NCJ Number
194491
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 26 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2002 Pages: 43-72
Date Published
February 2002
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This article presents two studies examining moderators and mediating mechanisms of pretrial publicity’s influence on juror decisions.
Abstract
Three moderators (gender, attitudes, and media slant) and four mediators (accessibility, evidence importance, evidence plausibility, and standards of guilt) were examined. The first study investigated whether exposure to rape media would alter participants’ perceptions of evidence plausibility. Study 1 also examined whether participants’ standards of proof were affected by exposure to rape media. Participants watched a prodefense rape story and a proprosecution rape story. Results showed that the participants who watched the prodefense story were more likely to report that they would need more evidence to convict a defendant than the participants who watched a proprosecution story. Participants in Study 2 watched news stories, one of which was a proprosecution rape story, a prodefense rape story, or a nonrape story. In an unrelated study, participants indicated their attitudes toward rape, watched a rape trial, and provided trial and witness ratings. Findings suggest that attitude accessibility is not solely responsible for the media effects on rape importance judgments. However, attitudes moderated media effects. Rape news influenced juror ratings of the importance of evidence about the complainant’s behavior. Media altered the standards participants used to determine defendant guilt. It is probable that jurors will watch many news stories about sexual misconduct over a period of years. Over time and with repeated exposure, incremental changes in jurors’ orientations may have an enormous influence on the decisions that jurors render in rape trials. Implications are that continuances may be more effective than voir dire and judicial instruction at reducing the influence of prejudicial media on juror decisions because accessibility of the information should decrease over time. 3 tables, 57 references