Making a biased jury decision: Using the Steven Avery murder case to investigate potential influences in jury decision-making.

Abstract

The Netflix documentary Making a Murderer made national headlines by chronicling the conflict between Steven Avery and the Manitowoc County legal system. After spending 18 years in prison for a wrongful conviction, Avery was arrested again and found guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach. Due to the controversial nature of the case, and the popularity associated with the documentary, this event was used to evaluate several variables that may influence judgment on decisions of a defendant's guilt or innocence. Participants (N ϭ 905) were recruited online via several social media platforms and included in the study if they acknowledged watching the documentary. They then completed an online survey containing questionnaires related to demographics (e.g., gender, ethnicity), perceptual (e.g., punitive attitudes), and psychosocial characteristics (e.g., posttraumatic stress symptom severity). The majority of participants rated both Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, also convicted in association for the crime, as innocent. Female participants reported higher ratings of guilt than males. Lower ratings of guilt were associated with lower levels of socioeconomic status, greater religious involvement, higher posttraumatic stress symptoms, and greater negative attitudes toward the judicial system. Race and political beliefs were unrelated to ratings of guilt. These results support previous research suggesting psychological and demographic variables may influence jurors' judgments of guilt in murder trials. Implications concerning maintaining impartiality among jury peers and preventing implicit biases are discussed. Public Policy Relevance StatementDue to the controversial nature of the Steven Avery murder case, and the popularity associated with the Making a Murderer documentary, this event was used to evaluate several variables that may influence judgment on decisions of a defendant's guilt or innocence. The results support previous research suggesting psychological and demographic variables may influence jurors' judgments of guilt in murder trials. Implications concerning maintaining impartiality among jury peers and preventing implicit biases are discussed.

Do exonerees face housing discrimination? An email-based field experiment and content analysis.

“…Given the recent surge in popularity of movies (e.g., The Hurricane , Brian Banks , Conviction ) and docuseries (e.g., Making a Murderer , When They See Us ) inspired by wrongful convictions, perhaps the public is becoming aware that the terms “exonerated” and “wrongly convicted” imply innocence—not a guilty person released on a legal technicality. For instance, Rodriguez et al (2019) surveyed 905 viewers of the Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer and found evidence of the “media’s influence on the public at large” (p. 435). Similarly, Norris and Mullinix (2020) found that reading a narrative account of a wrongful conviction increased personal concern over wrongful convictions and support for police reform.…”

Understanding the Role of Linguistic Complexity in Famous Trial Outcomes

“…This includes exploring pre-trial attitudes (Griffin, 2016;Lundrigan et al, 2013;Peter-Hagene & Bottoms, 2017), testimony style (Conley et al, 1978;Freedman et al, 1996;Hildebrand-Edgar & Ehrlich, 2017;O'Barr, 1982), and the influence of social media (Bakhshay & Haney, 2018;Battaglia, 2012;Taylor & Tarrant, 2019). Furthermore, many factors have been examined related to what influences a juror member's verdict: factors related to jury decision making (Rodriguez et al, 2019;Weinstock & Flaton, 2004) and the race of the defendant (Leippe et al, 2016;Skolnick & Shaw, 2010;Sommers, 2007). Thus, there are many important elements within "common" (i.e., not-famous) trials that influence the outcome.…”

‘Angry and heartbroken for the failure of the system’

“…This subtheme focused on how exonerees are affected by their wrongful conviction postrelease, and has not previously been noted within the literature. This may be because the previous studies that analyzed online viewer reactions to American wrongful conviction media productions used unresolved cases (e.g., Kennedy, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2019;Stratton, 2019) within which the protagonists had not yet been released, or because other American wrongful conviction media productions of resolved cases may not have emphasized the reintegration difficulties that exonerees often experience by focussing on the survivor narrative.…”

“…For example, research has found that DNA evidence significantly increases the likelihood of an exoneration in cases of violent crimes, such as murder and sexual assault (Olney & Bonn, 2015). Comments about the impact of DNA evidence did not appear in the studies that analyzed viewer responses to other wrongful conviction media, such as Making a Murderer (Kennedy, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2019;Stratton, 2019). Whether this specific thematic element emerges in response to a wrongful conviction media production will likely depend on the extent to which DNA evidence is relevant to the cases portrayed.…”

“…More recently, studies investigating public reactions to released media productions featuring unresolved, potential wrongful conviction cases, however, have found positive affective and behavioral responses (e.g., Golob, 2017;Kennedy, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2019;Stratton, 2019). For instance, season one of the Serial podcast (Koenig, 2014) described the (then) unresolved wrongful conviction of Adnan Syed, who at 17 years old, was found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend, despite maintaining his innocence.…”