The impact of forms of strategic and non‐strategic voir dire questions on jury verdicts

Abstract

This paper examined the effects of strategic voir dire questions on juror evaluations of trial participants. The influence of three types of voir dire questions was assessed on ratings of defendant guilt, defendant credibility, and defense attorney credibility. Using both a control group composed of non‐strategic questions and a control group with no voir dire questions, results indicated that the use of strategic voir dire questions influenced decisions and ratings of trial participants. In particular, questions asking jurors to disregard the defendant's unsavory past produced a main effect on perceptions of guilt. Among other effects additionally, the absence of any voir dire questions seemed to affect negatively perceptions of trial participants on the competence dimension. On both the ratings of defendant character and competence, an interaction emerged between the use of questions encouraging jurors to hold the prosecution to its burden of proof and questions urging jurors to overlook the defendant's unsavory background. Though use of the defendant background question enhanced credibility ratings when the burden of proof question was omitted, these effects were suppressed when both question types were used. In addition, a significant main effect revealed that competence was reduced when jurors were exposed to the question encouraging them to resist group pressure to convict. Furthermore, a three‐way interaction indicated that the highest ratings of defendant competence occurred when jurors were not asked any strategic questions except those urging them to overlook the defendant's unsavory background.