FACTORS AFFECTING SIMULATED JURORS DECISIONS IN CAPITAL CASES

Previous psyche-legal research has claimed that the process of selecti ng death-qualified jurors for capital cases creates conviction-prone j uries. The studies on which these claims are based have employed simul ation methodologies to examine the relationship between subjects' deat h-penalty attitudes and verdict decisions, as well as the effect of th e death-qualifying voir dire itself. Despite admitted weaknesses of si mulations in general, this method was employed in the present research so that conceptual comparisons to past findings could be drawn. Two e xperiments were designed to examine the issue of death-qualification a nd biased juries in a context of other potentially highly influential factors, namely, the strength of evidence and the degree of heinousnes s. Our results failed to find any of the relationships between death-p enalty attitudes and verdict decisions that would be predicted from pa st research. Instead, the subjects' decisions were influenced, virtual ly exclusively, by the strength of the evidence presented in the case, as is legally prescribed. In the light of these findings, the discuss ion focused on the questions of reliability and external validity of s imulation research, the potential problems caused by method-specific f actors in determining the outcome of such methodology, the attitude-be havior link, and the danger of premature and unwarranted application t o the legal system of findings from simulations.