Jurors' Responses To Unusual Inadmissible Evidence

Abstract

Two experiments investigated jurors' ability to disregard unusual inadmissible evidence. Participants listened to an audio recording of a theft trial. Those in four experimental conditions heard critical testimony favoring the prosecution, which was ruled either admissible or inadmissible and which contained either neutral details or details that were unusual in terms of semantic content (Experiment 1) or form (Experiment 2). Control jurors received no critical evidence. Exposure to unusual rather than neutral evidence led jurors to see the defendant as more guilty but only if that evidence was inadmissible instead of admissible. Additionally, jurors remembered unusual evidence better than neutral evidence. The results are consistent with Wegner's ironic-process theory and suggest that attempts at thought suppression are less successful if the forbidden information is especially memorable.

Is justice blind or myopic? An examination of the effects of meta-cognitive myopia and truth bias on mock jurors and judges

“…As for the judges, since they do not receive feedback on their decisions unless they are reviewed by appellate courts, it is unclear how their training and professional expertise might make them any less bias-prone (see Spellman, 2007). Several experimental studies indeed suggest that jurors' and judges' decision-making is driven by biases and heuristics just like lay decision-making (Daftary-Kapur, Dumas & Penrod, 2010;Kassin & Sommers, 1997;Lieberman & Arndt, 2000;Pickel, Karam & Warner, 2009).…”

“…Judges know that inadmissible evidence should be ignored in a trial and clearly instruct jurors to do so. Yet, experimental studies consistently show that both jurors and judges are affected by such inadmissible evidence (Daftary-Kapur et al, 2010;Kassin & Sommers, 1997;Landsman & Rakos, 1994;Lieberman & Arndt, 2000;Pickel et al, 2009;Wistrich et al, 2005).…”

The misjudgment of criminal responsibility

“…There is also evidence that, in making decisions about a defendant's liability for negligence, mock jurors are influenced by the severity of the injury the defendant caused (Greene, Johns, & Bowman, 1999) and by the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct when awarding damages (Greene, Johns, & Smith, 2001). Research also suggests that juries actively, though not necessarily consciously, disregard judicial instructions, fail to understand them, and consider inadmissible evidence to which they are exposed (Fluery-Steiner, 2004;Liberman & Arndt, 2000;Pickel, Karam, & Warner, 2009). Juries also fail to understand the meaning and application of aggravating and mitigating factors in capital sentencing (Haney, Sontag, & Costanzo, 1994).…”

Advances in Psychology and Law

“…For instance, jurors properly ignored "normal" evidence, but not "abnormal" evidence (e.g., typical versus atypical semantic content and delivery; Pickel, Karam, & Warner, 2009 ), suggesting that memorable information is harder to ignore. In another example, jurors complied with an instruction to disregard when the judge's reasoning was that the evidence was inadmissible because it was unreliable , but they did not comply when the reasoning was that the evidence was inadmissible because of a legal technicality (i.e., the evidence was illegally obtained; Kassin & Sommers, 1997 ;Sommers & Kassin, 2001 ).…”