The Mnemonic Consequences of Jurors' Selective Retrieval During Deliberation.

The jury is a defining component of the American criminal justice system, and the courts largely assume that the collaborative nature of jury deliberations will enhance jurors' memory for important trial information. However, research suggests that this kind of collaboration, although sometimes improving memory, can also lead to incomplete and inaccurate "collective" memories. The present research examines whether jury deliberations, where individuals collaboratively recall and discuss trial evidence to render unanimous verdicts, might shape jurors' memories through the robust phenomena of Within-Individual and Socially Shared Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (WI-RIF and SS-RIF, respectively). The results revealed no WI-RIF or SS-RIF. However, we did find evidence in the direction of Within-Individual and Socially-shared Retrieval Induced Facilitation (WI-RIFA and SS-RIFA, respectively) in speakers' and listeners' narrative and open-ended recall of evidentiary details. The present results are discussed in terms of whether jurors' goals during deliberation and the deliberation structure (e.g., six or more discussants) protect against forgetting, or whether possible methodological issues (e.g., the vast amount of information presented) eliminated WI-RIF and SS-RIF and, in turn, make drawing conclusions surrounding the mnemonic impact of jury deliberation difficult. Regardless, the present results suggest jury deliberations are quite limited in terms of how much evidence is actually discussed compared to the total of what could be discussed, and our methodology provides an ecologically valid baseline for future research to better understand the mnemonic consequences associated with jury deliberations and, in turn, jury decision making.

Rethinking the voluntary act requirement: Implications from neuroscience and behavioral science research.

Criminal responsibility in the American legal system requires the presence of an actus reus-a harmful act that was committed voluntarily-and a mens rea, or guilty mind. Courts frequently consider questions surrounding mens rea but rarely question whether an act was committed voluntarily. Thus, courts presume that acts have been committed voluntarily and with an ill will; retribution, which serves the primary basis for punishment in the USA, relies on this presumption. Research in neuroscience and the behavioral sciences, however, suggests that this presumption is flawed and not sufficiently robust to justify punishment that is grounded in retribution. In this paper we discuss the presumption of voluntariness and free will inherent in the law, provide examples of how the courts have conflated actus reus and mens rea and the consequences of doing so, and the implications of neuroscience and behavioral science research for actus reus (also known as the voluntary act requirement). Finally, we propose re-conceptualizing punishment within a consequentialist, empirically-based framework that does not rely on folk psychological notions about human behavior and reinvigorates the actus reus as the foundational requirement for legal responsibility.