Author
Listed:
- John M. Pearson
(Duke University Medical Center
Duke University
Duke University Medical Center
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences)
- Jonathan R. Law
(Duke University
Duke University Medical Center)
- Jesse A. G. Skene
(Duke University
Duke University Medical Center)
- Donald H. Beskind
(Duke University School of Law)
- Neil Vidmar
(Duke University School of Law)
- David A. Ball
(Malekpour and Ball Litigation Consulting)
- Artemis Malekpour
(Malekpour and Ball Litigation Consulting)
- R. McKell Carter
(University of Colorado)
- J. H. Pate Skene
(Duke University Medical Center
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences)
Abstract
Concerns over wrongful convictions have spurred an increased focus on understanding criminal justice decision-making. This study describes an experimental approach that complements conventional mock-juror experiments and case studies by providing a rapid, high-throughput screen for identifying preconceptions and biases that can influence how jurors and lawyers evaluate evidence in criminal cases. The approach combines an experimental decision task derived from marketing research with statistical modelling to explore how subjects evaluate the strength of the case against a defendant. The results show that, in the absence of explicit information about potential error rates or objective reliability, subjects tend to overweight widely used types of forensic evidence, but give much less weight than expected to a defendant’s criminal history. Notably, for mock jurors, the type of crime also biases their confidence in guilt independent of the evidence. This bias is positively correlated with the seriousness of the crime. For practising prosecutors and other lawyers, the crime-type bias is much smaller, yet still correlates with the seriousness of the crime.
Suggested Citation
John M. Pearson & Jonathan R. Law & Jesse A. G. Skene & Donald H. Beskind & Neil Vidmar & David A. Ball & Artemis Malekpour & R. McKell Carter & J. H. Pate Skene, 2018.
"Modelling the effects of crime type and evidence on judgments about guilt,"
Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(11), pages 856-866, November.
Handle:
RePEc:nat:nathum:v:2:y:2018:i:11:d:10.1038_s41562-018-0451-z
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0451-z
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:2:y:2018:i:11:d:10.1038_s41562-018-0451-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.