In 2015, the National Commission on Forensic Science (NCFS) affirmed that forensic examiners should draw conclusions solely from the physical evidence and not from any other evidence in the case. A suspect's criminal history, confession or alibi do not involve assessment of the physical evidence, and examiners are urged to be blind to such task-irrelevant information to prevent biasing their conclusions about the evidence. While over 70% of forensic examiners believe they can mitigate any bias from task-irrelevant case information simply by ignoring their expectations (Kukucka et al., 2017), scientific research overwhelming has found that knowledge of task-irrelevant case information

To prevent the biasing influence of information obtained outside the courtroom, courts often issue instructions to jurors that limit or prohibit certain activities during the trial and when deliberating. Despite these instructions, internet-based juror misconduct occurs. Carstens Namie (2019) examined the effectiveness of different types of judicial instructions about use of the internet and digital communications (e.g., social media, blogs, email, texting) on internet-based juror misconduct....

Experts differ both in their expertise and their interpersonal style. An expert can offer higher or lower quality evidence than other experts, and can have a more or less likeable style than other experts. How does likeability affect an expert's persuasiveness? Does a likeable expert make weak evidence more persuasive? Is strong evidence less persuasive when presented by a dislikeable expert? Is a dislikeable expert with strong evidence more persuasive than a likeable expert with weak evience? Younan and Matire (2021) investigated the impact of expert evidence quality and expert likeability on expert persuasiveness in two studies....

Attorneys are perceived as credible or non-credible trial attorneys based on the behaviors they enact during trial. Attorney credibility at trial has been assessed by behavioral measurement of an attorney's persuasion, critical listening, oral expression, physical presence, interpersonal interaction, speech clarity, organization, adaptability, synthesis and social perceptiveness ... The issue is this: How does attorney credibility matter? For example: Does attorney credibility affect verdicts? Do credible attorneys make weak cases stronger? Do strong cases win even if the attorney is non-credible? Wood and colleagues (2019) examined the relationship of attorney credibility and evidence strength on mock jurors' civil litigation verdicts