The Perception of a Jailhouse Informant in a Sexual Assault Case

The influence of jailhouse informant testimony on jury deliberation.

“…For example, jailhouse informant testimony (in either condition) would lead to lower defendant credibility and less sympathy for the defendant, resulting in more guilty verdicts than when no jailhouse informant testimony was presented. Mediation involving perceptions of the defendant in a jailhouse informant testimony trial has been found in other investigations (for example, Golding et al, 2020;Le Grand et al, 2021).…”

“…The cognitive networks used Pathfinder analysis (Schvaneveldt, 1990) to formally represent the most important concepts (and their relationship) that mock jurors discussed with their fellow jury members (Cooke, 1992;Johnson et al, 1994;Schvaneveldt, 1990;Zemla & Austerweil, 2018). Thus, like previous studies that have used cognitive networks to represent the thinking of individual mock jurors in various types of victimization cases (for example, sexual assault: Golding et al, 2020;alcohol-facilitated rape: Le Grand et al, 2021;stalking: Magyarics at al., 2015; adult rape), the present cognitive networks offered an additional measure about how mock jurors reasoned in their specific case.…”

“…Second, to better understand how the testimony of a jailhouse informant influences deliberations, cognitive networks of mock juries were constructed using Pathfinder analysis (for example, Golding et al, 2020; Le Grand et al, 2021; Magyarics at al., 2015). Pathfinder analysis is a psychometrically established scaling technique used to derive and formally represent networks from various forms of data including text (Cooke, 1992; Schvaneveldt, 1990; Zemla & Austerweil, 2018).…”

“…The use of jailhouse informants by the justice system, and the concern about these witnesses providing unreliable testimony (likely due to receiving incentives), has led to a recent surge in psychology and law research investigating the impact of jailhouse informants on legal decision-making (see Neuschatz & Golding, in press). The research has investigated both the impact of jailhouse informants (Neuschatz et al, 2007) and the underlying factors that might influence mock jurors who hear this testimony (DeLoach et al, 2020; Golding et al, 2020; Wetmore et al, 2020). This research has only investigated legal decision-making at the individual mock juror level, using primarily murder cases (but see Golding et al, 2020; Le Grand et al, 2021; Wetmore et al, 2014; for other types of cases).…”

“…The research has investigated both the impact of jailhouse informants (Neuschatz et al, 2007) and the underlying factors that might influence mock jurors who hear this testimony (DeLoach et al, 2020; Golding et al, 2020; Wetmore et al, 2020). This research has only investigated legal decision-making at the individual mock juror level, using primarily murder cases (but see Golding et al, 2020; Le Grand et al, 2021; Wetmore et al, 2014; for other types of cases). These studies have led to several significant findings.…”