JURIES
LAST SPRING'S ACQUITTAL of four police officers accused of beating
Los Angeleno Rodney King may have shocked a nation, but it demonstrated
what psychologists have known all along. R's terribly difficult to
predict jury behavior.
What juries do consider in reaching a verdict and what they are
supposed to consider may be two entirely different things. Scientists,
for example, are just beginning to understand how juries react to
"extra-evidenciary information"-or what's not legal proof.
Despite a judge's instructions to the contrary, jurors are in
reality influenced by:
o all testimony presented during a trial
o a witness's refusal to take the stand
o the lawyers' opening and closing statements
o a defendant's attractiveness and prior criminal record.
How jurors process what is admissable, reports psychologist Gary
Wells, is less clear. His own work shows that evidence must have "a kind
of flavor to it" to make an impact on a jury.
For example, jurors often refuse to base their verdict on numbers
and probabilities presented during a trial-so-called naked evidence. The
same numbers carry weight with jurors only when couched in a statement of
opinion, says Wells, a pro%mr at Iowa State University.
An expert who says "I strongly believe that there is a 99 percent
probability that the semen is the defendent's" will sway the jury more
effectively than the lawyer who says 'the probability the semen was the
defendent's is 99 percent." It's the same "naked" evidence, but cloaked
in more human format.
Juries will also fill in the gaps of witnesses' testimony with a
story constructed from their own inferences, says Valerie Hans, Ph.D., a
social psychologist at the University of Delaware.
During the Rodney King trial, for example, jurors who believed the
officers were guilty might weave elements of racial bias into their story
to construct a version of the truth they feel more comfortable with, Hans
says.
Also, many jurors on their own consider the "contributory
negligence" of a defendent, Hans points out. Jurors' post-trial comments
about King's "control of the situation" suggest a willingness by some
jurors to believe King could have avoided the violent attack.
Further, the trial's frame-by-frame videotape viewings had an
effect of its own, Hans says: It desensitized viewers to the attack's
violent overtones. And the change of venue from a diverse urban area to a
homogeneous suburban community was also critical to determining the
trial's outcome.
Hans and Wells both worry about a fair retrial after Los Angeles'
riots, but both still believe in justice by peer review.
"These aren't weird juries-these are just people," Wells says.
"They're taking it very seriously and they're trying to reach a verdict."
Oyez! Oyez!
Photo: Sometimes jurors see only what they want. (TINA GERSON/GAMMA
LIASSON)
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