The effect of jury deliberations on jurors' propensity to disregard inadmissible evidence

The goal of this research was to examine the effect of jury deliberations o n juror's propensity to disregard inadmissible evidence. Extant research is inconclusive; some research indicates that jurors do follow judicial instr uctions to ignore inadmissible evidence, but other research suggests that j urors do not. Two experiments examined whether jurors were affected by inad missible evidence. The results revealed that although mock jurors were bias ed by inadmissible evidence prior to deliberations, the bias was tempered f ollowing deliberations. In Experiment 1, post deliberation jurors disregard ed incriminating evidence that was ruled inadmissible because of due-proces s concerns. Experiment 2 replicated these results with less incriminating i nadmissible evidence and also revealed that jurors did not accurately gauge the impact that the inadmissible evidence had on their verdicts. Theoretic al and judicial policy implications are discussed.