This study involves scale development using theoretically derived items from previous measures and a lay consensual approach for generating new items. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the emergent constructs assessing individual differences in attitudes of prospective jurors. Using case summaries, the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ) demonstrates superior predictive validity over commonly employed measures of pretrial bias. The PJAQ confirms the importance of theoretically derived constructs assessed by other scales and introduces new constructs to the jury decision-making literature. The attitudes assessed by the PJAQ are conviction proneness, system confidence, cynicism toward the defense, racial bias, social justice, and innate criminality. Implications for assessing such attitudes and for better understanding the decision-making process of jurors are discussed.

Victim impact evidence consists of information about the effects of a crime on the victim or the victim's family. We presented 48 juries with two levels of victim impact evidence (victim impact/no victim impact) and two levels of evidence strength (strong/weak), with an equal number of juries in each of the 4 conditions. No significant effects for victim impact evidence were demonstrated at the jury level for either verdicts or sentencing judgments. However, jurors presented with victim impact evidence were less likely to find the defendant guilty for their post-deliberation verdicts, and those who found the defendant guilty gave significantly harsher sentence recommendations and were more likely to impose the death penalty than jurors who did not receive victim impact evidence. Implications for decisions such as Payne v. Tennessee (1991) are discussed. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com ] KEYWORDS Jury simulation, evidence strength, impact on crime victim, severity of sentence Trial attorney Percy Foreman represented a woman who confessed to shooting her husband. She was acquitted despite the overwhelming evidence Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 02:

Victim impact testimony (i.e., testimony concerning the harmful consequences on the victim's surviving family) was examined to determine its effect on the sentencing judgments of mock jurors. Undergraduate students (N= 293) watched a videotaped murder trial simulation, rendered verdicts, and made sentencing judgments. During the penalty phase of the trial, participants were either given no victim impact testimony, or they were given victim impact testimony that varied both the severity of the harm information (mild harm/ severe harm) and the demeanor of the witness (low affect/high affect). The results indicate that information concerning the harm experienced by the victim's relatives, not the affective demeanor of the witness, influenced sentencing judgments. Implications for the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Tennessee (1991) are discussed.

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Victim impact evidence is presented during sentencing hearings to convey the harm experienced by victims and victims' relatives as a result of a crime. Its use in capital cases is highly controversial. Some argue that the Supreme Court's decision to allow the admission of victim impact statements (VIS) during capital sentencing proceedings (Payne v. Tennessee, 1991) invites prejudice and judgments based on emotion rather than reason. Others reason that it provides an important voice for survivors and affords the jury an opportunity to learn about the victim. The authors outline the chief psychological issues that arise in the context of VIS, including their relevance to jurors' judgments of blameworthiness, concerns that the social worth of the victim will influence jurors' sentencing decisions, and issues related to the emotional appeal of VIS. Psycholegal research on the influence of VIS on mock jurors is reviewed, and implications of this work for capital sentencing policy and suggested directions for future research are discussed.

One important limitation of previous research involving measures of bias is that they rely heavily on brief methods of conveying trial information (case summaries) and participants typically do not deliberate as juries before rendering verdicts. In the present study, 183 jury-eligible college students completed the Pretrial Juror Attitudes Questionnaire (PJAQ) and the Juror Bias Scale, watched a videotaped simulated armed robbery trial, and rendered verdicts both before and after deliberating as juries. The results indicate that the PJAQ, and especially the subscales of System confidence and Conviction proneness, significantly predicts pre-deliberation verdicts as well as verdict change (i.e. the shift in verdicts from pre-to post-deliberation). Moreover, the PJAQ provides incremental predictive validity over a more commonly used measure of pretrial bias (the Juror Bias Scale) for pre-and post-deliberation verdicts, as well as providing incremental predictive validity with respect to a juror's tendency to change his/her verdict as a function of the deliberation process. Specifically, bias is associated with a greater probability of verdict change, regardless as to whether that bias reflects a pro-prosecution or pro-defense position. The implications these results have for the importance of pretrial attitude on juror judgments and the deliberation process are discussed.

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The present experiment investigated the impact of the Control Question Test (CQT) and the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) on the verdicts of mock jurors. Although studies have indicated that polygraph evidence has little influence on jurors' verdicts (Cavoukian & Heselgrave, 1980; Spanos, Myers, Dubreuil, & Pawlak, 1992–1993), no research has previously distinguished between the different types of polygraph tests and their impact on juror verdicts. In the present study, jurors were shown a videotape of a simulated rape‐murder trial that contained either CQT polygraph evidence, GKT polygraph evidence, or no polygraph evidence. No differences were found among the 3 conditions for either jury verdicts or individual juror verdicts, and jurors tended to rate both forms of polygraph testimony below other forms of equally suspect evidence, such as eyewitness testimony, in its influence on their decision‐making process.