Legal Psychology

Gerhard Ohrband

ULIM University, Moldova

10th lecture

Jury decision-making

Course structure

Lectures: • 1. Introduction into Legal Psychology – Theories of crime • 2. Correctional treatment• 3. Victimology• 4. Police psychology• 5. Testimony assessment• 6. Criminal responsibility• 7. Judicial judgments• 8. Psychological assessment of families

Course structure

Seminars:9. Eyewitness testimony10. Jury decision-making11. Child abuse12. Prostitution13. Rape14. Tax evasion15. Stereotypes and prejudices in the law system

Jury decision-making

• Which law systems do use juries for deliberating on someone’s guilt or innocence?

• Example: 1995 – murder trial of O.J. Simpson

• Western societies: the jury as a symbol for democracy, fairness and justice

Impact

Case:

• “The 1992 Los Angeles riots, which left 50 dead and 2,300 injured, were sparked by the perception that an all-white jury had delivered an unjust verdict of “not guilty” in the trial of white police officers accused of beating a black motorist”

Influence upon juries

Juries are groups and can therefore be influenced by all kinds of group processes like

• Decision schemes• Social loafing• Social influence• Group polarisation• Leadership• Groupthink

Influence upon juries

Characteristics of the defendant or the victim • Physical attractive defendants are more likely to

be acquitted or to receive a lighter sentence• Social group membership: blacks are more likely

to receive prison sentences, and people who murder a white are more likely than those who murder a black to receive the death penalty (11.1 % versus 4.5 %)

Influence upon juries

Laws and penalties• Harsh laws with stiff penalties (e.g., the death

penalty) tend to discourage juries from convicting – quite the reverse of the intention of many legislators who introduce such laws.

• Whether jurors do or do not support the death penalty has a reliable but small impact on the verdict: between 1 and 3 verdicts out of 100 would be affected.

Information processing

Juries have to deal with enormous amounts of information presented in court.

Research evidence:• Recency effect: information delivered later in the

trial is more heavily weighted in decision making.• Inadmissible evidence (evidence that is given by

witnesses or interjected by counsel, but is subsequently ruled inadmissible for procedural reasons by the judge) is also not disregarded by the jury – it continues to influence deliberation.

Information processing

Suboptimal decision making

Complex evidenceEnormous amounts

of evidenceComplex laws

and legal jargon

Leadership

Juries always nominate one of their members to be the spokesperson or foreman. This person has a key role in guiding the jury to its verdict, as they occupy the role of leader.

Research shows, the foreman is most likely to be someone

• of higher socioeconomic status,• with previous experience as a juror,• or who simply occupies the seat at the head of

the table at the first sitting of the jury.Discussion: Are these necessarily indicators

for the best person for the job?

Age, education and gender

• Jurors who are older, less well educated and of lower socio-economic status are more likely to vote to convict.

• Men and women do not differ, except that women are more likely to convict defendants in rape trials.

• Jurors who score high on authoritarianism favour conviction when the victim is an authority figure (e.g., a police officer).

• Jurors who are more egalitarian have the opposite bias of favouring conviction when the defendant is, say, a police officer.

Initial preferences

• If two thirds or more of the jurors initially favour one alternative, then that is likely to be the jury’s final verdict.

• Without such a majority, a hung jury is the likely outcome.

• The two-thirds majority rule is modified by a tendency for jurors to favour acquittal, particularly where evidence is not highly incriminating.

Jury size

• Larger juries, of say twelve rather than six members, are more likely to empanel representatives of minority groups.

• If minority or dissident viewpoints matter, they have more impact in larger than smaller juries.

Synthesis: factors affecting jury decision making

LeadershipWithin the

jury

Laws and penalties

Age, educationand gender

of the jurors

Initial preferences

Jury size

Information processing

Characteristicsof the defendant

or the victim

Jury decisionmaking