Mock juror decision-making in a self-defence trial involving police use of force.

Ewanation, Logan; Maeder, Evelyn M.; Yamamoto, Susan

doi:10.1037/cbs0000270

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…This conflicts with previous jury research conducted by Ewanation, Maeder, and Yamamoto (2021), who found that the more legitimate participants believed the police to be, the more likely they were to find a defendant guilty of murdering a police officer. A key difference between my study and the work of Ewanation et al (2021) relates to the incident described at trial; in their work, Ewanation and colleagues (2021) used a videotaped mock trial that involved a civilian accused of killing a police officer during a UoF incident. The defendant testified that the police were using excessive force during his attempted arrest and claimed to have killed the officer in an act of self-defence.…”

Section: Police Legitimacycontrasting

confidence: 96%

“…However, neither the APLS nor the police feeling thermometer were significantly related to jurors' verdicts or perceptions of the officer's UoF. This conflicts with previous jury research conducted by Ewanation, Maeder, and Yamamoto (2021), who found that the more legitimate participants believed the police to be, the more likely they were to find a defendant guilty of murdering a police officer. A key difference between my study and the work of Ewanation et al (2021) relates to the incident described at trial; in their work, Ewanation and colleagues (2021) used a videotaped mock trial that involved a civilian accused of killing a police officer during a UoF incident.…”

Section: Police Legitimacycontrasting

confidence: 87%

“…These results lend partial support to the Director's Cut Model (Devine, 2012) of jury decision-making, which posits that a jury's decision-making process is partly influenced by the pre-existing attitudes and beliefs of the jurors. However, the null relationship between perceptions of legitimacy and individual verdicts conflicts with not only the Director's Cut Model, but also previous research that has observed effects of these attitudes in both the courtroom (Ewanation et al, 2021) and in general evaluations of police use of force (Bradford et al, 2017;Gerber & Jackson, 2017;Reynolds et al, 2018). As mentioned in Study 1a, responses to the Attitudes Towards Police Legitimacy Scale were negatively skewed, although analyses using a transformed version of the variable continued to reveal non-significant relationships with individual juror responses.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

“…In my study, it seems that how jurors deliberated about the defendant officer's actions depended upon their general beliefs about police legitimacy (despite all hearing the same trial evidence). In similar mock jury research, Ewanation et al (2021) found that perceptions of police legitimacy influenced jurors' decisions in a self-defence trial that involved police UoF; the more legitimate that participants believed the police to be, the more likely they were to find the defendant guilty of murdering a police officer. Together, these results suggest that jurors' perceptions of police legitimacy play an important role in legal decision-making when the trial involves police UoF.…”

Section: Perceptions Of Police Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Specifically, I believe jurors will make more prodefendant utterances when the victim is Indigenous, and more anti-defendant utterances when the victim is White. Furthermore, I predict jurors with favourable perceptions of the police will make more pro-defendant utterances, and jurors with negative perceptions of the police will make more anti-defendant utterances (Ewanation et al, 2021;Reynolds et al, 2018).…”

Section: ) Officer Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 96%

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The effect of victim race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal use of force

Ewanation¹

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In recent years, a number of highly-publicized lethal police use of force (UoF) encounters have occurred in both Canada and the United States, sparking several social movements and causing public debate about officer accountability. The primary aim of this project is to increase our understanding of jurors' legal decision-making in trials involving police UoF by exploring what jurors discuss during deliberations in simulated trials and evaluating whether the race of the victim affects individual verdicts and deliberation content. Canadian jury eligible participants (N = 78) watched and listened to a fictional trial involving a police officer charged with manslaughter. The victim's race was manipulated to be either White or Indigenous. After rendering individual pre-deliberation verdicts, participants took part in a 60-minute deliberation session, then rendered individual post-deliberation verdicts. Study 1a investigated the relationship between victim race, jurors' perceived police legitimacy, and individual verdict decisions. Although victim race did not have a statistically significant effect on pre-deliberation verdicts, the odds of jurors rendering a guilty post-deliberation verdict was more than 16 times higher when the victim was White as opposed to Indigenous. Study 1b investigated how victim race and police legitimacy relate to the deliberation content of the juries. Analyses indicated that both of these variables play a significant role in jury deliberations. Specifically, jurors were significantly more likely to provide "anti-defendant" and "pro-prosecution" utterances when the victim was White, as compared to Indigenous. Additionally, jurors with negative perceptions of police were significantly more likely to utter "anti-defendant" statements. Overall, this study suggests that, contrary to the assumption of the Canadian legal system, victim race influences legal decision-making in trials involving officer UoF.

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Section: Police Legitimacycontrasting

confidence: 96%

Section: Police Legitimacycontrasting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

Section: Perceptions Of Police Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: ) Officer Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 96%

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The effect of victim race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal use of force

Ewanation¹

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Civil juror compensation and judgments of police use of force at the intersection of race and mental illness

Sturges

Flick

Provenza

et al. 2022

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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More than 53 million people come in contact with police each year, with people of color and those with mental illness (MI) being subjected to increased rates of contact. Sometimes police and civilian interactions have fatal outcomes, and these populations are disproportionately affected. As a result, families of these victims sometimes seek monetary compensation through civil litigation. The current study sought to understand how victim race and mental illness might impact civil juror decision‐making in deadly police use of force cases. Participants (N = 177) were exposed to trial evidence and were assessed on a number of dimensions. Results display a strong influence of mock jurors' attitudes toward police legitimacy on compensatory damages, as well as interaction effects between attitudes toward police legitimacy and victim race on punitive damage awards and opinions on what professional consequences the involved police officer should face. Implications and future directions are discussed.

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The influence of race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal police use of force.

Ewanation¹,

Maeder²

2023

Law and Human Behavior

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Objective: Many highly publicized police use-of-force encounters have recently occurred in the United States. This project primarily explored whether officer, juror, or victim race affects verdicts in trials involving police use of force. Hypotheses: Because of recent conflicting research surrounding race and juror decision-making, we conducted an exploratory analysis on the interactive effects of juror, victim, and defendant race. We hypothesized that mock jurors with favorable perceptions of police legitimacy would be less likely to convict an officer charged with manslaughter. Method: Four hundred sixteen (243 women, 170 men, three another gender; 263 White, 50 Asian, 44 Black, 41 Latine, four Native American, 14 another race/ethnicity) jury-eligible community members read a trial transcript involving a police officer charged with manslaughter, in which we manipulated victim and defendant race (Black, White), then rendered a verdict and answered a questionnaire. Results: We found significant effects of police legitimacy and defendant race on verdicts. The main effect was qualified by an interaction between juror race/ethnicity and defendant race. Simple-slope analyses revealed no effect of defendant race for White mock jurors. In comparison, Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) mock jurors were significantly more likely to convict a White than a Black defendant. We also observed significant effects of police legitimacy, defendant race, and victim race on perceptions of the officer's use of force. Conclusions: Our analyses revealed that mock jurors were significantly more punitive when the defendant was White compared with Black, and they perceived the officer's use of force as significantly more excessive when the officer was White or the victim was Black. These effects appear to be driven primarily by BIPOC jurors. Mock jurors with more favorable perceptions of police legitimacy were significantly less likely to convict the officer and viewed his use of force as less excessive. Public Significance StatementOur study provides evidence that despite explicit legal instructions regarding impartiality, factors such as defendant and victim race may influence mock jurors when rendering verdicts and evaluating trial evidence. The observed effects of juror race/ethnicity underscore the importance of diverse jury pools. Furthermore, we observed that mock jurors' attitudes concerning police legitimacy predicted their verdict decisions and perceptions of the officer's use of force. Thus, attorneys may wish to consider assessing attitudes toward police during the voir dire process of trials involving police officers as defendants.

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Mock juror decision-making in a self-defence trial involving police use of force.

Cited by 9 publications

References 52 publications

The effect of victim race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal use of force

The effect of victim race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal use of force

Civil juror compensation and judgments of police use of force at the intersection of race and mental illness

The influence of race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal police use of force.

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