IMPROVING JUROR COMPREHENSION OF JUDICIAL INSTRUCTIONS ON THE ENTRAPMENT DEFENSE

When the defense of entrapment is raised, the legal and psychological question is not whether the defendant committed some illegal act, but rather why the defendant behaved as he or she did and whether governme nt agents' actions provoked the defendant to commit the same crime. Th e subjective lest of entrapment focuses on the predisposition of the d efendant to commit a particular crime, while the objective test focuse s on situational forces. In Study 1, type of entrapment defense (subje ctive, objective) and the defendant's prior record (no prior record, p rior record) were experimentally manipulated. As expected, superior co mprehension of the judge's instructions was found for jurors who heard subjective test instructions. Study 2 was designed to improve the com prehension and judgments of jurors who received 1 of 3 versions of the objective test. Juror comprehension of key legal concepts and subsequ ent judgments improved if jurors heard one of the rewritten versions o f the objective test.