Jurors regularly are instructed about circumstantial evidence using pattern jury instructions that many states have rewritten so as to make legal concepts more comprehensible to people without a legal background.Boginskaya (2020) explored how well jurors comprehend simplified pattern jury instructions about circumstantial evidence. Two California pattern jury instructions, one being circumstantial evidence, were audio recorded. The audio recording was played twice to ....

When witnesses are asked questions, sometimes they respond quickly and sometimes they pause before answering. Does a fast answer or a pause before responding make a difference to how believable the witness's statements come across? Are faster or slower responses thought to be more sincere and truthful? Ziano and Wang (2021) conducted 14 experiments involving 7,565 participants to explore how pausing prior to responding to questions affects witness believability....

During trial, objections are the primary way in which an attorney can enforce evidentiary rules. Many attorneys worry that objecting might alienate a jury. Reed (2019) examined juror reactions to objections in two studies. In both studies, mock jurors listened to an audio trial of an armed robbery case and then rendered a verdict, rated the favorability of both the prosecuting and defense attorney, and answered questions related to memory for the evidence....

In both civil and criminal trials, jurors are instructed about the burden of proof of the parties with pattern jury instructions. Many states have re-written their instructions to try to be more juror-friendly, that is, more comprehensible to people without a legal background. Boginskaya (2020) explored how well jurors comprehend rewritten and simplified pattern jury instructions about the preponderance of evidence. Two California pattern jury instructions, one being the preponderance of evidence, were audio recorded. The audio recording was played twice to each of 44 native English-speaking undergraduate and postgraduate students who had never before served on a jury. Each

Expert witnesses testify in the vast majority of trials (see, for review, Jurs, 2016). Research conducted over three decades involving jurors in actual trials with expert testimony produces highly consistent results about what makes an expert witness persuasive to jurors. In the 1990s, Champagne and colleagues (Champagne et al., 1991; Shuman et al., 1994) surveyed jurors about the characteristics necessary for an expert to be effective in court in four different cities. Jurors reported that....

The law regarding jury selection in civil cases varies widely across trials, venues, judges and court systems. Voir dire can be fast or slow, done by attorneys and/or a judge, and focus on biographic, experiential and/or attitudinal information. Three types of voir dire are common in civil cases...Campbell and colleagues (2020) examined the effect of basic, minimal and expanded voir dire on 2,041 mock jurors across three different civil cases....

The biography and character of a criminal defendant are legally irrelevant factors in the determination of guilt, particularly the definition of a crime. While jurors' attributions of blame often consider a criminal defendant's history and character, judges are expected and trained to decide guilt according to the facts and the law, and to ignore legally irrelevant factors such as sympathy.....

Punitive damages are meant to punish a defendant and deter similar conduct in the future. The U.S. Supreme Court suggests that the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages generally should not exceed 9:1 (State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Company v. Campbell 538 U.S. 408, 425 (2003)). The specific amount of money that punishes a defendant and deters similar conduct, however, is subjective and left to each case's decision-maker. Conklin (2021) examined whether a lump sum request (for the total amount desired) or a per diem revenue request (asking for a specific number of days of the defendant's revenue) yielded

The judicial system weights a juror's self-diagnoses of bias and fairness during voir dire very heavily, assuming that, as a factual matter, jurors can undertake accurately this self-assessment.In the context of a medical malpractice case, Yokum, Robertson and Palmer (2019) tested whether mock jurors exposed to negative pre-trial publicity are able to identify the influence the material had on their decision-making....

The modern #MeToo movement started in late 2017. In 2010, well before the #Metoo movement, Wright and colleagues reported research results related to a rape case. In 2019, Conklin (2020) used this same rape case to understand the effects of the #MeToo movement on juror decision-making....