The graphic illustrating this post contains false data. It is just one example of the way false information has been used to heighten racial tensions in the past few years. The graphic is shown here with FALSE in big red letters to help you remember the data shown is simply not true (we’ve blogged about the importance of this visual strategy before here. The information contained in this post IS true and comes from a new Marshall Project investigation into 400,000 murders by civilians between 1980 and 2014. They begin the report with these bold statements (which are backed up

Every once in a while we run across a tip in the social sciences research that is just begging to be used in litigation advocacy. A while back we found a UK researcher named Tim Perfect who told us a very simple thing: “When you want to increase both volume and accuracy in witness recall, don’t have them tell a story backwards. Just have them close their eyes! It really does increase the number of accurate observations recalled.” We liked his work so much we asked him to write up his research for publication in The Jury Expert (where many

The problem with female attorney retention has been discussed at some length in blogs, in reports sponsored by the American Bar Association, in professional association publications, in academic journals, and likely—everywhere female attorneys gather. Female attorneys leave BigLaw for many reasons but here’s a bit of research that may give insight into helping law firms retain female attorneys following childbirth or adoption. It has long been noted that women bear the brunt of the financial/career impact related to childbirth and/or motherhood. And if you are a woman of color, the damage to income is even worse. While the research cited

We have blogged a number of times on the problems with humblebragging. Observers see you as insincere and self-involved. But Forbes recently published an article that just may allow you to promote yourself as well as promoting others. The practice of effective self-promotion for women is strewn with pitfalls. A well-known example is that women will offer ideas that are ignored in group discussion and then when a male colleague says the same thing—the idea is often embraced. Last week we posted on the challenges faced by female and minority managers and this strategy may be a good way around that

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently released a report on racial and ethnic differences in homicides of adult women. After you read this, you will want to be very careful out there! As it happens, homicide is one of the leading causes of death for women in the US who are age 44 or younger. Whether you are more likely to be murdered varies with your race and/or ethnicity. However, one thing does not vary—over half of female victims (where circumstances were known) were killed by “a current or former male intimate partner”. The CDC calls this “intimate partner violence”

This issue has been the banner of a number of well-known male bloggers who encourage their readers to pile on [with their generally anonymous screen names] when commenters do not agree with the blogger. These bloggers make comments like, “it’s my blog and I make the rules” to justify boorish behavior. Granted. We don’t choose to interact with bullies—online or otherwise. We have been the subject of the entire spectrum of comment for our writing over the years of The Jury Room, including bizarre and wildly over-the-top trash-talking from a few other bloggers. We do not like it. We ignore

Researchers actually study the factors that go into making others see you as a jerk—and help us figure out how to avoid those behaviors. Today’s research is from an international team of researchers in the Netherlands, the US and the UK. Their work is interesting to consider from the perspective of witness preparation of the difficult witness. According to the researchers, most of us work to manage the impressions others have of us and some of us do it quite well. Others fail miserably, however, and these researchers think that failure stems from making poor choices on which impression management

The U.S. Department of Justice defines hate crime as “the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.” While the documentation and awareness of hate crimes is essential, we also need to understand the differences in the numbers we see reported on hate crimes, increases and decreases for specific types of hate crimes, and what those shifts in numbers actually mean. We often see comments about one kind of hate crime being more “important” than another due to a spike in frequency. Today’s article points

Women often think that “one day” they will garner the professional respect and standing that will stop men from interrupting them when the woman is speaking. Today we are presenting two studies of women who’ve reached heights in their professions which most women (and most men for that matter) will never achieve. Both studies tell us the fantasy of speaking without interruption is likely untrue. Harassment of female “Space Scientists Despite all the professed desire to increase the number of women in STEM fields, the working environment experienced by women scientists continues to be hostile. A recent survey of astronomers

We mentioned this scale last week in a combination post but decided it deserved a post of its own as with other scales we’ve featured here in the past. You are likely aware of the terms “driving while black” or “flying while brown” and this scale means to document that experience of discrimination and accompanying health impact. Despite a plethora of research on general stress and race-related stress—the researchers developing this scale say they “are not aware of any psychometric instruments that specifically focus on assessing Black men’s experiences with law enforcement discrimination”. In order to develop a valid scale,