Parkinson (1981) studied the speech of male prosecutors and defense attorneys from courtroom transcripts. Successful prosecutors were...

Jurors are often questioned together as a group during voir dire. On occasion, jurors are questioned individually outside the presence of other jurors. Nietzel and Dillehay (1982) explored the effects of questioning jurors as a group or individually in 13 capital cases prosecuted in Kentucky...

Juries convict African-American defendants more often than White defendants for many crimes. Instances exist, however, when African-American defendants are treated less harshly by juries than White defendants. Poulson (1990) found that...

The law treats the determination of negligence and the awarding of damages as independent issues. Are jurors able to separate the issues of liability and damages in comparative negligence cases? Zickafoose and Bornstein (1999) conducted two studies examining how a plaintiff's partial negligence affects jurors' damage awards...

Eyewitness testimony is fallible. Mistaken eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of false convictions, accounting for more criminal convictions of innocent people than all other causes combined (see, for review, Wells et al., 1998). Lawyers' cross-examination skills often cannot overcome jurors' belief in an eyewitness...

When judging the legality of a search, any items that are discovered during the search should be irrelevant. Under the law, search legality is based only on information that police have prior to conducting the search, and whether or not such information meets the legal standard to conduct the search. Casper and colleagues (1988) examined jurors' attitudes toward police officers who had improperly searched an apartment...

Judges exhibit their leaning in cases, and jurors take their cue from their judge. Even subtle differences in how judges read jury instructions can influence verdicts. Researchers (Blanck et al., 1985; Blanck et al., 1990; Hart, 1995) have investigated how judges' expectations for the outcome of a trial predicted both (a) the judges' verbal and nonverbal behavior, and (b) the verdicts returned by juries...

Automobile accident claims constitute a significant proportion of the personal injury bar's work, insurance defense work, and the state jury trial caseload, comprising 50% of all tort filings and 42% of all tort jury trials in state courts of general jurisdiction (Ostrom and colleagues, 1996). While a plaintiff's broken bone can be demonstrated through X-rays, whiplash (soft tissue or connective-tissue) injuries do not show up on common medical tests. Hans and Vadino (2007) surveyed 600 prospective jurors concerning their attitudes...

Warnings on products can affect jurors' allocation of responsibility for injuries incurred while using those products. First, the mere presence of a warning affects the allocation of responsibility...

Jurors come to court with beliefs about the allocation of responsibility for product injuries. These a priori beliefs anchor jurors' judgments in product liability cases. Laughery and colleagues (1995) report jurors' a priori allocation of responsibility for injuries involving...