Doctoral Dissertation Research: Improving the Accuracy of Juror Self-Reports of Bias during Rehabilitative Voir Dire

博士论文研究：提高陪审员在康复预审期间自我报告偏见的准确性

• 批准号: 1920404
• 负责人: Margaret Bull Kovera
• 金额: $ 1.98万
• 依托单位: CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1920404&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Improving; Accuracy

The courts have long acknowledged pretrial publicity as a source of juror bias. To safeguard defendants' rights to a fair and impartial jury, the courts frequently attempt to "rehabilitate" jurors who admit bias by asking them if they could set aside their bias and be fair and impartial. Yet research indicates that jurors' self-reports of their ability to be fair and impartial are largely inaccurate. For example, regardless of their level of exposure to pretrial publicity, jurors typically report an ability to be fair and impartial. Therefore, this practice of juror rehabilitation is ineffective. Enhancing self-reporting accuracy is critical given that inaccurate self-reports not only undermine defendants' right to a fair and impartial jury but can also create additional litigation, thus requiring valuable time and resources from the courts and weakening public confidence in the accuracy and legitimacy of the legal system. The present research examines how conformity pressures from the judge and other jurors influence jurors' self-reporting accuracy and tests the effectiveness of a novel intervention designed to increase the accuracy of self-reported bias. This project examines the mechanism behind jurors' inaccurate reports of their ability to be fair and impartial and the effectiveness of juror rehabilitation in two jury simulation experiments. First, this project will test whether the behaviors of the judge, other jurors, or both are influencing jurors' self-reporting accuracy by fostering pressures for them to conform their behavior to the request of the judge and other potential jurors. Second, this research will test the effectiveness of an intervention for decreasing conformity pressures during juror rehabilitation and attenuating the biasing effects of pretrial publicity on jurors' decision making. Research shows that pretrial publicity biases jurors' decision-making in part by creating source monitoring errors wherein jurors confuse evidence learned from pretrial publicity with evidence presented during trial. The proposed intervention allows jurors to reflect on and write down information obtained through pretrial publicity prior to being questioned about their ability to set aside bias and be impartial. This intervention should decrease conformity pressures and source monitoring errors and, in turn, increase self-reporting accuracy. In addition, the proposed research will involve students enrolled at a Hispanic-serving institution as research assistants, contributing to the preparation of students from underrepresented groups for graduate study in the sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

法院长期以来一直承认审前宣传是陪审员偏见的根源。为了维护被告人对公正和公正的陪审团的权利，法院经常试图“恢复”陪审员，他们承认偏见，问他们是否可以搁置偏见，并公平，公正。然而，研究表明，陪审员对公正和公正的能力的自我报告在很大程度上是不准确的。例如，无论他们对审前宣传的接触程度如何，陪审员通常都报告公平和公正的能力。因此，这种陪审员康复的做法无效。鉴于不准确的自我报告不仅会破坏被告获得公正和公正的陪审团的权利，而且还可以提起额外的诉讼，从而需要法院的宝贵时间和资源，并削弱了公众对准确性和合法性的公众信心，这一点至关重要，这至关重要。法律体系。本研究探讨了法官和其他陪审员的顺从性压力如何影响陪审员的自我报告准确性，并测试了旨在提高自我报告偏见准确性的新颖干预措施的有效性。该项目研究了陪审员在两个陪审团模拟实验中的公平和公正能力以及陪审员康复的有效性的不准确报告背后的机制。首先，该项目将测试法官，其他陪审员或两者的行为是否正在影响陪审员的自我报告准确性，从而促进压力，以使他们的行为符合法官和其他潜在陪审员的要求。其次，这项研究将测试干预措施在陪审员康复期间减轻整合压力的有效性，并减轻审前宣传对陪审员决策的偏见影响。研究表明，审前宣传通过创建来源监测错误来部分偏见陪审员的决策，其中陪审员将审前宣传中学到的证据与审判期间提供的证据相混淆。拟议的干预措施使陪审员可以通过审前宣传获得并写下信息，然后质疑他们抛弃偏见和公正的能力。这种干预应减少整合压力和源监视错误，进而提高自我报告的准确性。此外，拟议的研究将涉及参加西班牙裔服务机构的学生，作为研究助理，为科学专业人数不足的研究生研究的学生做准备。使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响评估标准进行评估。