WEEK 12 - trial tactics + juror decision making

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40 Terms

1
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what are the 3 forms of social influence?

presuasion

compliance

dissuasion

2
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what is persuasion in terms of social influence?

lawyers try to persuade jurors to agree with their version of events

can be seen as an attempt to chnage someones attitudes

3
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what is compliance in terms of social influence?

lawyers may bypass persuasion and directly attemot to make jurors comply to their assumptions and adhere with their wishes

4
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what is dissuasion in terms of social influence?

lawyers may try to dissuade jury members from being persuaded by the opposing lawyer

  • forewarning

  • inoculation

  • stealing thunder

  • credibility challenges

  • reactance

5
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what is the definition of attitude?

a psychological orientation towards a perticular stimuli

6
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In the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) people can be pursuaded by one of two routes, what are the routes and describe them

central route - high degree of thought and scutiny

peripheral route - less cognitively effortful

7
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In ELM, the route of processing depends on what two things? describe them

motivation - lack of motivation leads the juror to travel down the peripheral route out of choice

ability - lack of ability leads the juror to travel down the peripheral route out of necessity

8
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what are implications for lawyers

  • encourage centreal processing when evidence is good (motivation and ability increase)

  • encourage peripheral processing when evidence is flawed (decrease motivation and ability)

  • always ensure that peripheral cues are in your favour , just in case ability factors prevent central processing

9
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what is cross-examination?

witness is questioned by opposing lawyer

from a justic perspective - it aims to uncover inaccuracies in a witnesses evidence and draw out the truth

in practice - used with the aim to discredit the witness, regardless of accuracy

10
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what types of things do cross-examinations used? who are they liekly to be problematic for?

  • leading questions

  • complex or confusing questions

  • confrontational questions

  • long delays

children

11
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zajac conducted a study that looked at how children respond to cross examination, what did they find children showed?

  • high rates of compliance with elading questions

  • low rates of clarification seeking

  • misunderstandings

12
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___% of children made at least one change to their earlier testimony?

75

13
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what were the findings from zajac study of cross examination on children?

  • 33% chnaged all of their earlier responses

  • 85% of children made at least one chnage to their earlier testimony during the cross examination interview

  • these reponse chnages were made irrespective of accuracy

  • cross examination decreased childrens accuracy, even for children who started out 100% accurate

14
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what are the more recent findings of cross examination in children?

  • cross examination style questionign decreases childrens accuracy even when it takes place very soon after the event

  • children do not belive they chnages they make during cross examination style questioning

  • cross examination style questioning also decreases the accuracy of childrens reports about forensically relevant events

  • children who are more liekly to be targets for abuse may also be more liekly to fare poorly during cross examination

  • brief verbal warnings appear to have no effect on accuracy during cross eaxmination

  • comprehensive preperation shows promsie as a means of reducing the negative effect of cross examination on accuracy

15
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what 4 ways do we study jurors?

  • mock jurors

  • case studies/archives

  • post trial interviwes

  • field experiments with real jurors

16
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describe pretrial publicity problems

it represents a conflict between the right to a fair trial and freedom of the press

research looking at pretrial media report in criminal cases indicates a slant in favour of the prosecution

can be expected to disadvantge the accused

17
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describe a pre-trial publicity case?

oj

a lot of media coverage

so an opinion before jury

18
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describe the meta-anlaysis on pretrial publicity

44 PTP studies involving 5755 participants

participants exposed to negative PTP were more likely to judge the defendant guilty than participants exposed to less or no negative PTP

19
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what are the factors that increase PTP effects?

  • murder, sexual abuse or drug crimes

  • multiple negative points in PTP

  • increased length between PTP and trial

  • emotional PTP

  • PTP from TV

all lead to increase in guilty verdicts

20
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why might instructions to disregard backfire?

  1. theory of ironic processes - when we make an effort not to think about soemthing, it often dominates our thoughts

  2. reactance theory - people are motivated to maintain their freedom

  3. jurors may prefer to rely on broad, commonsense notions of justice

21
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what things have been kept from jurors?

  • relevant criminal records

  • other sexual assault charges

22
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whata re the models of decision making?

mathematical models

cognitive/ explanation- based models

23
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what is the mathematical model

where you hear more evidence and it moves you either way

24
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what is the cognitive/explanation based model? what model does it contain?

story model

juror constructs a story based on

  • evidence

  • personal knowledge or expectations of similar events

  • expectations or knowledge of what constitutes a complete story

story is evaluated on:

  • coverage

  • uniqueness

  • coherence (completeness, consistency, plausability)

25
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what is predecisional distortion?

when jurors may simultaneously weigh up several stories

or when jurors form one story early on, as they trial progresses they fail to accept or reject new evidence

26
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Describe efran study on attractiveness (part 1)

108 students answered the following questions on a 6 point liker scale

  1. should jurors be influenced by the defendants character and previous history - 77% said yes

  2. should jurors be influenced by defendants attractiveness - 7% said yes

27
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describe part 2 of the study

66 students took part in a simulated jury experiments - case study where student was caught cheating on exam

  • attractive photo

  • unattractive photo

  • no photo

students rated attractiveness, likelihood of guilt and punishment severity

found:

  • lower punishment and guilt in atttractive defendants

  • no photo ratings were between the two

28
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what is the exception to these findings?

occurs when attractiveness helped a person commit the crime

29
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describe the two theories of juror attrctiveness

shared attributes between the juror and the defendant may increase the affinity between the individuals, resulting in increased leniency

what is beautiful is good

30
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describe the study by darby and jeffers on attractive and unattractive jurors

participants read and evaluated 3 judical cases

defendant attractiveness was manipulated (high,medium,low)

asked to make judgements of guilt, punishment severity and attractiveness of defendant

asked to complete a self-assessment questionaire

found:

  • for both jurors groups, guilty convictions increased as defendant attractiveness decreased

  • overall, attractive jurors were more likely to convict

  • for attractive jurors, punishment severity increased as defendant attractiveness decreased

  • for unattractive jurors, high attractive and low attractive defendants were given lower sentences than medium attractive defendants

31
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describe the stuyd conducted by ziesel and diamond on juror selection

are jurors dismissed during juror selection any more or less likely to convict

examined juror votes in 12 criminal trials

persuaded dismissed jurros to stay in court and observe case

found:

  • overall lawyers are not much better than chance at selecting jurors who willr eturn the right verdict

  • defence lawyers tend to be better than prosecution lawyers

  • there is individual variation in lawyers success rates

32
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what is deliberation?

selection of a foreperson

likely to be male, middle aged, high status in community, professional, experienced with regard to jury service

participates in deliberation process more than other - 25-35% of speaking time

33
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what size are jurys?

usually 12 people

34
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describe aschs conformity research

  • mean conformity rate was 35%

  • 30% confomred on more than half the trials

  • group size made little difference

  • presence of one other dissenter reduced conformity, even if that dissenter was also incorrect

  • participants attributed their responses to their own misjudgement or the desire to fit in

35
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what are the 2 types of deliberation style, explain them

verdict driven - where the ultimate goal of the jury is to reach a verdict as quickly as possible

  • take a vote soon after foreperson is elected

  • focus discussion on key facts that are essential to reaching final outcome

evidence driven - where the jury concentrates on forming a logical story from the evidence

  • delay a vote until considerable discussion has taken place

  • deliberate longer and considers evidence more carefully

  • report greater satisfaction

36
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what deliberation style do juries prefer?

verdict driven, while the legal system would rather juries were evidence driven

37
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what is the group polarisation hypothesis?

the average post group response will tend to be more extreme in the same direction as the average pre-group response

38
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what is leniancy bias?

where the jury doesnt convict when the judge would have

39
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describe what happens at these numbers of favour of conviction

  • 7 or fewer jurors

  • 10 or more jurors

  • 8 or 9

  • jury will acquit

  • convict

  • final verdict is a toss up

40
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what is a majority verdict?

11 to 1 - this is possible but judges wont tell juries they are able to do that