pre trial factors

• pre trial publicity?

  criminal case is well documented before it goes into trial so jury members may have already formed an opinion on suspects of defendent
• 2 types of information of pre trial publicity?

  • factual information, can be redressed within trial as more information about what happened is presented to the jury
  • emotional information, may not contain incriminating information and is likely to present information thats arousing negative information. has a longer lasting influence on jury members than factual
• Fein (1997)?

  looked into OJ Simpson case and cuttings from newspaper, setting up mock jury to see if pre trial publicity would affect a jurors decision,

  • jurors most likely to say guilty if they had access to pre-trial publicity (80% voted guilty)
  • only 45% voted guilty if race was mentioned in cuttings, may thinking of it as racist

  evidence suggests publicity before and during the trial can have a powerful influence on jury decision making
• evidence for pre trial publicity?

  • Thomas (2010), analysed 62 real life cases and found jurors remembered media coverage 70% of the time if it was a high profile case, but 11% if it was a low profile case.
  • Steblay (1999), effect of pre trial publicity on juror verdicts, using meta analysis of 44 empirical tests representing 5,755 subjects. jurors exposed to negative PTP were more likely to judge defendent as guilty
• applications/ ethics?

  allows researchers to raise evidence based concerns about rapidly increased potential for jury bias to occur in current era of 24/7 news and constant access to online news.

  most research is ethical when using mock juries, allowing variables to be isolated and manipulated where it wouldn't be ethical in a real trial
• methodology of PTP?

  bad: real juror cannot be exposed to pre trial publicity before serving on a jury leading to miscarriages of justice so research is ethically restrained. artificial situations mean verdicts may not reflect influence of real pre trial publicity. Fein (1997), difficult to generalise to real juries.