The effects of rehabilitative voir dire on juror bias and decision making.
During voir dire, judges frequently attempt to "rehabilitate" venirepersons who express an inability to be impartial. Venirepersons who agree to ignore their biases and base their verdict on the evidence and the law are eligible for jury service. In Experiment 1, biased and unbiased mock jurors participated in either a standard or rehabilitative voir dire conducted by a judge and watched a trial video. Rehabilitation influenced insanity defense attitudes and perceptions of the defendant's mental state, and decreased scaled guilt judgments compared to standard questioning. Although rehabilitation is intended to correct for partiality among biased jurors, rehabilitation similarly influenced biased and unbiased jurors. Experiment 2 found that watching rehabilitation did not influence jurors' perceptions of the judge's personal beliefs about the case.
Crocker
Caroline B
CB
Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 445 W. 59th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA. crocker.caroline@gmail.com
Kovera
Margaret Bull
MB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001290:Attitude; D003416:Criminal Law / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007298:Insanity Defense; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012938:Social Perception; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult