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Inducing jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence: A legal explanation does not help

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Law and Human Behavior

Abstract

Three experiments investigated mock jurors' ability to disregard inadmissible prior conviction evidence and hearsay. In Experiments 1 and 2, college students listened to an audiotape enacting a theft trial. The critical evidence favored the prosecution and was objected to by the defense. In three different conditions the judge either ruled the evidence admissible, ruled it inadmissible, or ruled it inadmissible and explained the legal basis for the ruling. In a fourth condition no critical evidence was presented. The critical witness' credibility was also manipulated. With prior conviction evidence but not hearsay the legal explanation “backfired.” In addition, the critical witness' credibility did not affect subjects' ability to disregard inadmissible evidence. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the legal explanation may have affected the use of hearsay and prior conviction evidence differently because of subjects' dissimilar preconceptions of the fairness of using the two evidence items to assess guilt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, 47306, Muncie, IN

    Kerri L. Pickel

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  1. Kerri L. Pickel
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Additional information

I am grateful to the following individuals for their assistance with this research: for help with data collection, Kerry McCafferty, Frank Ross, Lana Symmes, and Marsennia Wells; for their fine acting on the audiotapes, Eric Covey, Brian Fern, Jeff Langdon, Andy Lewellen, Jennifer Luoma, Kerry McCafferty, Marsennia Wells, and Clayton Zambori; for providing helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, Darrell Butler and three anonymous reviewers; and for serving as legal consultant, Colleen Kochanek.

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Pickel, K.L. Inducing jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence: A legal explanation does not help. Law Hum Behav 19, 407–424 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01499140

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