THE CRIMINAL APPROACH - JURY DECISION MAKING

Question 1

What are all the factors effecting jury decision making?

Answer 1

pre trial: pre-trial publicity, competence and instructions
During the trial: defendant characteristics (eg race, accent, physical attractiveness), expert witness testimony, the narrative or story model
Post trial: conformity/majority influence, group polarisation, foreperson influence

Question 2

What is pre-trial publicity, and how can it effect jury decision making?

Answer 2

Has the potential to influence a jury by creating a perception of the defendant and other parties involved in the case even before official information has been given to court
Perceptions may be based on existing schemas the jury has and are difficult to change once they have been formed
Steblay et al, Christopher Jeffries, Kovera, Németh

Question 3

What did Steblay et al find?

Answer 3

studied the effects of pre-trial publicity in a meta-analysis involving 5755 pps
Mock juries exposed to negative pre-trial publicity were significantly more likely to find the defendant guilty compared to those exposed to less negative or no negative pre-trial publicity

Question 4

Who was Christopher Jeffries?

Answer 4

landlord of murdered Joanna Yeates, won damages from 8 newspapers regarding their coverage of him after he was wrongly arrested (publishers of the sun and the mirror were fined for contempt of court over their coverage)

Question 5

What did Kovera find?

Answer 5

studied the influence of different types of pre-trial publicity: negative and positive in two rape cases
‘jurors’ who watched positive publicity reported that they needed more evidence in order to convict someone of rape than the pps who watched the negative pre-trial publicity

Question 6

How can competence and instructions effect jury decision making?

Answer 6

Information presented in court can often be very complex, often far removed from the jurors own experiences and knowledge, which is especially the case in complex fraud cases
Levett and Kovera, Vicky Price

Question 7

What did Levett and Kovera find?

Answer 7

have shown that juries struggle to evaluate the credibility of scientific evidence, even following cross-examination by other experts, due to difficulties in understanding the meaning of the evidence

Question 8

Who was Vicky Price?

Answer 8

was tried in February 2013 for perverting the course of justice, after falsely claiming she was driving her husband’s speeding car so that he would avoid a driving band and adverse publicity
The judge discharged the jury when they submitted 10 questions which demonstrated that they had not grasped the basics of their task

Question 9

What studies support that race can affect jury decision making?

Answer 9

Bradbury and Williams, OJ Simpson, Duncan

Question 10

What did Bradbury and Williams find?

Answer 10

study found that black defendants are more likely to be convicted if the % of other ethnicity jurors is higher than the % of black jurors therefore the selection of jury members can be very important

Question 11

Who was OJ Simpson and what was the significant of his trial?

Answer 11

O J Simpson was acquitted, despite the overwhelming evidence due to the sympathies of the US black, female jurors who had black sons, fathers and brothers and therefore sympathised with OJ and the LA police being racist

Question 12

What did Duncan find?

Answer 12

studied the effects of stereotypes on perception, by asking pps to view a version of a video of a disagreement between 2 people (the race differed between the victim and assailant)
70% of people described the behaviour as violent when assailant was black, and only 13% when the assailant was white

Question 13

What did Gordon find?

Answer 13

argues that the effect of race can be complicated by the type of crime, black/white defendant accused of embezzlement/burglary
Schemas are attached to different crimes, so the defendant is judged depending on the relevant schema

Question 14

How can race influence jury decision making?

Answer 14

research suggests that in mock trials there is a negative bias to black defendants
All link to social identity theory, where the group has a shared social identity and categorise themselves together, suggesting you’re less likely to show in group preference if you don’t have a shared identity (Reicher and Haslam, BBC prison study)
Dobbs and Crano also argue that a minority is more likely to show in group preference which can be linked to ethnic minorities

Question 15

How does physical attractiveness effect jury decision making?

Answer 15

villains in films are usually unattractive and heroes are attractive
‘Halo effect’ is where if you have one positive trait, people assume you have all the other good traits (if attractiveness, less likely to commit crime)
Saladin et al, Sigall and Ostrove

Question 16

What did Saladin et al find?

Answer 16

showed pps 8 photos of men and asked them to judge how capable they considered them to be of committing each of 2 crimes: murder and armed robbery
The more attractive men were considered less likely to have committed either crime than the unattractive male

Question 17

What did Sigall and Ostrove find?

Answer 17

showed pps a picture of ‘Barbara’, either attractive, unattractive or no picture
The attractive ‘Barbara’ got a longer sentence if it was fraud, shorter if it was attractive ‘Barbara’ and burglary

Question 18

What did Dixon and Mahoney find?

Answer 18

that participants rated defendants with a strong Birmingham accent as being more likely to be guilty than other accents, and black defendants with a strong Birmingham accent were regarded as more guilty than white defendants
Birmingham accent associated with being poor, less intelligent, and being less socially competent, with the result meaning those with a Birmingham accent were 2x as likely to be found guilty

Question 19

What study supports the effect of accent on jury decision making?

Answer 19

Dixon and Mahoney

Question 20

What is expert witness testimony and how does it effect jury decision making?

Answer 20

Used to give scientific credibility to evidence to help clarify complex issues (eg forensic)
Yet jurors often don’t understand the expert witness testimony so dismiss it
Cutler et al, Sion Jenkins

Question 21

What did Cutler et al find?

Answer 21

demonstrated that jurors were more likely to give guilty verdicts when the expert witness used easy-to-understand language, suggesting the use of language can influence the opinion of juries

Question 22

Who was Sion Jenkins?

Answer 22

Deputy Head teacher convicted of killing his foster daughter Billie-Jo - conviction was quashed on appeal in 2004, after he had served 6 years
His team of scientific experts suggested that blood could have soaked into his clothing as he bent down to see if his daughter was breathing, or as he cradled her in his arms
his ex-wife’s evidence about his domestic violence was ruled inadmissible, as was evidence about his alleged affair with a teenager who looked very similar to his foster daughter

Question 23

How does the narrative model influence jury decision making?

Answer 23

Often jurors make a story about the crime in their head, then fit the evidence to their story
Story of the crime must be coherent, consistent, plausible and complete
The jury chooses which story to believe based on the evidence and their schemas
eg in the OJ Simpson case the jury was presented with two stories, one where OJ Simpson was a violent criminal and the other where he was being framed by an institutionally racist justice system, and they chose the second one as the jury had schemas about the police being racist so used their schemas
Pennington and Hastie

Question 24

What did Pennington and Hastie find?

Answer 24

found that jurors make their decisions by creating hypothetical stories that could explain the evidence and then they match the story to the verdict
Also showed that if a jury is given an account of an offence in an order that is east to understand, 78% of the pps acting as jurors gave guilty verdicts, compared to 31% if the information was not given to them in a logical order

Question 25

How can majority influence effect jury decision making?

Answer 25

Alternative options may not be considered carefully if the majority is voting in one way
Informational majority influence: don’t know enough information so go off of the majority as they know better than you
Normative majority influence: wanting to have the same norms as the majority group (more subtle)
Can link to social identity theory, and social loafing (let everyone else have the power and decision) and group polarisation (the group has a stronger view than the individuals)
Majority views tend to be more influential as they have more confidence behind them, and are expressed more often
Hastie et al, Solomon and Asch

Question 26

What did Hastie et al find?

Answer 26

found that if the first decision of the majority was for acquittal, then 86% of cases returned a not guilty verdict, if at the outset the majority favoured guilty then in 90% of cases guilty was the final verdict

Question 27

What did Solomon and Asch find?

Answer 27

gave pps three lines and asked them to say which line was closest to another line
They then had confederates who chose the obviously wrong answer, and 1/3 of the pps went along with the majority view

Question 28

How can group polarisation effect jury decision making?

Answer 28

Research reveals that when a majority of group members favours on side, discussion usually results in the group moving to an even stronger position
Moscovici, Németh

Question 29

What did Moscovici find?

Answer 29

suggests that minority can overcome a majority if:
They are consistent and committed to their opinion and arguments
Seem to be acting on principle rather than self gain
Are not too rigid, dogmatic and unreasonable

Question 30

What did Németh find about group polarisation?

Answer 30

suggests that when a majority is confronted with a consistent majority, they are puzzled and try to work out why they are so convinced they are right and so determined to express publicly these unpopular views
The majority is therefore prepared to scrutinise these minority views and, on occasions, be convinced by them
Even when minorities initially fail to persuade people, they may start a questioning process which disconcerts the majority and may eventually lead to change

Question 31

How can a foreperson influence jury decision making?

Answer 31

Before any deliberation takes place, the jury selects a foreperson who is responsible for calling for votes, liaising between the judge and jury and announcing the verdict in court
The foreperson is not necessarily a leader in the sense of controlling proceedings or being more influential than others, but the role of foreperson may exert some influence over other jury members and may be more influential than other jury members
Kerr et al

Question 32

What did Kerr et al find?

Answer 32

found that in 179 real-life trials in which half the jurors were women, in only 10% of cases was a woman elected as foreperson
People who sit at the head of a rectangular table are also more likely to be chosen as foreperson than those sitting at the side
This may not, of course, be independent of individual factors, since a confident, middle-class male who has served on a jury before may seat himself in such a position

Question 33

What are the overall criticisms of factors affecting jury decision making?

Answer 33

The variables that influence jury decision making are very hard to control (eg juror’s past experiences, being or knowing a person who has been a victim of a specific crime etc)
Mock and shadow trials lack the consequences of being a member of a real jury, so there is a lack of ecological validity in the research
However, laboratory experiments do allow researchers to focus an manipulate specific variables making them more valid (eg defendants’ accent or attractiveness)