Prediction of first ballot mock jury votes by the Analytic Juror Rater

Exposure to capital voir dire may not increase convictions despite increasing pretrial presumption of guilt.

“…Given the oft-replicated finding that people are motivated to evaluate new evidence in a way that confirms their beliefs (e.g., Kunda, 1990; Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979), many scholars interpreted this finding that exposure to capital voir dire influenced potential jurors to adopt pretrial attitudes that implied the defendant’s guilt as support for the notion that capital voir dire would make jurors prone to convict defendants at trial. One can find conclusions that exposure to the death qualification process results in a more conviction prone jury in journal articles (e.g., Allen, Mabry, & McKelton, 1998; Butler & Moran, 2002; Goodman-Delahunty, Greene, & Hsiao, 1998; Haney, 1984a; Pettigrew & Unglesby, 2003; Schuller, Kazoleas, & Kawakami, 2009; Trahan & Stewart, 2011; Young, 2004), law review articles (e.g., Haney, 2006; Robbennolt, 2002; Vartkessian, 2012), and even an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the American Psychological Association (Bersoff & Ogden, 1987). Despite the prevalence of the opinion that exposure to capital voir dire causes jurors to become more conviction-prone, prior research has not examined whether the pretrial bias generated by capital voir dire survives the presentation of trial evidence to influence guilt-phase verdicts among individuals eligible to serve as jurors in a capital trial.…”