Instructing on death: Psychologists, juries, and judges.

The American legal system depends on judicial instructions to structure jury death penalty decisions and thus avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness. Some death penalty instructions, however, provide woefully inadequate guidance and ignore schemas that lead jurors to misconstrue instructions. Empirical research has just begun to document sources of misunderstanding and ways to improve communication. Psychological research can assist in reducing arbitrariness in death penalty decisions, but even optimal instructions may not produce constitutionally sufficient consistency. To be constitutional, capital punishment must be imposed according to a consistent set of standards. Simultaneously, juries must be free to consider in mitigation any relevant case or offender characteristic. It is far from clear that this constitutional conflict between standards and discretion can be resolved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Capital jury decision-making: The limitations of predictions of future violence.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Jurek v. Texas (1976) affirmed that capital juries are able to identify those capital offenders who will commit serious violence in the future. The capability of capital juries to accurately make these judgments as a means of deciding which capital offenders should receive the death penalty has been widely endorsed in both statute and case law, as well as embraced by jurors. A growing body of research on rates and correlates of prison violence, however, points to this confidence being misplaced. Prior investigations of the accuracy of these capital jury predictions, though limited in number, have found alarming error rates. The current study retrospectively reviewed the post-trial (M = 5.7 years) prison disciplinary misconduct of federal capital offenders (N = 72) for whom juries considered “future dangerousness” as an aggravating factor at sentencing. These jurors’ predictive performance was no better than random guesses, with high error (false positive) rates, regardless of the severity of the anticipated violence. In light of prior studies, it is concluded that juror predictions of future violence lack sufficient reliability to play a role in death penalty determinations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of jury size, evidence complexity, and note taking on jury process and performance in a civil trial.

A total of 567 jury-eligible men and women who were assigned to 6- or 12-person juries saw a videotaped civil trial that contained either 1 or 4 plaintiffs. Half the juries took notes, whereas the remainder did not. Six-person juries that did not take notes awarded multiple plaintiffs the highest amounts of compensation. Six-person juries also gave the highest punitive damages when they did not take notes and judged multiple plaintiffs. The punitive awards of 6-person juries were highly variable compared with 12-person juries. Multiple plaintiffs also increased the unpredictability of jury punitive awards. Twelve-person juries deliberated longer, recalled more probative information, and relied less than 6-person juries on evaluative statements and nonprobative evidence. Limitations and implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commonsense justice and jury instructions: Instructive and reciprocating connections.

"Commonsense justice" (CSJ) and "jury instructions" are conjoined to illustrate their instructive and reciprocating (i.e., diagnostic and therapeutic) connections, and, when taken together, their instructive potential for the law. It is argued here that "jury nullification," which appears as the antithesis of connectedness, is more likely the failure of "jury instructions," rather than the "failing of jurors." Insanity jurisprudence is the main venue for demonstrating the instructive and reciprocating connections, an area replete with insanity test instruction failures. What emerges from the empirical findings are CSJ's sophisticated constructs and prototypes, where types and gradations of culpability are found, yet where jurors' distinctions schemes that afford no opportunity for jurors to register their distinctions. With such a schema is created and tested, it succeeds. The implications of these instructive and reciprocating connections between CSJ and jury instructions—for other nettlesome areas of the law—are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Precious little guidance: Jury instruction on damage awards.

Jury instructions on damage awards are notoriously vague and ambiguous. As a result, awards are sometimes unexpected and seemingly illogical. In this article, the authors argue that jury instructions regarding damages are vague because the law of damages itself is purposefully ambiguous—allowing particularized justice across a variety of different circumstances. The authors review research on comprehension and application of substantive jury instructions related to damages and on procedural variations at trial (e.g., use of preinstruction, bifurcation, blindfolding jurors to various issues, special verdict forms, caps on damages, and instruction revision) that impact the substantive instructions that jurors receive from the judge. They comment on attempts at reforming jury instructions regarding damages and conclude that jurors' decision making on this difficult and emotional issue could be made more predictable by careful reforms at the trial level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Jury decision making: 45 years of empirical research on deliberating groups.

This article provides a comprehensive review of the empirical research on jury decision making published between 1955 and 1999. In total, 206 distinguishable studies involving deliberating juries (actual or mock) were located and grouped into 4 categories on the basis of their focal variables: (a) procedural characteristics, (b) participant characteristics, (c) case characteristics, and (d) deliberation characteristics. Numerous factors were found to have consistent effects on jury decisions: definitions of key legal terms, verdict/sentence options, trial structure, jury-defendant demographic similarity, jury personality composition related to authoritarianism/dogmatism, jury attitude composition, defendant criminal history, evidence strength, pretrial publicity, inadmissible evidence, case type, and the initial distribution of juror verdict preferences during deliberation. Key findings, emergent themes, practical implications, and future research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the Effects of Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty on Capital Sentencing Verdicts.

Attitudes toward the death penalty are multifaceted and strongly held, but little research outside of the death-qualification literature has focused on the role that such attitudes and beliefs play in jurors' capital sentencing verdicts. A single item is insufficient to properly measure attitudes toward the death penalty; therefore, a new 15-item, 5-factor scale was constructed and validated. Use of this scale in 11 studies of capital jury decision making found a large effect of general support of the death penalty on sentencing verdicts as well as independent aggravating effects for the belief that the death penalty is a deterrent and the belief that a sentence of life without parole nonetheless allows parole. These effects generally were not completely mediated by, nor did attitudes moderate the effects of, aggravating and mitigating factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Penrod and Hastie.

Reports an error in the original article by Penrod and Hastie (Psychological Review. Vol 87(2) Mar 1980, 133-159). On Page 142, two equations in the left-hand column were presented incorrectly. The corrected equations are presented here. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1980-20924-001.) A computer simulation of jury decision making is described and evaluated in terms of its ability to account for findings in 2 empirical studies. The computer model is based on elementary assumptions about the effects of relative jury faction sizes and variability in juror resistance to persuasion. The model is used to simulate decision making in empirical studies based on a murder case and a rape case. In the simulation of the 1st study, the model's performance is compared to empirical results from 6- and 12-member juries using unanimous and nonunanimous decision rules. Criteria to evaluate the model's performance are distributions of verdicts, deliberation times, rates of juror vote changing, and reversals of 1st-ballot majorities. The evaluation results support the theory underlying the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Judging the jury.

Reviews the book, Judging the jury by Valerie P. Hans and Neil Vidmar (1986). Judging the Jury has a primary emphasis on the jury system in the United States. As the authors point out, the judicial models of the U.S. and Canada are quite different. The Canadian system is more similar to the British tradition, while the American courts have departed from this tradition in a number of significant ways. There is a greater reliance on the jury for both civil and criminal matters in the U.S.; indeed, Canadian courts do not even allow trial by jury for less serious crimes. In general, the American model gives the jury considerably more power and discretion. The book's focus on the U.S. obviously limits its application in Canada. Given that one author is a Canadian scholar and the other has extensive experience in Canadian jury research, perhaps their next book will feature the Canadian jury system. This book provides an excellent background for social scientists interested injury research, but it will also be of interest to anyone interested in the administration of justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In the Supreme Court of the United States Lockhart v. McCree: Amicus curiae brief for the American Psychological Association.

Presents an amicus curiae brief prepared by the American Psychological Association and submitted to the US Supreme Court in its October 1985 term. The case concerned A. L. Lockhart, Director Arkansas Department of Correction, Petitioner, v. Ardia V. McCree, Respondent, and was filed in support of the petitioner. The issue is whether a "death-qualified" jury, one formed under standards developed in Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968), is more likely to convict a capital criminal defendant than a jury that—like juries formed in all noncapital criminal cases—also includes members of the venire who, because of absolute scruples against imposing the death penalty, are excluded from death-qualified juries. The authors critique the methodology and major empirical findings in the relevant research and evaluate the data in light of the States' 8 major criticisms of this research. Amicus demonstrates that the studies show that death-qualified juries are prosecution prone and unrepresentative of the community and that death qualification impairs proper jury functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On racial diversity and group decision making: Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations.

This research examines the multiple effects of racial diversity on group decision making. Participants deliberated on the trial of a Black defendant as members of racially homogeneous or heterogeneous mock juries. Half of the groups were exposed to pretrial jury selection questions about racism and half were not. Deliberation analyses supported the prediction that diverse groups would exchange a wider range of information than all-White groups. This finding was not wholly attributable to the performance of Black participants, as Whites cited more case facts, made fewer errors, and were more amenable to discussion of racism when in diverse versus all-White groups. Even before discussion, Whites in diverse groups were more lenient toward the Black defendant, demonstrating that the effects of diversity do not occur solely through information exchange. The influence of jury selection questions extended previous findings that blatant racial issues at trial increase leniency toward a Black defendant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-racial identification testimony and what not to do about it: A comment on the cross-racial jury charge and cross-racial expert identification testimony.

This article argues against adopting cross-racial jury instructions and against allowing cross-racial identification experts to testify at criminal trials. Problems of cross-racial identification evidence are not solved by requiring trial judges to tell juries that all cross-racial identifications are suspect, when that is not necessarily the case, nor by enlisting identification experts to testify at trial that, in general, cross-racial witnesses are less credible than others. Jury instructions and expert testimony on cross-racial identification are flawed insofar as they address generalities; neither can tell a jury anything about the particular identification at issue. Problems inherent in cross-racial identifications are instead best addressed by taking measures to prevent mistaken identifications in the first place, such as improving line-up procedures. Unlike special jury instructions or experts, improved line-up procedures could enhance the reliability of the identification itself and consequently the integrity of the verdict in a criminal trial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Litigation consulting: Expanding beyond jury selection to trial strategy and tactics.

Litigation consulting is an emerging discipline that is often confused with the more common jury consulting, jury selection, or even witness preparation, each of which is described and contrasted in this article. Litigation consultants are typically consulting psychologists who have expertise in jury thought and decision-making processes. They may be retained to help attorneys and insurance carriers assess the risks of litigation or the utility of settlement. They may also be used to help devise trial strategy and tactics, with a special understanding of how juries acquire, remember, and process trial information. This article describes the utility of a wide variety of litigation support services and consulting approaches that can be delivered by consulting and organizational psychologists and the potential ethical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Shouldn't we consider...?": Jury discussions of forbidden topics and effects on damage awards.

The Federal Rules of Evidence prohibit disclosure to civil jurors of information that is arguably related to their decision-making (e.g., that either party is insured). The basis for so-called "blindfolding" is that a jury might be biased by this information to alter its appraisal of the evidence to reach a desired verdict. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which mock juries in an automobile negligence case discuss several "silent factors" during deliberation (viz., insurance carried by the parties, the payment of attorneys' fees, and previous settlements between the plaintiff and other defendants) and the effects of such discussion on their compensatory damage award. We presented summaries of the evidence that varied in the severity of the plaintiff's injuries and the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct. These variables influenced judgments of liability and damage awards. Analysis of the content of jury deliberations regarding damages showed that, although nearly all juries talked about silent factors, the size of their damage awards was unrelated to the frequency of these discussions and that such discussion accounted for only a very small portion of the variance in awards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In the public interest: Intellectual disability, the Supreme Court, and the death penalty.

This article deals with a case that recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. The issues involved whether attorneys provided effective assistance to a person convicted of murder when no mitigating evidence was presented (either strategically or by neglect) to the jury concerning the intellectual disabilities of their client during the death penalty phase of the trial. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the death penalty for intellectually disabled individuals (mentally retarded) constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In this case the attorneys made a strategic decision not to present possibly mitigating evidence for the death penalty phase. The Supreme Court considered whether the appeals court abdicated its judicial review responsibilities. The results of psychological evaluations are presented, and the decisions of the Supreme Court are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Jury instructions: Past, present, and future.

This introduction provides an overview of the relevant issues addressed in this special theme issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, which is devoted to the topic of jury instructions. It begins with a brief history of jury instruction research. This is followed by a summary of the articles represented in this issue. Next, the strengths and weaknesses of the typical methodology used in jury instruction research are considered. Finally, the specific goals of this special issue are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of pertussis toxin on baclofen- and diphenhydramine-induced amnesia

In this article the contemporary problems of the jury and jury research are considered. This is timely, in view of the current Home Office Consultation Paper on the future of, and alternatives to, the jury in serious fraud trials, to which the author has submitted representations on its jury aspects. The research position is dominated by the prohibitions in the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The types of indirect research on jury deliberation which have been achieved within this stricture are outlined. In the USA, direct research of the jury is possible but, for historical reasons, it has been in television documentaries that direct observation of the deliberation process has been achieved. The first issue is discussed and the problems of inauthenticity, 'the observer effect', and of existential invalidity in 'mock' or 'shadow' juries are noted. Finally, the kinds of issues that could be addressed if licensed jury deliberation research was legalized, are proposed. It is also suggested that there are methods available to transcend the problems associated with American direct research.     

Flexible corrections of juror judgments: Implications for jury instructions.

The Flexible Correction Model (FCM, D. T. Wegener & R. E. Petty, 1997; D. T. Wegener, R. E. Petty, & M. Dunn, 1998) conceptualizes efforts at bias correction (i.e., attempts to remove influences that are perceived as illegitimate or unwanted) as guided by people's naive theories (perceptions) of the influences at work in that judgment setting. In this article, the authors present this model, discuss the general support for this model outside of courtroom judgment, and discuss a variety of implications of this model for courtroom judgment in general and for the impact of judges' instructions to juries in particular. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obedience and responsibility: A jury simulation.

Employed a jury simulation to explore observers' attributions of responsibility for destructive obedience with a total of 302 adults (198 experimental, 54 deliberating controls, and 50 nondeliberating controls). The 198 Ss in the main design viewed a slide and tape presentation of a military case resembling that of Lieutenant Calley, gave individual verdicts and other responses, deliberated in 6-person groups, and again gave individual judgments. As predicted, manipulating the rank of the defendant's superior officer from sergeant to captain increased the gap between superior's and subordinate's attributed responsibilities. The superior was also consistently rated as more responsible, and open-ended results suggest that he was responsible for both role- and causally related reasons, unlike the defendant. Restricting the available verdict options lowered convictions, but this effect was primarily due to the restricted-options/captain-superior cell. Sentence assigned was not affected by the manipulations. Both the deliberating and the nondeliberating control groups differed from experimentals. The former group differed on a number of adjective ratings, and the latter group yielded lower conviction rates, raising questions about generalizing from typical jury simulation designs. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)