The impact of graphic photographic evidence on mock jurors' decisions in a murder trial: Probative or prejudicial?

Abstract

Although courts in the United States and Canada regularly admit graphic photographs into evidence, little research exists on whether such evidence prejudices the decisions of jurors. Mock jurors (N = 720) read a detailed trial transcript of a murder trial, and were either presented with color, black and white, or no photographs of an actual murder victim. The proportion of guilty verdicts in the color and the black and white photograph conditions was approximately double that in the control condition. Both groups were more likely than the control condition to report emotional distress and physical reactions in response to viewing the photographs. By contrast, there were few differences between groups concerning the extent to which participants felt that the photographs influenced verdicts. Participants in all conditions equally felt that they had acted fairly. Implications surrounding the admissibility of graphic photographic evidence, and the seeming inability of participants to recognize that their judgments were biased, are discussed.

Visual evidence

“…For example, showing participants photos of the accident victim in a negligence case significantly increased damage awards but not measures of the defendant's culpability (Oliver & Griffitt, 1976;Whalen & Blanchard, 1982). More recently, showing participants either color or black-and-white explicit autopsy photos (Douglas, Lyon, & Ogloff, 1997) or either neutral or grue-…”

“…It is also worth observing that whatever the effects of visual evidence on legal judgments, the decision makers themselves may not be aware of them (Douglas et al, 1997;M. A. Dunn et al, 2006;Ray, 2001).…”

“…(a) Features of the visual evidence: medium or format (e.g., photograph, video, animation, tos, for instance, they became more anxious, anguished, disturbed, and shocked (Douglas et al, 1997) or angry (Bright & Goodman-Delahunty, 2006), and mediational analyses showed that these negative emotions made them more likely to vote to convict the defendant. In one negligence case study, mock jurors' negative emotional responses to a video reenactment of a child's drowning were correlated with lesser attributions of responsibility to the plaintiff, but it was not shown that the emotional responses mediated those attributions (Fishfader et al, 1996).…”

The Role of the Photograph in the Application of Forensic Anthropology and the Interpretation of Clandestine Scenes of Crime

“…The trial court judge must at all times balance the potential importance and significance of the photographic evidence against the negative impact it may have on the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings; that is, does its probative value outweigh any prejudicial impact? (Douglas et al, 1997;Robinson, 2007). The most common examples of photographs to be rejected by the courts are those of severe gunshot injury (see Robinson, 2007) or entomological activity (the use of arthropods in the estimation of time-since-death, which invariably requires photographs of such insects in situ on decomposing bodies; see Greenberg and Kunich, 2002).…”

“…Both wet-film and digital photographs are regularly utilised by the courts today, but one could argue that actually the courts themselves accept that crime scene photographs are not objective -if they were, one wonders how they could prejudice proceedings as Douglas et al (1997) argue above with regard to the vivid content of the photograph? There is an innate acknowledgement of the power and agency of such photographs when used in these circumstances that undermines the objective veneer placed on such photographs by that very same court system.…”