5. Jury Decision Making - test notes PDF

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Jury Decision Making Jury Decision Making Decision-making in the forensic context What are classical decision-making situation?  Moral dilemmas  Crime-related decisions (-> on the scene)  Probation decisions (-> risk assessment)  Jury decisions Jury Decision-making Who can be part of a jury: Most people on the New Zealand electoral roll can be randomly selected for jury service every 2 years Some people can't serve on a jury:  Anyone with an intellectual disability  A member of parliament  The governor-general  A judge, community magistrate or visiting justice  A member of the parole board  A barrister or solicitor with a current practicing certificate  A just of the peace who hears cases in the district court  Employees Department of Corrections, New Zealand Police or Ministry of Justice If you are selected into the jury … you and the other 11 jurors must listen to all the evidence given during the trial Then you must look at the facts and decide whether the person accused of the crime is guilty or not After a trial, you can find out the defendant's sentence. You can also get counselling if you need it You shouldn't talk to anyone about what happened in the jury room, even after the trial has ended. Research in this field Primary effect/main finding: The verdict preferred by the majority of jurors on the first ballot in 90% of cases is the final verdict – i.e. the first verdict that is found is usually the one that wins Large Discrepancy: Bayesian probability algebraic weighing stochastic choice cognitive processes story line People look at the story line vs the scientific evidence Most frequently used framework:  Social Decision Schemes (SDS, Davis 1973) Are different ways that groups come to decisions - majority Methods and designs:  Experimental vs non-experimental: can manipulate the variables we want to if use an experiment rather than relying on specific cases  Field (observational) vs laboratory: advantage of real-life scenarios, not hypothetical however there's no control

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Different trial formats Different levels of realism: how real-life scenario is it Retrospective or prospective: imagine you were on that trial and look into data from past, prospective: imagine making decisions coming up

Jury decision making research from a behavioral/social point of view  Participant characteristics  Procedural characteristics  Case characteristics  Deliberation characteristics Research has found that all of these characteristics lead to the decision/conclusion made by a jury Which cognitive and affective processes could have an impact?  Affective states  Cognitive load  Contextual priming  Executive function All lead to the decision/conclusion Procedural characteristics • Wording of standard of proof: 'beyond reasonable doubt' vs. 'sure and certain' vs. 'balance of probabilities' - It was found that there was a higher acquittal rate for "beyond reasonable doubt", variations between 4 and 23% • Jury nullification (=right to disregard evidence and 'nullify' a law that seems unfair) - Reminded of nullification capability increases use of it • Instructions about limits: telling the jury what they CANNOT do increases that behavior e.g. making use of pretrial media information • Well-informed jury: explaining terms and procedures does not generally improve decisions • Jury size: 6 person juries take less time to reach verdict and gave larger penalties than 12 person juries, but are also more variable in decisions • Trial structure: juries responsible for determining both guilt and sentence are more likely to convict than juries responsible for determining only guilt Social influence on decision making Social conformity: 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participant never conformed. In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer - Asch 1956 Moral decision-making task: Making moral and semantic decisions about sentences that either contained direct bodily harm or not E.g. A crosses the very busy street Vs. A never paid the money back

Results:

Moral > semantic decision-making Semantic > moral (blue)  Areas in subcortical and prefrontal cortex that are involved in processing moral compared to semantic decisions Participant characteristics Jury demographics:  Male dominated -> longer sentences to male defendants  Specific case: all female jury in rape trial -> higher rates of convictions  Racially similar defendants -> longer sentences Juror personality traits  Mean dogmatism score within juries correlated with sentence length  The higher on self-centered impulsivity, the higher the probability to endorse death penalty Juror characteristics: guilt aversion

Trust game Player B (receives some money) decides how much money to return to Player A

Decisions that minimize anticipated guilt: Anterior cingulate cortex and insula Decisions to maximize material payoffs: Ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and dorsomedial PFC Juror attitudes:  Higher levels of moral reasoning related to lower rates of liability (Bernard et al. 1985) Juror experience:  Number of experienced jurors positively correlated with more convictions on the primary charge Defendant characteristics:  Gender: females get lower sentences  Personality  Prior criminal record: higher conviction rates if record is known  Defendant showing remorse: no clear results  Psychopathic personality traits: more punitive sentencing Victim characteristics:  Stranger: higher rate of death penalties  No clear relationship with age Cox et al. 2010 Participants characteristics: violence and psychopathic traits interaction Task: Reading a case vignette and decide on sentence vignettes differed in presentation of defendant in violence and psychopathic characteristics Results: More death sentences for cases where they were described as highly violent and psychopathic Huge variability in terms of psychopathy - matters more that there was a lot of violence Low violence conviction - matters more if they are highly psychopathic for a conviction High violence and high psychopathic then death sentence Case characteristics Strength of evidence related to verdicts (both criminal and civil cases) Pretrial negative publicity related to increased verdicts

Expert testimony:  Use of neuroscientific evidence related to higher convictions  Mental health information Case characteristcs: mental health Presentation of mental health Deliberation characteristics  Initial verdict preference  Strongest finding in jury decision making research – is that the initial verdict which is found is usually the one that wins

Multi-Level theory - one model trying to put it all together

Summary Jury decisions are influenced by a series of factors  Characteristics of the trial  Characteristics of the participants involved  Procedural aspects Decision making processes are complex and depend on internal and external variables An overarching approach could be the multilevel theory...