Avoid Bald Men and People with Green Socks? Other Ways to Improve the Voir Dire Process in Jury Selection

During jury selection, many courts adopt a minimal approach to voir dire questioning, asking a small number of close-ended questions to groups of prospective jurors and requiring prospective jurors to volunteer their biases. The Article describes research evidence showing that limited voir dire questioning is often ineffective in detecting juror bias. To improve the effectiveness of voir dire, the authors make four recommendations: (1) increase the use of juror questionnaires; (2) incorporate some open-ended questions; (3) expand the types of questions that are asked; and (4) allow attorneys to participate in voir dire

Celebrities in the Courtroom: Legal Responses, Psychological Theory and Empirical Research

This article sets out to answer a basic question about celebrities in the legal system: does celebrity status influence the outcome of a trial? Part I focuses on the legal aspects surrounding the treatment of celebrities in the courtroom. For example, there is some evidence that celebrities receive preferential treatment in court, while there is other evidence that celebrities are held to higher standards than non-celebrities. Part II examines psychological theories suggesting that status and authority influence jurors\u27 decision-making processes. In Part III, a review of relevant past psychological research provides an empirical basis to make conclusions about celebrity influence in the courtroom. Although there may be vivid accounts of celebrities being treated preferentially in the courts, the current experimental study demonstrates that celebrity defendants do not get differential treatment from non-celebrity defendants. As a result of this research, the article concludes that the legal system does not need to implement extreme legal measures (e.g., establishing special courts to protect celebrity defendants\u27 rights) that are designed to abate the alleged presence of celebrity influence in the court

How Voluntariness of Apologies Affects Actual and Hypothetical Victims' Perceptions of the Offender

Apologies are important in social interactions. Study 1 investigated participants’ reactions after being insulted by a confederate and receiving no apology, a voluntary apology, a coerced apology with consequences (i.e., explicitly coerced apology), or a coerced apology without consequences (i.e., implicitly coerced apology). Receiving any apology produced more positive perceptions of the offender and less serious recommended punishments than no apology. Study 2 replicated Study 1, except participants read about the insult and imagined being a victim (instead of being an actual victim as in Study 1). Actual victims distinguished between types of apologies while hypothetical victims did not. Results have implications for court-ordered apologies

The Influence of Accounts and Remorse on Mock Jurors' Judgments of Offenders

Defendants often provide accounts that minimize their responsibility for the accused offense. Jurors attribute responsibility to defendants and decide legal outcomes based on the given account. The current research examined the effects of accounts (i.e., excuse, justification, denial, and no explanation) and the defendant’s remorse display (i.e., remorseful, remorseless) on mock jurors’ judgments. Participants acquitted the defendant in the denial condition most often and recommended the most lenient punishment in the justification condition. The remorseful defendant was found guilty more frequently than the remorseless defendant in the no explanation and (marginally) excuse conditions. Limitations and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved