The impact of pretrial publicity on mock juror and jury verdicts: A meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: We updated and extended a meta-analysis on pretrial publicity (PTP) conducted by Steblay et al. (1999) by reexamining the effect of negative (antidefendant) PTP on individual (juror) and deliberating group (jury) verdicts and the effect of positive (pro-defendant) PTP on individual verdicts. HYPOTHESES: We hypothesized that exposure to negative PTP would increase guilty verdicts from both jurors and juries, whereas exposure to positive PTP would decrease guilty verdicts. We predicted that the relationship between negative PTP and juror verdicts would vary according to methodological and theoretical variables. For methodological variables, we hypothesized that published studies, community-member participants, and crime-related comparison conditions would have a stronger PTP effect. For theoretical variables related to the story model, source monitoring bias, and predecisional distortion, we predicted that the effect of PTP would be stronger with more serious crimes, longer time delays, greater amounts of PTP, and more-severe PTP. METHOD: We analyzed 77 unique effect sizes extracted from 27 published and 18 unpublished reports based on 11,240 individual participants. RESULTS: Negative PTP increased juror guilty verdicts (r = .16) and jury verdicts (r = .35), whereas positive PTP decreased guilty verdicts (r = -.21). Moderator analyses revealed that negative PTP's effect on juror verdicts was stronger for published studies, student participants, and unrelated crime or no additional information control groups. Additionally, the biasing effect of negative PTP was stronger for nonviolent crimes, trial delays of less than 1 week, PTP presented in one article with multiple facts, and moderate-severity PTP. CONCLUSIONS: PTP has a modest biasing effect when it favors or disfavors the defendant. Nonetheless, the impact of negative PTP on individuals varies according to studies' methodological variables and variables theoretically related to the mechanism underlying PTP's biasing effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidentiary, extraevidentiary, and deliberation process predictors of real jury verdicts.

In contrast to the extensive literature based on mock jurors, large-sample studies of decision making by real juries are relatively rare. In this field study, we examined relationships between jury verdicts and variables representing 3 classes of potential determinants-evidentiary, extraevidentiary, and deliberation process-using a sample of 114 criminal jury trials. Posttrial data were collected from 11 presiding judges, 31 attorneys, and 367 jurors using a Web-based questionnaire. The strength of the prosecution's evidence was strongly related to the occurrence of a conviction, whereas most extraevidentiary and deliberation process variables were only weakly to modestly related in bivariate form and when the prosecution's evidence strength was controlled. Notable exceptions to this pattern were jury demographic diversity as represented by the number of different race-gender subgroups (e.g., Black males) present in the jury, and several deliberation process variables reflecting advocacy for acquittal (e.g., presence of an identifiable proacquittal faction within the jury and proacquittal advocacy by the foreperson). Variables reflecting advocacy for conviction were essentially unrelated to jury verdict. Sets of extraevidentiary and deliberation variables were each able to modestly improve the explanation of jury verdicts over prosecution evidence strength in multivariate models. This study highlights the predictive efficacy of prosecution evidence strength with respect to jury verdicts, as well as the potential importance of jury demographic diversity and advocacy for acquittal during deliberation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Strength of evidence, extraevidentiary influence, and the liberation hypothesis: data from the field.

To examine relationships between strength of evidence (SOE) and extraevidentiary variables in the context of Kalven and Zeisel's (The American Jury, 1966) liberation hypothesis, post-trial questionnaire data were collected from judges, attorneys, and jurors associated with 179 criminal jury trials. SOE ratings were strongly correlated with jury verdicts on the three most serious charges against the defendant, and several extraevidentiary variables (i.e., pretrial publicity, trial complexity, charge severity, and foreperson demographics) were moderately correlated with verdicts. Extraevidentiary-verdict relationships remained significant when SOE was controlled, although extraevidentiary variables yielded only modest improvement in classification accuracy beyond SOE. In partial support of the liberation hypothesis, several case-related extraevidentiary variables were significantly related to jury verdicts only when the prosecution's evidence was rated as moderately strong.