Jury Decision Research Articles

Titans clash over biotech licenses

Monsanto and San Diego-based Mycogen are at it again. A California jury has awarded Mycogen $175 million in damages as a result of Monsanto's foot-dragging on granting a license for its technology for genetically engineering insect-and herbicide- resistant plants. We are gratified that the jury has held Monsanto accountable for the negative impact the delay in receiving this technology has had on our seed business, says Carl Eibl, president of a biotechnology and agribusiness company 69% owned by Dow Chemical. Monsanto is not taking the San Diego Superior Court jury's decision lying down. We will immediately seek to have this award set aside, [because] no past or future damages were suffered by Mycogen, says David Snively, assistant general counsel for Monsanto. At the center of the dispute is enabling biotechnology that allows the creation of a whole new generation of crops. Monsanto has technology that enables insertion of modified Bacillus thuringiensis ...

{BLR 2622} AAAS - Confidentiality - Informed Consent - Pedigrees - Privacy

Biotechnology Law ReportVol. 17, No. 2 {BLR 2622} AAAS - Confidentiality - Informed Consent - Pedigrees - PrivacyPresentation of Probabilities, Informed Consent for Pedigree Publication Featured at AAAS Annual Meeting – Jury Decisions Influenced by How Probabilities of DNA Fingerprint Matches Are Presented; Publication of Pedigrees in Medical Articles May Violate Privacy Without Informed ConsentPublished Online:16 Mar 2009https://doi.org/10.1089/blr.1998.17.254AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail "{BLR 2622} AAAS - Confidentiality - Informed Consent - Pedigrees - Privacy." , 17(2), pp. 254–255FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 17Issue 2Mar 1998 To cite this article:{BLR 2622} AAAS - Confidentiality - Informed Consent - Pedigrees - Privacy.Biotechnology Law Report.Mar 1998.254-255.http://doi.org/10.1089/blr.1998.17.254Published in Volume: 17 Issue 2: March 16, 2009PDF download

Legal Cases and Institutional Research Involving Faculty Dismissals Based on Financial Exigency

AbstractBy examining court cases involving financial exigency as a cause for terminating faculty appointments, this chapter confirms the important impact of institutional data and information on the decisions of judges and juries.

Attributions about domestic violence: A study of community attitudes

Attributions of responsibility and causality, and other beliefs about behaviours and affective states of individuals in domestic violence situations, were investigated in interviews with 188 men and women (aged 18 to 65 years) in six suburban locations in Melbourne, Australia. Participants were selected using a stratified random sampling procedure designed to include persons from three different socio‐economic levels. Two vignettes depicting a man's physical and verbal abuse of his female partner were presented. In one scenario, the battered woman kills her abuser; the other scenario shows the abuser being taken away by police. The results indicated that attributions of responsibility were best predicted by beliefs about the impact of alcohol and the extent to which the actors could predict control and moderate violent behaviour. Most respondents believed the battered woman acted in self‐defence and should not be found guilty of murder for killing the perpetrator. The findings are discussed in relation to community reactions to domestic violence, laypersons' intuitive theories of domestic violence, and the implications of these explanations in jury decision making.

El jurado popular: estudio descriptivo/exploratorio de un juicio real y decisión no vinculante

This article deals with the analysis of the main factors influencing the decision of the members of a jury in an experimental trial held in Málaga. This study was carried out in preparation for the introduction of jury-trials in Spanish Courts. The trial atissue was a real case, but the decision ofthe jury was notbinding. This work attempts to analyze the factors that explain the jury's decision. Itis ofa qualitative andexploratory nature. The study has found four different stages: predeliberation, deliberation, postdeliberation and post-trial. The results of the study indicate that the jurors value very highly the intervention of the counsel for the defense. Certain extralegal factors, such as the impression that the accused and the victim make on the members of the jury, also play an important role in the process.

Allocation of Responsibility for Product Safety: Warning and Severity of Injury Effects

A study explored how injury severity and the presence of warnings influence people's allocation of responsibility for safety during consumer product use. Eighty-eight subjects were shown ten scenarios, one for each of ten products, describing an accident and injury. The subjects assigned responsibility to the manufacturer, the retailer and the consumer (user). Two variables were manipulated: injury severity and the presence or absence of a warning. The mean responsibility assigned to consumers was 85% and 41% with and without warnings, respectively. The mean allocations to manufacturers was 11% and 49% with and without warnings. The warning effect was less, however, when hazards were more obvious, with consumers generally assigned more responsibility when hazards were obvious. Injury severity was a factor only when warnings were present; manufacturers were assigned greater responsibility for severe injury accidents than for less severe injuries. These results have implications for policies about the need for warnings and for understanding or predicting outcomes of jury decisions in product liability litigation.

Desperately seeking evidence: The recovered memory debate

Purpose. The debate concerning the recovery of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is one with which academics and professionals are becoming increasingly familiar. This paper asks whether or not recovered memories require special psychological mechanisms to explain as this has implications if legal proceedings are initiated on the basis of that recovered memory.Method. The following areas are deemed relevant when evaluating evidence based upon a recovered memory: (i) the effects of trauma on memory (an influence on memory at the encoding stage); (ii) how memory can be aided and distorted (an influence on memory at the retrieval stage); and (iii) factors likely to influence jury decisions concerning recovered memories.Results. Cases documenting the veracity of recovered memories are few and far between. On the contrary there is sufficient evidence to be concerned about the accuracy of recovered memories in the legal context.Conclusions. Further research is needed on the conditions under which false recollections may occur and how these may be prevented.

Trial by media?: Media reliance, knowledge of crime and perception of criminal defendants

Previous research has linked extensive news media coverage of crimes and the criminal process to pretrial jury bias against defendants. Most research, however, has tested the effects of reading fabricated crime stories on mock jury decisions or general perceptions of crime. Using telephone interviews, this study examines whether perceptions of the defendant in an actual double homicide were related to reliance on local news media for news and information. The results provide clear evidence that potential jurors who are exposed to media coverage of crimes form biases against criminal defendants. Newspaper and television reliance were found to be positively related to perceptions of guilt. The results also show that newspaper reliant individuals knew significantly more facts about the case. Television reliant individuals judged the defendant's character as significantly more negative.

USING A JURY SIMULATION AS A CLASSROOM EXERCISE

The authors' empirical research project considers the effects of differences in actual legal rules on jury decisions and, concurrently, gives business students the opportunity to participate in a realistic jury experience. The project uses actual trial evidence to produce a videotaped simulated trial presentation thereby insuring that the testimony, legal arguments, jury instructions and facts are realistic. To date, approximately 2,000 business students have participated in the simulation, under the supervision of 13 different Academy members at 11 different universities. This article describes the project and its curricular benefits within the context of an introductory course in law.

When Strong Evidence Has Less Impact Than Weak Evidence: Bias, Adjustment, and Instructions to Ignore

Results from three experiments show that individuals who are asked to ignore a strong testimony “overadjust” their judgments relative to those asked to ignore testimony with a milder persuasive impact. Participants made jury decisions after reading several testimonies, one of which provided either strong or weak evidence for the defendant's guilt. Relative to the weak testimony, the strong testimony led to higher judgments of guilt when participants were instructed to use it, but lower judgments of guilt when participants were instructed to ignore it. Strength of the critical testimony was manipulated through the confidence of the witness (Experiment 1), linguistic cues to the witness's age (Experiment 2), and the abnormality of the defendant's actions (Experiment 3). Results are interpreted as supporting previous theories about awareness of cognitive processes and how individuals adjust beliefs.

Is the jury trial a lottery?

Acquittals in some recent high-profile criminal cases have led to criticism of the jury system and calls for its modification. The central idea that a jury trial is ‘of one's peers’ is examined in the light of legislation affecting the operation of the jury and the process of jury empanelment. Direct research observation of jury decision-making is prohibited by legislation in the UK and USA and this has led to a legalistic emphasis in this research area, which is regrettable. The ability of the jury decision to reflect social opinion about the nature of right and wrong is emphasized. Rather than the jury being the scapegoat for those who have criticisms of the criminal justice system, the real culprit is seen as simply the end product of the legal process.

Structural properties of stereotypic knowledge and their influences on the construal of social situations.

This research focused on the role that higher order structural properties of stereotypic knowledge play in the processing of social information. It is argued that stereotypic assumptions about cause-effect relations provide important constraints for the causal structure underlying the perceiver's subjective representation of social information. Experiment 1 shows how, within the context of a jury decision experiment, the causal structure underlying stereotypic knowledge about African Americans influences the construal of causality in a situation involving a member of that group. Results from 2 additional experiments indicate that this construal effect is based in part on stereotypic knowledge affecting the encoding of the trial evidence instead of on biasing responses at the output stage. The implications of these findings are discussed, and a theoretical framework is offered according to which the application of category knowledge involves not only the matching of stereotypic attributes but also the alignment of structural relations in the environment.

Impact of Ethnicity, Gender, and Previous Experience on Juror Judgments in Sexual Harassment Cases1

To examine the influence of gender, having been the target of sexual harassment, and ethnicity on jury decisions, 215 respondents reviewed 17 sexual harassment cases ranging on a continuum from relatively innocent to severe. Respondents indicated their perception of the offensiveness of the cases as well as whether they would vote for the plaintiff or for the defendant. Jurors voting for the plaintiff also indicated whether monetary damages should be awarded. Results of the study indicate that gender and prior experience with sexual harassment affect the outcomes in sexual harassment cases when behaviors can be classified as ambiguous. Results were mixed for the influence of gender and having been sexually harassed for relatively innocent and severe cases. No ethnicity effects were found. A discussion of the legal implications of these findings is included.

From Poisson to the present: Applying operations research to problems of crime and justice

In the 1830s Simeon-Denis Poisson developed the distribution that bears his name, basing it on the binomial distribution. He used it to show how the inherent variance in jury decisions affected the inferences that could be made about the probability of conviction in French courts. In recent years there have been a number of examples where researchers have either ignored or forgotten this inherent variance, and how operations research, in particular mathematical modeling, can be used to incorporate this variance in analyses. These are described in this paper, as well as other contributions made by operations research to the study of crime and criminal justice.

Perfiles psicosociales como predictores de sesgo en la toma de decisión del Jurado

Contradictory findings have been reported concerning whether or not psychological variables can be responsible for bias in jury decisions, possibly because of differences among the studies in question as regards the type of legal case considered by the jury and the quantity of evidence supplied. When we submitted various filmed cases for the consideration of juries that were homogeneous with regard to psychosocial profiles identified in previous studies of the verdicts of individuals, bias was detected in some cases but not others, and where detected was apparently increased by deliberation.

The case study as a jury research methodology

The case study is defended as a methodology for jury research. The weaknesses of this approach are identified, including lack of internal and external validity. A number of advantages of the case study are then set forth, such as their heuristic value in generating hypotheses about jury behavior and their role in helping understand problematic verdicts in celebrated cases. The article concludes with a discussion of techniques to enhance the quality of case studies among which are attention to careful data collection, consideration of plausible rival hypotheses competing with the interpretation of jury decisions being advanced, and the placing of findings in a larger theoretical context.

Jury Decision Making and the Effect of Victim Impact Statements in the Penalty Phase

Research supports the finding that jurors' decisions are affected by many variables other than the evidence presented during trial. Most of this research has focused on jury decision making during the guilt determining phase of the trial, while very little study has been devoted to the sentencing phase. As victims of crime have demanded more attention in the criminal justice system over the past decade, more cases and research have focused on the “rights” of victims and how they may have an impact on the outcome of a criminal trial. This article examines the research regarding the variables which affect jury decision making during the guilt and penalty phases of a criminal case while emphasizing the need for further research in the area of how victim impact evidence affects the jury's decision.

Expert psychological testimony on eyewitness reliability before and after Daubert: the state of the law and the science.

This article examines the legal and scientific issues inherent in the use of expert psychological testimony on the factors that affect eyewitness reliability. First, the history of the use of such expert testimony is traced. Next, we look at the criteria that state and federal courts have used in determining whether to admit such testimony, as well as the grounds upon which the testimony has been excluded. We then examine the Daubert decision and discuss its implications for the use of expert eyewitness testimony. We conclude by reviewing eyewitness research and research on jury decision-making that is likely to assume new importance in the post-Daubert era.

Expert Psychological Testimony in the United States: A New Playing Field? 1This paper is based in part on material presented at greater length in , and .

This paper examines the legal and scientific aspects of expert psychological testimony in the United States and discusses the possible implications for such testimony of a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court. We consider expert testimony on eyewitness identification issues as an illustration of the reaction of the courts to, particularly, novel scientific evidence offered in adversarial settings. First, an historical perspective on the use of expert testimony is traced with particular attention to the criteria that state and federal courts have used in determining whether to admit expert testimony. We then examine the new Supreme Court decision and discuss its implications for the use of expert eyewitness testimony. We conclude by illustrating how eyewitness research and research on jury decisionmaking is likely to assume new importance in light of new expert evidence criteria.

Factors that influence jury decision making: Disposition instructions and mental state at the time of the trial.

Investigated whether information regarding the disposition of insanity acquittees and the defendant's mental state at the time of the trial, had a significant effect on mock jurors' verdicts. Two trials were used to assess whether results generalize across cases. participants read excerpts from a trial in which the accused's mental state at the time of the trial (symptom free, neurotic symptoms, or psychotic symptoms) and the disposition instructions (no instructions, indeterminate disposition, and capped disposition) were varied. Participants then rendered a verdict of guilty, not guilty, or not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD). Participants who thought the accused was psychotic at the time of the trial were more likely to render a verdict of NCRMD than guilty, and they were more likely to render a verdict of NCRMD than those who thought the accused was normal. No significant differences were found for disposition. Finally, a significant difference for verdicts was found between trials.