Can the Jury Disregard that Information? The Use of Suspicion to Reduce the Prejudicial Effects of Pretrial Publicity and Inadmissible Testimony

Abstract

Mock jurors learned incriminating information about a defendant in the context of pretrial publicity (Study 1) or testimony introduced in the trial but ruled inadmissible (Study 2). Despite the judge's instructions that they disregard the information, jurors' verdicts were affected significantly by the information, unless the jurors were made suspicious about the motives underlying the introduction of this information. That is, jurors given reason to be suspicious about why the incriminating information was introduced into the media or the trial offered verdicts that did not differ from those made by jurors who were not exposed to the incriminating information. The potential role of suspicion in weakening the biasing effects of a variety of nonevidentiary factors on jurors' verdicts is discussed, as is the role of suspicion in social-cognitive processes more generally.