The impact of case factors on jurors’ decisions in a sexual violent predator hearing.

Abstract

Twenty states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government allow for the postincarceration, indeterminate civil commitment of sexual violent predators (SVPs). Yet, although a large number of individuals has been committed under these laws, relatively little is known about how jurors make decisions in these proceedings. Using a sample of 274 jury-eligible participants and a trial transcript based on an actual SVP proceeding, we systematically manipulated legal (standards of proof), victim (ages of previous victims), offender (number of previous convictions), and expert (expressed level of offender’s future risk) testimony characteristics to determine which, if any, of these factors affected mock jurors’ decisions. Results indicated that both the offender’s number of prior convictions and expert testimony on the offender’s level of future risk independently influenced jurors’ commitment judgments. These findings raise the possibility that jurors may be double counting certain evidence, because previous convictions were explicitly contained in the risk assessment and provided as part of the expert’s risk judgment. Differences in the standards of proof and ages of previous victims had no impact on jurors’ verdicts. The legal and constitutional implications of jurors’ insensitivity to changes in the proof threshold are discussed, as are the problems associated with jurors’ placing independent weight on prior convictions in their decisions.