Jury Decision Making Test 2

Suppose you were a potential juror. The trial has not begun and no admissable evidence has been entered into the court. At this point, if you were asked on a scale of 1-100 “how guilty do you think the defendent is?” what should be your answer?

why can this situation be tricky?

your answer should be 0. we as citizens are always guilty until proven innocent and without any evidence, there is nothing to tarnish that innocence. If you had any answer higher than 0 this could be due to biasing (potentially media biasing where you learn about the individual before the case starts in court)

this situation can be tricky because media bias can be very strong and make it hard to view someone as 100% innocent. Most people, if they were put on a jury for Diddy’s case, would have some presumed amount of guilt due to all the allegations that have been circling around online and in the media.

news headlines focus on ______________

sensational stories

what does it mean when we say that the media focuses on sensationalised crime?

It means that the media emphasizes dramatic and shocking aspects of crime stories, often exaggerating details to attract attention and provoke emotional responses, which can influence public perception and juror bias.

where is the primary source of sensation for the media and news?

the criminal justice system

• they get the most interesting cases from sensationalised crime, follow the most sensationalised and high-profiled cases in court, wait outside with cameras and mics waiting for a verdict, etc.. the news loves to use the CJS as its primary source of sensation

*what were the 3 sources of media that could influence jurors that we talked about in class

1. new media

   • this can be TV news stations, newspapers, news websites, news articles, or formal news accounts on social media

2. reality television

   • NOTE: while this doesn’t necessarily cause jurors to have bias against a specific case, it biases how they think the CJS works and this can cause them to be biased jurors as a result.

     • this includes any shows about police practices, such as Cops, America's Most Wanted, The first 48 hours, etc…

     • this can also include shows that cover courtroom practices, like Judge Judy

   • All of the shows mentioned above, while they may appear like they are representing the CJS accurately, are ofc used to provide entertainment, so they show sensationalized cases and skew how these systems are perceived so they are not boring to the viewer (which is often not accurate to how the CJS really is).

     • if we used Judge Judy as our reference for how courts act in the CJS, we’d think judges ordinarily call ppl in the courtroom names, insult their intelligence, and that courts are always dramatic and interesting.

3. fictional media

even if someone doesn’t know much about the legal CJS, they may still develop attitudes and biases on the legal system based off of ___________________

media portrayals and sensationalized crime stories.

what are the 2 ways that news boradcasts can be racially biased?

1. they can be racially biased in the portraial of the roles of the suspects and victims

2. they can be racially biased in the types of stories they choose to air

what is the CSI effect and the reverse CSI effect. how do they differ?

The CSI effect refers to the phenomenon where jurors have unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence due to crime shows like CSI, believing that such evidence is always available, used, and decisive (in particular, the use of DNA).

The reverse CSI effect occurs when jurors focus on the testimony of specific witnesses (often expert forensic witnessess) and give that said witness more credibility than is deserved (as a result of watching shows like CSI where the expert witnessess are always accurate). This leads the juror to place the testimony of the witness above other evidence, potentially skewing their judgment.

“The reverse CSI effect suggests jurors, influenced by crime shows, may place excessive weight on forensic evidence, potentially leading to wrongful convictions where the defendant should have been acquitted” - google

*the REVERSE CSI effect is also known as what?

the defense effect.

research on the CSI and reverse CSI effect is ____________. this is because these effects are more of a _______________ rather than _____________________

lacking evidence for a causal relationship (mixed findings);

school of thought;

an emperically true fact.

*lay video eviedence is also called ________________

sousveillance (said like sous chef) or phone evidence.

the professor stated that forensic bankers are claiming that ___________ is a currently sensationalised topic

brexit

in real life it is extremely rare for _____________________

useful DNA evidence to be collected. its only used in like 7% of homicides investigations in NYC. this is something that sensationalised media has misled us to believe that DNA is used all the time

people who _________________ tend to just generally say that they view ________________ as being ________________. They also say tend to perceive _____________________________________________, so they are more likely to say that _________________________.

view a lot of news media;

black people and people in minority groups;

more violent than white people;

people in minority groups as being more criminal and culpable than white people;

they are guilty

consuming lots of news and media tends to make us more ____________

stereotypical and biased.

what do jurors tend to do with pre-trial information?

they misremember it as information that was brought up in trial as legitimate evidence. This can lead to biased judgments and affect their decision-making process.

the media tends to be bias towards the side of the __________

prosecution.

one study showed that the more often participants watched crime shows and the news, the higher they_____________

preceived their risk of sexual victimization to be (this relationship was also seen to be higher in women with higher socio-economic statuses)

how often was DNA evidence used in CSI episodes?

often, it was seen in 84% of the episodes

(also when they went to look for DNA, it was found 93% of the time… so almost every time DNA was left in CSI)

what is the trend with video evidence in the court? what can be the attributing factor for this?

it has grown exponentially in recent years

this can be attirbuted to the term known as “evidence variety”, which means an increase in the amount of unstaged and unedited footage of legally relevant events that are being captured in their performance

what is survailance evidence variety

The increase in diverse types of surveillance footage, including police body cams, security cameras, dash cams, etc…

how do jurors view video or survailance evidence?

they view it as credible and persuasive

what is “processing fluency”

The ease with which information is processed, often influencing jurors' perceptions of video evidence and its credibility.

“people can mentally process visual evidence or visual stimuli more quickly and more efficiently than verbal evidence/ stimuli.”

video evidence/surveillance evidence has a high degree of processing fluency, when witnesses talking in scholarly jargon may have a lower degree of processsing fluency to lay people.

what is one issue with video evidence?

it can build a sense of overconfidence in jurors.

what are the 3 detrimental influences of video evidence?

1. Naive realism (The belief that people see the world objectively, leading to the assumption that others who disagree are uninformed or biased.)

2. overconfidence (they feel overconfident cuz they “seen the video with their own eyes”

3. overvaluing (they put too much stock into the video evidence)

what is naive realism?

The belief that people see the world objectively, leading to the assumption that others who disagree are uninformed or biased.

what is motivated cognition?

The tendency for people's beliefs and desires to influence their interpretation of information, leading to biased reasoning.

what is sentence/linguistic restoration?

The phenomenon where individuals unconsciously fill in missing or ambiguous information in spoken or written language based on their expectations and prior knowledge.

what is a rational juror and what is the expectation of a rational juror?

A rational juror is an individual who approaches the trial process with reasoned judgment, critically evaluating evidence and arguments. The expectation is that they will base their decisions on logical reasoning, impartiality, and adherence to the law.

*they are expected to be almost “robotic” and not use emotional influence

*what were the 6 mechanisms of emotion and how do they differ from one another?

1. affective forecasting

   • this is a cognitive process where individuals predict how an outcome will make them feel and then adjust their behaviour and decisions accordingly to help them reach the outcome that will make them feel positive.

     • for example, if we think that we would feel really bad seeing the defendant get a guilty verdict, we will try to alter our behaviour in order to prevent this (like vote not-guilty or cognitively shift our perception to deem the defendant less guilty)

2. affect as feedback

   • this is a process where individuals use their current emotional state to inform their evaluations (through the 2 systems) and decisions. this is cuz emotions provide cues that influence how people interpret situations, often guiding their choices unconsciously. specifically, our emotions dictate which processing system our brain will use:

     1. system 1 (affective and heuristic)
        - processes information through instinct (often using stereotypes
        - if we are in a positive mood we will use system 1

     2. system 2 (deliberate and analytical)
        - takes more time, more effort, and processess analytically.
        - if we are in a negative mood we will use system 2

3. affect as cognitive appraisal

   • this is how specific emotions can lead to distinct judgements that cause us to use either system 1 or system 2 to make our future perceptions. this differs by “affect as feedback” as it is not using the “current emotional state” to dictate if you should use system 1 or 2, but rather is determined by the emotions felt as a juror

     • anger → system 1 (affective heuristic) processing

     • fear/sadness → system 2 (deliberate and analytical processing)

4. immediate emotion

   • we are using our immediate emotion that is cropping to make an automatic informed determination of the risk of a specific outcome occurring.

5. disgust-driven moral judgement

   • this is when we feel disgust and anger and it causes us to assume that a moral value has been violated (which causes us to be more punitive to someone)

6. emotion regulation

   • this is the ability for one to acknowledge their current emotions and manage them. IF you can manage your anger for example, and manage this, you can think more critically and be less punitive (allowing you to use system 2). if you cannot manage your emotions and are caught up in anger or hatred, you may vote with emotions and be more punitive (using system 1)

     • emotion regulation increases the use of system 2 processing

AAAIDE

by default, are we using system 1 or system 2.

The default mode of thinking is to rely on system 1, which processes information quickly and instinctively, while system 2 is engaged under more negative emotional states.

what are individualist and collectivist cultures. how do they differ?

individualist:

• focuses on autonomy, independence, self-sufficiency, and uniqueness

collectivist:

• focuses on social aspects and selflessness, working as a group, doing what is best for society

• familes and communities have a central role in collectivistic cultures

*What were the research findings on individualist and collectivist cultures in the court?

• collectivist cultures were less likely to conform to the views of the group (their juror peers)

• collectivist incorporated multiple arguments and had more multidimensional deliberation

• collectivist cultures were more likely to acknowledge mitigating factors

• there were NO differences in final sentencing between individualist and collectivist cultures

  • this is a good thing!

*what did the findings of a study show regarding the influence of religion on guilt ratings?

• if the defendant (alleged offender) was Christian, they were found to be more guilty than Muslim defendants (alleged offenders)

  • this could be due to white guilt

• if the victim was Muslim, the defendant (alleged offender) would receive higher guilt ratings

  • The victims’ religion only affected guilt ratings if the defendant was Muslim

what is victim blaming?

The tendency to hold victims accountable for the harm they suffered, often based on their behaviors or circumstances surrounding the incident. This can lead to further victimization and stigma, particularly in contexts like sexual assault or violent crime.

*in the study that focused on delay intervals (2 months, 10 years, 20 years) that victims reported sexual assault, what did we notice?

• the shorter the delay, the better it looked for the victim (aka, the shorter the delay the higher the guilty verdict for the sexual offender)

• delays in reporting due to family concerns (aka the victim delayed because they were scared that their family would find out), allowed jurors to view the victim more favourably than if they delayed for other reasons, which rendered an increase in guilty verdicts for the sexual offender

in the study focusing on victim intoxication and jury decision-making, what findings were observed?

• Alcohol is seen as detrimental to victim credibility, BUT intoxication did NOT have an impact on rape/sexual assault verdicts

*what are the 7 guidelines for AI use in the court?

1. Protect Judicial Independence

   • this means that individual courts are individual from one another and maintain some level of autoonomy in the rules they adopt. Implementing AI should not be a state governed thing that removes the court’s autonomy

2. Use AI consistently with coure values and ethical rules

   • the court has several ethical values held (like independence, integrity, respect, transparency, fairness, etc…) and the implementation of AI should not go against the preexisting courtroom core ethical values

3. Have regard to the legal aspects of AI use

   • courts should be aware of the source material that is used to train the AI systems, and we cannot have AI giving up sensitive case information and ending up on 3rd party sites which would break privacy laws

4. AI tools must be subject to security standards

   • we must protect AI and the private data it holds from hacks, security threats, and tampering. to do this, we must put AI through a set of security standards within a robust cubersecurity program.

5. AI tools must provide understandable explanations for decision-making

   • AI can be used to improve court efficiency, but we must be able to explain the outcomes provided by AI systems. we CANNOT blindly trust the robot to be correct, it needs to explain its justification of its actions

6. Courts must track AI impact

   • we need to know if AI is actually effective and working to reduce backlog. this is like quality assurance, we need to know that the AI is doing what we set out to do with it.

7. Program of education and user support

   • judges must have proper training for working with AI

   • we need court staff that can run/fix Ai and make sure that AI runs smoothly throughout trials.

PUHAACP

*what are the benefits and limitations/risks of an all AI jury?

benefits:

• help reduce the backlog of cases

• AI has no biases so there would be 100% impartiality behind AI jury verdicts (possibly also making the Voir Dire process obsolete which would further speed up trials)

• we could have AI jurors working 24h a day

• we could get decisions with AI 7x faster

limitations:

• AI is not perfect and we don’t know if it will ever be 100% perfect

• Jury tampering

  • AI is vulnerable to hackers and it could potentially be easier to tamper with AI jurors than human jurors

• Bias

  • AI and their source information are made by people. Algorithmic bias or an error in training the AI with good source information can cause the AI to have built in human bias

• Lack of Conscience

  • AI has no moral judgements. the whole point of a jury is to add a moral layer to the courts and ensure that the courts are operating morally (among other factors). AI cannot ensure this.

*how much faster would AI juries be than humans at coming to decisions/verdicts

(this might be the test questions from the review that involved a “number”)

7x faster as they can work 24 hours a day

*what were the 3 listed limitations of AI juries?

1. Jury tampering

   • AI is vulnerable to hackers and it could potentially be easier to tamper with AI jurors than human jurors

2. Bias

   • AI and their source information are made by people. Algorithmic bias or an error in training the AI with good source information can cause the AI to have built in human bias

3. Lack of Conscience

   • AI has no moral judgements. the whole point of a jury is to add a moral layer to the courts and ensure that the courts are operating morally (among other factors). AI cannot ensure this.

crime TV dramas are said to be inaccurate due to the exaggerated role of _______ evidence in criminal cases

DNA

when exposed to video evidence, jurors believe themselves to be a “virtual witness of events” (T/F)

True

what does it means when jurors say the feel like a “virtual witness of events”

Jurors perceive themselves as directly experiencing the events depicted in video evidence, which can significantly influence their judgements and decision-making processes during a trial.

According to the ‘Disgust-driven moral judgements’ mechanism of emotion, emotional responses manifest as a result of a _______________

perceived violation of social norms

Unlike human juries, proponents of AI juries argue that an AI jury would be less susceptible to the misinterpretation of the law (T/F)

true.