urors in criminal trials are instructed they may not draw any inference of guilt when criminal defendants exercise their right not to testify. Jurors often also are instructed that defendants' exercise of their right to remain silent cannot influence verdicts in any way. Frank and Broschard (2006) surveyed nearly 600 actual criminal case jurors after they completed their jury deliberations in Florida misdemeanor and felony cases. In approximately 40% of trials, jurors reported that criminal defendants exercised their Fifth Amendment privilege. When defendants chose not to testify....

Tort liability often hinges on whether a defendant behaved as a "reasonable person" would have under the circumstances. Jurors often must decide if a defendant acted as would a reasonably prudent person or as would reasonable people exercising ordinary care. Jaeger (2021) conducted four experiments exploring how potential jurors conceive of the "reasonable person." The first two experiments tested whether mock jurors interpret the reasonable person standard in empirical terms (based on what others do) or economic terms (based on cost efficiency). The third and fourth experiments examined how laypeople apply the empirical standard....

any trials are full of charts and graphs intended to communicate numerical information clearly and to persuade jurors of the specific facts or conclusions that are illustrated. The graphs and charts can be technically accurate in that they display correct numerical values, while also being misleading if they invite people to draw inappropriate conclusions. Yang and colleagues (2021) conducted five studies that examined the conclusions people draw from bar charts that violate a fundamental principle of data visualization, specifically the "y-axis truncation" of bar charts....

During penalty phase deliberations in capital cases, jurors are expected to weigh legally-specified aggravators and mitigators to reach a sentence of life in prison without parole or death. Jurors typically are instructed to exclude extralegal factors irrelevant to the decision. Examples of extralegal factors include a defendant's ethnicity and immigrant status. West and colleagues (2021) explored how mock jurors used aggravators and mitigators when making capital sentencing decisions of defendants of differing immigrant statuses and ethnicities....

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....