Courts + Juries

Courts + Juries

1. Types of trial

   • Adversarial system
     • 2 advocates represent parties' positions before impartial person/group
     • Judges are impartial - fair play
   • Inquisitorial system
     • Court actively involved in investigating case facts
     • Judge can be involved from early stages of police investigation
     • Judge steers legal process
     • Criminal defendant's first to testify

2. Methods of processing info

   • Central route - people actively process all info pertinent to situation (argument quality)
   • Peripheral route - use peripheral cues in making decision
     • Status - well-respected = more likely to accept argument

3. Presenting evidence in court

   • Structural constraints
     • How/where etc evidence may be provided
     • Order evidence is presented
     • Prosecution gives case first
   • Primacy-recency effect
   • (Pennington + Hastie) Crucial to good narrative: ppts goals; physical/psychological conditions

4. Lawyers' tactics

   • Discrediting strategies (personal attacks)
   • Abstract language with child witnesses
   • Plea bargaining - less likely to recommend it when evidence weak but likely long sentence
   • Defendant as witness - view more posly

5. Juvenile offending

   • Rehabilitation
   • Less punitive
   • Not viewed fully responsible for actions
   • Risk factors
     • Delinquency + violence
       • Family/community context
       • School problems
       • Peers + gangs
     • Sexual violence - reoffended associated with...
       • Acquaintance of victim
       • No treatment
       • Being younger

6. Jury

   • Lay person jury - 12 random people
   • Escabinato jury - lay people + legal experts
   • Selection
     • UK: everyone has right to trial to peers
     • Randomly select from electoral role: 18-70yo
     • Mock trials; focus groups etc
     • Over 50% don't attend
     • Scientific jury selection: Voir Dire
       • Trial within trial
       • Hearing to determine admissibility of evidence + competency of witness/juror

7. The trial

   • Pre-trial publicity can bias jury
   • Inadmissible evidence can affect jury even if retracted
   • Defendant's attractiveness + socio-economic status influence jurors
   • Subjective decision

8. Jury decision rules

   • UK: combined decision rule (unanimity then 10/12 majority)
   • (Ziesel) Greater size of jury, greater chance of hung jury

9. Expert witnesses

   • (Groscup) 1/4 expert witnesses in US from social/behavioural sciences
   • Can't offer evidence outside expertise
   • Daubert criteria - whether technique/criteria is verifiable. accepted in scientific community + likelihood of error in study
   • Problems with psychologists
     • Hard to reduce complex matters to fixed characteristics
     • Hard for capacity of jury to understand
     • Weight of opinion e.g. risk assessments, likelihood to reoffend