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Final Exam comm law

Terms in this set (41)

Voire Dire Process
The forum in which the judge and/ or the attorneys (both defense attorney and prosecutor) question prospective jurors. A french term meaning to speak the truth. Focus on juror's ability and willingness to be fair and impartial. Defendants have the opportunity (via attorney) to screen prospective jurors for prejudice.
What does the legal system seek in trial juries?
seeks representative and unbiased juries. Both are hard to achieve. The jury selection process can, in some instances, create an unrepresentative jury.
What stands in the way of jury representativeness?
The lists from which juror's names were selected originally only voter registration lists underrepresented certain segments of society such as youth, older adults, and minorities. Many people fail to respond to their jury summons. Others seek dismissal by claiming personal hardship. To make jury pools representative, jurisdictions have 1. broadened the sources of names of prospective jurors by using lists of licensed drivers and those who receive federal assistance and 2. reduced automatic exemptions to persons in a limited number of occupations.
What procedures are used in voire dire?
The process of selecting a jury from the panel of prospective jurors is called voire dire. its goal is an unbiased jury. Prospective jurors who have biases or conflicts of interest can be challenged for cause and discharged. Each side may also discharge a certain number of prospective jurors without giving any reasons; these are called peremptory challenges. questions of the prospective jurors is done at the discretion of the judge. In most trials, there is some combination of questions from the judge and the attorneys. When questioning jurors, most attorneys also try to sway jurors to their view point through various ingratiation and indoctrination techniques.
peremptory challenges
Each side may also discharge a certain number of prospective jurors without giving any reasons.
What personality and attitudinal characteristics of jurors, if any, are related to their verdicts?
In choosing jurors, lawyers base their decisions on their implicit personality theories and stereotypes of what is a good juror. According to laboratory studies, a few personality and attitude related characteristics authoritarianism, locus of control, and belief in a just world are weakly related to juror verdicts. these variables may be less important in real cases, however, and attorneys tend not to focus on jurors' personality characteristics when selecting jurors, probably because they are difficult to identify.
what role do jury consultants play in a trial?
Initially, practitioners of scientific jury selection tried to determine which demographic characteristics of jurors were related to their sympathy for one side or the other in trials. More recently, trial consultants have broadened their work to include 1. pretrial assessment of reactions to the evidence and 2. the development of themes that organize the evidence for specific jurors likely to be swayed by this approach. There is some evidence that science oriented consultation may be useful in cases in which jurors' attitudes about the evidence are especially important.
4 elements necessary for a tort
Duty, breach of duty, breach of duty is proximate cause of harm, and must show that person's actions were the cause of your pain/suffering.
Physical injury and mental disorder
(physical-Mental) broken back = chronic pain, inability to continue working depression.
Traumatic Incident and psychological difficulties
(Mental-Mental) Robbed at gunpoint and Post traumatic stress disorder and/or anxiety.
Mental-Physical
work-related stress and high blood pressure, insomnia
Recently, increase in psychological claims
Women in the workforce; more often diagnosed with anxiety or depression. Shift from manufacturing and service jobs ( less physical injuries, more psychological injuries. Dealing with people sucks). Psychological claims are motivated by money.
Extended
Open-ended questions by both attorneys and judge, individually. good for eliciting info from jurors that would not have disclosed otherwise.
Typical voire dire
group questions, then individual follow - up questions. both attorneys and judge, sensitive topics discussed at judge's bench/chambers, many potential jurors report feeling like questions are 1. irrelevant, 2. overly personal, and / or 3. likely to make them feel uncomfortable.
Challenges for cause
Juries aren't really selected; they are rejected. two types of challenges (juror should be excluded because inflexibly biased or prejudiced ex. victim of same crime defendant committed) relative, dating, or business associate of defendant, judge can challenge for cause as well, and unlimited.
Peremptory challenge
Without a reason stated, without inquiry, and being subject to the court's control, ability to exclude potential jurors who they believe will not be sympathetic, limited number; varies by type of case ex. criminal vs. civil and by jurisdiction.
Jury selection strategies
representative jury should represent what our country/community consists of.
Rodney King Jury Composition
All white (4 white male defendants), 2 NRA members and 2 veterans, all seemed pro-police and from similar backgrounds, all 4 LAPD officers were acquitted, resulted in LA riots, Jury was Not Representative.
Venire
Panel of prospective jurors before potential jurors arrive at the courthouse. General rules systematically eliminate any subgroup underrepresented.
Group
A cognizable group that share certain characteristics, might hold unique perspectives on a particular issue.
Reforms
50 yrs ago well-educated white men were overrepresented in juries US Congress and Supreme Court require that poor from which jury is selected representative cross section of the community.
Representative cross section of the community
More heterogeneous/diverse (Minorities discourage members from expressing prejudice, Better fact-finders/problem solvers (different perspectives, experiences, attitudes, opinions. and appearance of legitimacy(if the community perceives jury as unrepresentative, they may view verdict as invalid).
All white juries vs. racially mixed juries
Diverse groups has longer, more thorough deliberations, more likely to discuss racially-charged issues, and white jurors on diverse juries discussed was more facts and more aware of racial concerns than whites on all white juries. White jurors who expected to discuss race-relevant issues, showed better comprehension of case background information.
Typical Voir Dire
group questions, then individual follow-up questions from both attorneys and judge.

Most Limited version: a few yes/no questions to the group (is anyone here incapable of being fair and impartial because of the defendants ethnicity. (asked to the whole group; no one is comfortable to admit that in front of a group)

Extended version: Open ended questions by both attorneys and judge, individually (privately) good for eliciting information from jurors that wouldn't have disclosed otherwise. Downside: Time consuming.
Sensitive topics discussed at judge's bench/chambers many potential jurors report feeling like questions are irrelevant, overly personal, likely to make them feel uncomfortable. these questions are asked so that they could be more honest (attorneys have there own reason).
similarity lenincy hypothesis
common attorney strategy based on the assumption that jurors who are demographically or socially similar to a litigant will be predisposed to favor that litigant.
Black Sheep effect
in some cases sharing similar qualities with another might make a juror more skeptical of that person's excuses or justifications for behavior that the juror dislikes. Although people generally favor individuals who are part of their in-group, they may sometimes strongly sanction those fellow members who reflect negatively on and could embarrass the in-group.
implicit personality theory
is a person's organized network of preconceptions about how certain attributes are related to one another and to behavior. Trial lawyers often apply their implicit personality theories to jury selection.
Peremptory challenges
have multiple purposes. 1. they allow attorney to challenge potential jurors who they believe will not be sympathetic, for whatever reason, to their client. 2. larglly symbolic function; when the parties in lawsuit play a role in selecting the people who decide the outcome, they may be more statisfied with that outcome. 3. is to allow the attorney to begin to indoctrinate prospective jurors and influence those who ultimately will make up the jury.

based on religious affiliation violate state constitution, but the Supreme Court has yet to hold that it is unconstitutional to base peremptory challenges on religious persuasion (or on any other classification, except that jurors cannot be challenged because of their race or gender.
Social Judgements
people infrequently admit (even to themselves) that social category information such as race influences their decisions, often because they want to appear to be unprejudiced and to avoid the social consequences of showing racial bias. These findings suggest that attorney self-reports are unlikely to encompass the real impact of racial considerations in jury selection. and (above all) race neutral justifications leave judges with little reason to reject them, and archival analyses of actual voir dire proceedings show that judges are unlikely to find that peremptory challenges violate the Baston rule.
Baston Rule
when an attorney believes that the prosecution's peremptory challenge was motivated by racial factors.
Challenges for cause
Ex. a relative or business associate of a defendant would be challenged, or excused. The judge may excuse a panelist for cause without either attorney requesting it if the prospective juror is unfit to serve.
Social desirability effect
is most people want to present themselves in a positive, socially desirable way. This desire to appear favorably, especially in the presence of a high-status person such as a judge, shapes how people answer questions and influences what they disclose about themselves.
Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality
A generally accepted framework for describing personality characteristics. The traits that form the model include 1. openness to experience, 2. nueroticism, 3. extraversion, 4. conscientiousness and 5. agreeableness.
Scientific Jury selection
These consultants use empirically based procedures, including small group discussions called focus groups, shadow juries, systematic ratings of prospective jurors, and surveys of the community, to detect bias.
Evidentairy strength
jurors in both criminal and civil cases pay considerable attention to the strength of the evidence. Probably the most important determinant of jurors' verdicts.
Extralegal information
Influenced by irrelevant information about the defendants background or appearance, by what jurors read in the newspaper, or by other sources of irrelevant information, all of which constitute.
Aversive racism
a social psychological framework that proposes that most white jurors are motivated to avoid showing racial bias and when cued about racial consideration ex. when the crime is racially charged or when jurors are instructed to avoid prejudice, they tend to render color-blind decisions.
Liberation hypothesis
When the evidence in a case clearly favors one side or the other juries will decide the case in favor of the side with the stronger evidence. But when the evidence is ambiguous ex. the prosecutions case is weak, jurors are liberated and allowed to rely on their assumptions, sentiments, and biases in short, on extralegal evidence in reaching a verdict.
Dual process theory of attitude change
that distinguishes two different kinds of information processing strategies or routes. When people are motivated to think systematically about some information and have ample time to do so.
Central route
Focus on the arguments or evidence provided.
peripheral route
that involves attention to tangential or extraneous details such as extralegal information.
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