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The Impact Of Gruesome Evidence On Mock Juror Decision Making : The Role Of Evidence Characteristics And Emotional Response, Robert J. Nemeth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of gruesome evidence on mock jurors? decisions in a simulated capital trial. The first experiment was designed as a replication and extension of Douglas, Lyon, and Ogloff (1997), who found that mock jurors who were presented with gruesome photographic evidence were nearly twice as likely to convict the defendant than participants who did not see the gruesome evidence. In Experiment 1, gruesome evidence was manipulated in two ways: photographic evidence (low gruesome, highly gruesome, or control photographs) and verbal testimony (low gruesome vs. highly gruesome). Neither photographic evidence nor testimony had an …