Reaching a verdict - persuading a jury

Pennington and Hastie - effect of order testimony

• investigate whether jurors are more easily persuaded by story order than witness order
• 130 paid student participants from USA
• asked to be jurors in a mock murder trial
• participants listened to tape recording of a stimulus trial and then responded to written questions
• told to reach a guilty or not guilty verdict and then rate their confidence in their verdict on a 5 point rating scale.
• lawyers representing both the denfence and the prosecution varied the order in which the evidence was presented
• when defence used story order and prosecution used witness order guilty verdicts returned 31% of time
• when prosecution used story order and defence used witness order guilty verdicts returned 78% of the time
• when both prosecution and defence used the same stratergy the guilty verdicts were both around 60%

Hosch, Beck and McIntyre - persuasion

• study the impact of introducing an expert witness to a case on a) the verdicts reached and b) the juries confidence in the eyewitness
• two…