Jury Nullification: The Influence of Judicial Instruction on the Relationship Between Attitudes and Juridic Decision-Making

Advances in Psychology and Law

“…More recent research on the deliberation process of nullifi cation-instructed jurors replicated the fi nding that nullifi cation instructions led jurors to rely less on evidence and more on defendant characteristics (Meissner et al, 2003 ). In cases involving a morally ambiguous crime (i.e., euthanasia), nullifi cation-instructed jurors were infl uenced by their own attitudes toward the issue in pre-deliberation verdicts; however, deliberation seemed to reduce jurors' reliance on these attitudes.…”

“…The research suggests that , while nullifi cation does not result in the anarchic scenario presented by opponents of nullifi cation instructions, it does raise some concerns regarding the effect of nullifi cation instructions on jury decision-making (Hamm et al, 2013 ;Horowitz, 1985Horowitz, , 2008Horowitz, Kerr, Park, & Gockel, 2006 ;Kerr et al, 2008 ;Meissner, Brigham, & Pfeifer, 2003 ). Most studies compare juries which are instructed about their power to nullify to juries which are not instructed about this power.…”

“…Rather, while juries might rely on their values and beliefs to evaluate whether factors beyond the evidence should be considered, jurors rarely nullify (Hamm et al, 2013 ), and when they do, it appears to be limited to a narrow set of crimes toward which community sentiment is divided. However, even in cases in which community sentiment might be divided (e.g., euthanasia; Meissner et al, 2003 ;Pfeifer, Brigham, & Robinson, 1996 ), jury deliberation might ameliorate the infl uence of jurors' attitudes on the fi nal verdict. Thus, deliberation provides further stability to the process of jury decision-making even when nullifi cation instructions are presented.…”

“…Nevertheless, evidence does suggest that jurors might be biased by extralegal factors such as whether or not the defendant's victim was an especially sympathetic or unsympathetic individual (Horowitz, 1985 ;Kerr et al, 2008 ;Meissner et al, 2003 ). This bias might occur, in part, if instructions on nullifi cation produces greater sensitivity to emotionally biasing information (i.e., the death of a sympathetic victim might elicit more negative emotions, resulting in higher likelihood of a guilty verdict).…”

Expert testimony in recovered memory trials: Effects on mock jurors' opinions, deliberations and verdicts

“…A hierarchical research design was used in which participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions and to six-person juries within each condition. Thus, preliminary analyses (MANCOVA) on questions asked following deliberation were conducted to determine whether the variance attributable to juries was greater than the individual variance (similar to Hazelwood & Brigham, 1998;Meissner, Brigham, & Pfeifer, 2003). If there is not a significant effect of juries then the individual and jury error terms can be pooled.…”