Jurors commonly are allowed to take notes during trial. Dann and colleagues (2004, 2020) investigated the content of notes taken by mock jurors and examined how jurors take notes about simple and complex evidence. While most of the notes taken by the mock jurors involved factual or evidentiary matters, nearly a quarter referred to judicial instructions and ....
I’m writing this post after having recently received a solicitation from an attorney group asking for speakers for a big annual event. The “invitation” included a price list of what they expected speakers to pay. Despite the fact the audience would be perfect for us, marketing wise, Melissa immediately rejected the idea as something prohibited by the American Psychological Association (APA). Who knows when the pay to play issue heated up in the academic world, but it was in the last 25 years or so that it seemed to grow when university professors were paying to publish academic papers
I have purposely avoided writing about narrative and its importance for years since the industry of jury consulting is oversaturated with folks who advise, “You gotta tell a story.” While true, this advice never seemed helpful to me as it seemed akin to self-help books that tell you just to work harder, be happier, or visualize your goals. Too many times, I have seen attorneys embrace the advice to tell a story, only to struggle with what that actually means as they prepare for trial. Afterall, it is not like attorneys get to sit around a campfire with jurors and
As trial consultants we try to stay current by reading lots of newspapers, journals, and magazines. Recently, I’ve noticed people writing about the composition of juries post COVID-19 (not that COVID-19 is over, “post” in this context merely indicates a world where COVID-19 came into being). Because of the politicization of COVID-19, vaccines, masks, etc., and because of the CDC guidelines, courthouse closures, the world of jury trials has been shaken. The practice of law has changed in many ways, some permanently. The willingness of ordinary citizens who are called for jury duty has been impacted as well. People
Numerous studies have shown that jurors' damages decisions are strongly affected by the damages amount suggested by a plaintiff's attorney, independent of the strength of the actual evidence, a psychological effect known as "anchoring". Simply put, the more money asked, the more jurors award, even when the damages anchors suggested by plaintiff attorneys are extreme or absurdly high. Campbell and colleagues (2016) investigated whether civil defendants can effectively rebut a damages anchor proposed by a plaintiff's attorney....
A client recently told me about a continuing legal education program he attended and the new information contained in the seminar. He kindly shared the information on the use of visual evidence and my reaction was, despite his enthusiasm for this “new” information, it isn’t new. What struck me is how often, in the more than 30 years of working with and around lawyers, this phenomenon occurs. Sometimes it is a search for a short cut to get certain results. But, often it is an indication of how far apart the fields of law and psychology remain. Meaning that,
Do you have an alibi? Do you need an alibi? We’ve all seen it on TV. If you are innocent, you have an alibi. If you don’t have an alibi, you are suspect #1. What were you doing on the evening in question? Do you remember? Probably not. In life one goes from hour to hour, day to day, doing whatever things one does. Unless there is something exceptional, one probably does not remember the activities that occurred on any particular day. The exceptions become salient and memorable; normal and routine activities are not. A creative research study illustrates
hile most jurors take notes during trial when allowed to do so, not every juror chooses to do so. Dann and colleagues (2004) report on juror note-taking among 480 community members who watched a 70 minute videotaped trial filmed in a real courtroom using legal professionals to play the parts of the judge and lawyers. Lorek and colleagues (2019a, 2019b) explored whether prior jury service influenced juror note-taking and conducted three studies exploring how juror note-taking was influenced by jurors' handwriting speed, short-term memory capacity and attentional span....
Almost every state that enforces the death penalty allows for victim impact statements during the penalty phase of the trial. Nunez and colleagues (2017) examined the effects of angry and sad victim impact statements on 581 jury eligible and death qualified mock jurors. Mock jurors watched the penalty phase of a capital trial. For one group of jurors, the penalty phase had no victim impact statement. For a second group of jurors, the trial included a victim impact statement with emotional content that was sad. For a third group of jurors, the trial included a victim impact statement with emotional
Magnus Research Consultants recently worked in Miami, where we have worked numerous times throughout the decades we have been in business. Most of the time when we are conducting mock jury research, the research participants/mock jurors are respectful toward one another, the Magnus staff, and me. Once in a while, however, one or more of them will overstep the line of decency, which is a guarantee they will be sent home, immediately. On this day in Miami, one of the mock jurors, who had volunteered to be the jury foreperson, refused to follow the instructions he was given by