Pretrial publicity, judicial remedies, and jury bias.

Abstract

Examined the effectiveness of 3 remedies (judicial instructions, deliberation, and continuance) in combating the negative impact of different types of pretrial publicity on juror judgment. Two different types of pretrial publicity were examined: factual publicity (incriminating information about the defendant) and emotional publicity (information likely to arouse negative emotions). 617 adults from the jury rolls and 14 university students served as mock jurors. Neither instructions nor deliberation reduced the impact of either form of publicity; in fact, deliberation strengthened publicity biases. A continuance of several days between exposure to the publicity and viewing the trial served as an effective remedy for the factual publicity but not for the emotional publicity.