The impact of forms of strategic and non-strategic voir dire questions on jury verdicts

This paper examined the effects of strategic voir dire questions on juror e valuations of trial participants. The influence of three types of voir dire questions was assessed on ratings of defendant guilt, defendant credibilit y, and defense attorney credibility. Using both a control group composed of non-strategic questions and a control group with no voir dire questions, r esults indicated that the use of strategic voir dire questions influenced d ecisions and ratings of trial participants. In particular, questions asking jurors to disregard the defendant's unsavory past produced a main effect o n perceptions of guilt. Among other effects additionally, the absence of an y voir dire questions seemed to affect negatively perceptions of trial part icipants on the competence dimension. On both the ratings of defendant char acter and competence, an interaction emerged between the use of questions e ncouraging jurors to hold the prosecution to its burden of Proof and questi ons urging jurors to overlook the defendant's unsavory background. Though w e of the defendant background question enhanced credibility ratings when th e burden. of proof question was omitted, these effects were suppressed when both question types were wed In addition, a significant main effect reveal ed that competence was reduced when jurors were exposed to the question enc ouraging them to resist group pressure to convict. Furthermore, a three-way interaction indicated that the highest ratings of defendant competence occ urred when jurors were not asked any strategic questions except those urgin g them to overlook the defendant's unsavory background.