 2

What does PTP mean to the jurors? (ao1)

Answer 2

It means jurors in such trials are not naive to the case, as its almost impossible for the jurors to have not seen the PTP, due to status of the suspect or media exposure

Question 3

What type of media might PTP come from? (ao1)

Answer 3

• News papers
• TV
• Social media

Question 4

What is some impact of PTP? (ao1)

Answer 4

• Knowing about past criminal records can affect how the jury attributes guilt. However, more specific information will have a larger effect than more general PTP.
• The judges request to ignore any PTP is usually ignored/ jurors find it hard to ignore- PTP can create more memory source errors, which will impact what they believe in from the trial and what is from PTP
• Prior knowledge does influence the jury compared to not knowing any information about the case beforehand, especially in more violent crimes, such as murder and sexual abuse.
• Media reporting is often sensationalised, which favours the victim. Television exposire and television plus printed media biased potential jurors significantly more exposure to print media alone
• Emotional material is more influential- therfore the context of the material matters, as this is harder to remove, making it more likely that the defendant is seen as guilty
• The type of PTP matters, pro defence vs negative defence, both have an effect, when pro defence is used for jurors tend to need more evidence in order to see if guilty is the right judgement. More negative= more guilty verdicts.

Question 5

What are some strengths of a Mock jury? (ao3)

Answer 5

Application to real life- mock juries are useful for researching scenarios and variables that may affect jury decision making such as pre-trial publicity. This could lead to potential changes to improve practice of juries in real life.
Jurors are selected randomly in a mock jury, just like in a real jury selection, this allows for high generalisability.
The mock case is set up in a controlled environment, therefore, having internal validity as cause and effect can be established between factors and jury-decision making.

Question 6

What are some negatives of Mock jury? (ao3)

Answer 6

The mock jurors know that the case is not real, therefore they may not act the same as the would on a real case. There are no stakes for them to be invested with the pressure of a real-life conviction. Therefore, this lowers validity.
Task validity can also be questioned as the process of case is shortened in a mock jury, in real life a case may takes weeks and can be full of complexities, so this lacks mundane realism.
Low ecological validity- not the exact same environment so does not reflect the stress of the person in question or their family.
Operatiovariable-attractivenss is subjective and to a degree so is race- social desirability to do with race as you dont want to appear racist which may mean the validity of studies may be lower
DV- judge does sentencing??
Students may be more lenient so will skew your data
Problem of measuring the IV is that a lot of it is subjective - such as finding people attractive or what race
Social desirability such as not being racist.

Question 7

What are some strengths of meta- analysis? (ao3)

Answer 7

Increases the validity of the conclusions drawn as they’re based on a wider sample of participants.
Often, studies in a review produce contradictory results (e.g. some studies may find no effect, some a small effect, others a larger effect). A meta-analysis allows us to reach an overall conclusion by having a statistic to represent the findings of different studies.
More credible conclusions for the factors affecting JDM.
Large amounts of data will hopefully ignore anomilies and lots of detail and depth

Question 8

What are some weaknesses of meta- analysis? (ao3)

Answer 8

Research designs in studies can vary so they are not truly comparable.
Multiple studies/ secondary data- erros and no control over extraneous variables as uses secondary data - lowers credibility for conclusion

Question 9

What is the contrasting theory of PTP?

Answer 9

Characteristics of the defendant

Question 10

What are the applications of PTP?

Answer 10

Advise the jury to limit access to the media if they know they are on jury duty. We can not necessarily stop them from accessing the media and hard to enforce. Get the judge to ask the jury

Question 11

What did Thomas (2010) find about PTP?

Answer 11

In high profile cases, 20 per cent of jurors who did remember media reports about the case they were on found it hard to put reports out of their mind while a juror on the case

Question 12

What did Steblay find about PTP?

Answer 12

Carried ouot a meta- analysis to review the effects of pre trial publicity on juror verdicts. Forty four tests were looked at and findings were often in support of the idea that ppts exposed to negative pre trial publicity are more likely to find a defendant guilty than if there is less or no negative pre-trial publicity