Week 6 Post 1 - The Trial

Defendant - Person accused (charged) of committing an offense (crime)
Notes on watching trial:

• Prosecution: seek to make people feel bad for women murdered, provides intense detail and information to make people feel for her when speaking for jury 
• when speaking about defendant : "as a jury you have to look beyond the nice things he has done and his good looks because every nice thing he has done slipped away when he murdered Janine Jenker" 
• Defense: "My client is not guilty, I want you to think about a different story where you do all the rights things but it still comes tumbling down for being blamed for something you did not do"
• Information from autopsy is presented and testifies, thinks attacker is left-handed
• Women sees defendant on tv and comes forward with assault story (shares testimony)

Jury Decision-making 

Jurors role is to decide facts of case, judge decides matter of law 

Look at how people use common sense to make decisions- schemas, stereotypes and heuristics (jurors are people and affected by all of these!)

Stereotype is a specific example of a schema, based on prior knowledge, theories in our head for what things are like 

heuristic- quick decision or short cuts 

Cognitive Story Model (pennigton and Hastie) - says jurors construct narrative stories during the trial to organize and interpret evidence, they then evaluate evidence in line with the story

Media may influence through pre-trial publicity

Dual process models- think about jury trial as a series of persuasive messages 

Elaboration likelihood model- Describes 2 distinct modes or routes to persuasion- central (more effortful thinking and elaboration, more pros and cons) and peripheral routes (peripheral involves less thinking, more persuasion based on your knowledge, if you have a positive stereotype of person used when there is little time to think and issue is not as important to you)

Australia Institute of Criminology report- majority of convicted murderers are male, unemployed, offend alone and do not have a known record of criminal history 

Extra-Legal Factors 

Physically Attractive defendants are likely to receive a lighter sentence 

Rates in the United StatesStereotypes role in this?

Jones and Kaplan in 2003 found when the defendant matched race-based expectations for the type of crime allegedly committed, mock jurors sought less additional information to help them make a decision, implying they simply relied more on their pre-existing stereotypes not done in other cases, similar effects happen in regards to socio-economic status 

Main Influences on Jurors : Race, Socio-economic status, gender and physical attractiveness 

Dean and colleagues find in 2000 men are more likely to be found guilty of specific crimes such as assault and theft or more violent crimes (stereotype of more aggressive and assertive) 

Experts may come in when knowledge beyond common sense is required, coming in to provide evidence