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Criminal Psychology

Persuading juries: speech style, expert witnesses, order of evidence and publicity

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 03

Overview

Recall questions on powerful and powerless speech, expert witnesses, primacy and recency, the story model, inadmissible evidence, pre-trial publicity, the problem of defendant characteristics for justice, predicting jury responses, and the limits of mock jury research.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Distinguish powerful from powerless speech in a witness.

Key term

Why does telling jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence often fail?

Key term

Why are effects of defendant characteristics on verdicts regarded as a serious problem for justice?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Distinguish powerful from powerless speech in a witness.

    Model answer

    Powerful speech is direct and fluent, while powerless speech is full of hedges, hesitations, intensifiers and rising intonation; the powerless style leads jurors to see the witness as less competent and less believable.

  2. 2

    When is an expert witness most persuasive to a jury?

    Model answer

    When their evidence is clear, is directly relevant to the facts in issue, and they appear independent rather than a hired advocate for one side.

  3. 3

    How do primacy and recency affect a jury's view of the evidence?

    Model answer

    Evidence heard first sets the framework through which the rest is interpreted, while evidence heard last is freshest in mind during deliberation, so both ends of the case carry extra weight.

  4. 4

    Outline the story model of juror decision making.

    Model answer

    Jurors do not weigh each item of evidence separately but construct a narrative that best accounts for what they have heard, then choose the verdict that fits that story.

  5. 5

    Why does telling jurors to disregard inadmissible evidence often fail?

    Model answer

    The instruction draws attention to the material and can provoke reactance, so jurors think about it more and may weight it more heavily than if nothing had been said.

  6. 6

    How can pre-trial publicity prejudice a jury?

    Model answer

    Jurors arrive having already absorbed a version of events and often forget which details came from the media rather than the evidence, so they judge the case against a story formed before the trial began.

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