While the issue of race in the courtroom often focuses on jurors and defendants, this issue also extends to attorneys. Boliver (1999) examined how the race of jurors and attorneys influences verdicts in a child abuse/neglect case...

When a female defense attorney defends a man accused of rape, jurors are more likely to believe the case against the defendant is not as strong. Villemur and Hyde (1983) found that in rape trials...

Increasingly, judges are instructing criminal juries about presumption of innocence, burden of proof and reasonable doubt before presentation of evidence, rather than waiting until after the evidence has been presented. The timing of judicial instructions can have a significant impact on verdicts. Kaplan and Wrightsman (1979) examined how the timing of judicial instructions affects jurors' verdicts in criminal cases...

Some cases, courts and jurisdictions rely on juries smaller than 12 persons. At times, litigants give permission to continue a trial with fewer jurors than originally selected. Jury size affects jury decisions, and whether a smaller or larger jury is preferred in any given case depends on the nature of the case, the strength of the evidence, the degree to which deliberation is desired, and a host of other factors...

Recently, Hannaford and colleagues (2002) examined the causes of juror deadlock in 336 non-capital felony jury trials conducted in state courts in Los Angeles County (CA), Maricopa County (AZ), Bronx County (NY), and the District of Columbia (DC) between June 2000 and August 2001. Thirteen percent of these cases hung on one or more of the charges. Juries that hung on at least one charge...

Corporate defendants preparing for trial face a hostile environment from jurors. Corporate defendants must battle not only the charges against them, but also jurors' negative attitudes about corporate America. Vinson and Perlut (2003) report jury research conducted in actual cases, and describe jurors' attitudes that corporate defendants must overcome at trial...

Jurors often award greater damages against corporate defendants than individuals for the same behavior. Is it because a corporate defendant has deeper pockets (i.e., more financial resources) than individuals? Hans and Ermann (1989) asked two groups of mock jurors to decide the same civil lawsuit, with the only difference between the cases given to the jurors being that one group of jurors heard the defendant was a corporation (The Jones Corporation), while the other group of jurors heard the defendant was an individual (Mr. Jones)...

Prosecutors and defense attorneys present religious appeals and testimony about a defendant's religious activities at trial to influence capital jurors' sentencing. Religious appeals have been used in several high profile trials. In the trial of Andrea Yates, the mother in Texas who drowned her five children in her bathtub, the prosecutor told the jury "It was wrong in the eyes of God and it was wrong in the eyes of the law." In the trial of Susan Smith, the mother who killed her two sons and invented a carjacking story to cover up the crime, the defense attorney told the

The wording of a question affects witnesses answers to it. Changing only the verb, an adjective, or even just the article in a question is sufficient to affect a witness' answer. First, using differentially intense verbs (e.g., smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted) in a question asking about an event (e.g., a traffic accident) alters a witness' answer...

Question wording influences the answer witnesses provide. A response about the number of times a certain action or event occurred is not independent of the wording of the question used to elicit the answer. Loftus (1975) reports a study finding that people's estimated frequency of use of headache products are dependent on (1) possible answers that are included as part of the question, and (2) the adverb used in the question...