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Wrongful Conviction: Using Lived Experience To Explore Errors In Juror Cognition, Danielle Nicole Schulte Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractWrongful conviction is a pressing legal and social justice issue that requires scholarly attention in the United States. The role of jurors in the criminal justice system has been empirically investigated and debated for many decades as researchers attempt to understand the juror decision-making process and how jurors contribute to wrongful conviction. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore how errors in juror cognition during decision-making led to juror reliance on narrative construction and commonsense reasoning rather than legal and judicial instruction in wrongful conviction cases. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 jurors who served on a criminal …