On finding for defendants who plead insanity: The crucial impact of dispositional instructions and opportunity to deliberate.

Shannon R. Wheatman · David R. Shaffer

30 citations0/0 files storedLaw and Human Behavior

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Jury Decision Making Processes Legal processes and jurisprudence Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

Abstract

One hundred twenty participants functioned as mock-jurors and as members of deliberating juries in an experiment designed to assess the impact of dispositional instruction on verdicts rendered in an insanity trial. Consistent with prior research (K. E. Whittemore & J. R. Ogloff, 1995), dispositional instruction had no effect on the verdict preferences of individual jurors prior to deliberating. Yet, as expected, the instruction manipulation had a major impact on postdeliberative decisions (i.e., group verdicts; individual juror verdict preferences). Content analyses of jury deliberations revealed that postdeliberative shifts toward harsh verdicts in uninstructed juries and toward lenient verdicts in instructed juries were mediated by the impact of the Instruction manipulation on the content of jury deliberations: uninstructed juries feared that an acquitted-insane defendant would be freed to act again, whereas instructed juries recognized that finding for an insane defendant implied his retention and treatment. Implications of these results for both legal policy and the conduct of mock-trial research are discussed.

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References

1966Behavioral sciences and the law.1983Accountability and complexity of thought.1989Effects of involvement on persuasion: A meta-analysis.1994Mock Jurors Versus Mock Juries: The Role of Deliberations in Reactions to Inadmissible Testimony 1974Group Discussion and the Influence of Defendant Characteristics in a Simulated Jury Setting 1992Jury selection in insanity defense cases

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2016Juror decision making in not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder trials: Effects of defendant gender and mental illness type 2016“It will be your duty…:” The Psychology of Criminal Jury Instructions 2018The Role of Defendant Race and Racially Charged Media in Canadian Mock Juror Decision Making 2006NGRI Revisited: Venirepersons' Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense1 2009Measuring Attitudes toward the Insanity Defense in Venirepersons: Refining the IDA-R in the Evaluation of Juror Bias 2015Educating Canadian jurors about the not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder defence.2019The influence of defendant race and mental disorder type on mock juror decision-making in insanity trials

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