Character witnesses offer general positive information about a defendant's personality and good character, and can be impeached through cross-examination that allows prosecutors to introduce specific bad acts in which a defendant has engaged. Recent research by Hunt and Budesheim (2004) studied the effects of positive character evidence when offered alone, and when followed by a prosecutor cross-examining about specific bad acts...

The advent of the modern mass tort trial has pitted individualized justice against judicial concern for efficiency, leading to the aggregation of cases. Horowitz and Bordens have examined the effect of aggregating plaintiffs on liability decisions and damage awards in mass toxic tort litigation...

Two recent studies have examined the role alcohol plays in jurors' perceptions of defendants and complainants in sexual assault cases...

A doctor who testifies at trial can be a doctor who sees patients, a professor, a researcher or even a professional expert witness. Jurors find some types of doctors more credible than others. Recently, Boccaccini and Brodsky (2002) interviewed almost 500 potential jurors...

A camera's angle, or perspective, in a videotaped confession can have serious prejudicial effects to defendants in criminal trials...

Hastie and colleagues (2002) examined how dollar amounts requested by a plaintiff influence jurors' damage awards...

Jurors have expectations about battered women who kill, and their verdicts are influenced by the extent to which a defendant matches or deviates from those expectations. Russell (1999) found that jurors expect a battered woman to exhibit certain physical, social, behavioral and psychological characteristics...

Companies conduct cost-benefit analyses for many reasons, including to help improve safety. These cost-benefit analyses affect juror decision-making when introduced at trial...

Three recent studies examined how jurors' perceptions of the elderly affect verdicts in cases of elder abuse and elder neglect. One study looked at the health of the elderly person, another at the age of jurors, and another at the gender of jurors...

Incriminating evidence can be presented first, in the middle, or last in a trial. Costabile and Klein (2005) recently studied the timing of evidence presentation on juror verdicts in 4 separate experiments...