The biography and character of a criminal defendant are legally irrelevant factors in the determination of guilt, particularly the definition of a crime. While jurors' attributions of blame often consider a criminal defendant's history and character, judges are expected and trained to decide guilt according to the facts and the law, and to ignore legally irrelevant factors such as sympathy.....

Punitive damages are meant to punish a defendant and deter similar conduct in the future. The U.S. Supreme Court suggests that the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages generally should not exceed 9:1 (State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Company v. Campbell 538 U.S. 408, 425 (2003)). The specific amount of money that punishes a defendant and deters similar conduct, however, is subjective and left to each case's decision-maker. Conklin (2021) examined whether a lump sum request (for the total amount desired) or a per diem revenue request (asking for a specific number of days of the defendant's revenue) yielded

The judicial system weights a juror's self-diagnoses of bias and fairness during voir dire very heavily, assuming that, as a factual matter, jurors can undertake accurately this self-assessment.In the context of a medical malpractice case, Yokum, Robertson and Palmer (2019) tested whether mock jurors exposed to negative pre-trial publicity are able to identify the influence the material had on their decision-making....

The modern #MeToo movement started in late 2017. In 2010, well before the #Metoo movement, Wright and colleagues reported research results related to a rape case. In 2019, Conklin (2020) used this same rape case to understand the effects of the #MeToo movement on juror decision-making....

Emotional expression is a key part of trial advocacy for attorneys. Many attorneys are encouraged to demonstrate conviction through the expression of anger as a way to gain credibility with juries. Salerno and colleagues (Salerno & Phalen, 2018, 2019; Salerno et al., 2018) conducted a series of experiments involving nearly 700 participants from across the country to test whether expressing anger in court makes attorneys more effective....

Judges often limit the number and kinds of experts who can testify at trial, paying particular attention to repetition of information across experts. Nonetheless, attorneys often still can choose to diffuse needed expert testimony across multiple expert witnesses or concentrate needed expertise within one (usually multidisciplinary) expert witness. The choice matters. Harkins and Petty (1981, 1987) conducted numerous experiments focusing on the persuasiveness of (a) multiple versus single sources of information (b) making either one or multiple arguments (c) in favor of proposals participants strongly oppose...

Juror demographic characteristics such as age, race, gender, marital status, income, education and number of children predict almost no variation in the verdict preferences of individual jurors in either civil or criminal cases, across many years and studies, with only a few exceptions. One recently discovered exception to this almost uniform inability for juror demographics to predict verdicts in civil cases is the ability of...

A court's decision about allowing the use of the term ‘victim’ versus ‘complaining witness’ may seem trivial, and yet language is known to have powerful effects. The term ‘victim’ can be argued to presuppose what a trial is meant to determine and therefore deny defendants' right to the presumption of innocence (no different than if a defendant is called a ‘criminal’ prior to a jury verdict). On the other hand, ‘victim’ is used in statutes and does not necessarily presuppose criminal activity by the defendant. Modern case law on the issue varies. The general principle is that it is acceptable

A plaintiff's attorney can request damage awards and make settlement offers using more precise or less precise amounts in the request. Conklin (2020) studied whether a plaintiff's attorney can increase the punitive damages awarded simply by requesting a more precise amount of money. A survey was given to 609 people that contained demographic questions, a summary of a products liability case, a punitive damages request, and a question asking what amount -- if any -- survey respondents would award in punitive damages. The punitive damages requested by the plaintiff's attorney varied across the surveys, being either $497,000 (a more precise

During voir dire, judges frequently attempt to rehabilite potential jurors who express an inability to be impartial. In an insanity defense case, jurors opposed to a not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) verdict are often asked if they can put aside their personal feelings about the insanity defense and base their decision on the evidence and the law. Crocker and Kovera (2010) examined whether judicial rehabilitative questioning during voir dire in an insanity defense case reduced the influence of juror bias on verdict judgments in a simulated trial...