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Law and Psychology

Michigan Law Review

Juries

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller Nov 2006

The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller

Michigan Law Review

Empirical research indicates that jurors routinely undervalue circumstantial evidence (DNA, fingerprints, and the like) and overvalue direct evidence (eyewitness identifications and confessions) when making verdict choices, even though false-conviction statistics indicate that the former is normally more probative and more reliable than the latter The traditional explanation of this paradox, based on the probability-threshold model of jury decision-making, is that jurors simply do not understand circumstantial evidence and thus routinely underestimate its effect on the objective probability of the defendant's guilt. That may be true in some situations, but it fails to account for what is known in cognitive psychology …


Psychology, Factfinding, And Entrapment, Kevin A. Smith Feb 2005

Psychology, Factfinding, And Entrapment, Kevin A. Smith

Michigan Law Review

Through the entrapment defense, the law acknowledges that criminal behavior is not always the result of a culpable mind, but is sometimes the result of an interaction between the individual and his environment. By limiting the amount of pressure and temptation that undercover agents may bring to bear on a target, the defense recognizes that the ordinary, law-abiding citizen can be persuaded, cajoled, or intimidated into criminal activity that, he would never consider absent law-enforcement interference. Appropriate application of the defense requires, however, that courts be able to accurately separate the truly wicked from the merely weak-willed, and offensively coercive …


Understanding The Jury With The Help Of Social Science, Stephen Saltzburg Feb 1985

Understanding The Jury With The Help Of Social Science, Stephen Saltzburg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Inside the Jury by Reid Hastie, Steven Penrod and Nancy Pennington


Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior by L. Craig Parker


Reconstructing Reality In The Courtroom: Justice And Judgement In American Culture, Michigan Law Review Mar 1983

Reconstructing Reality In The Courtroom: Justice And Judgement In American Culture, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom: Justice and Judgement in American Culture by W. Lance Bennett and Martha S. Feldman


Judgment Non Obstantibus Datis, Reid Hastie Mar 1981

Judgment Non Obstantibus Datis, Reid Hastie

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Jury Trials by John Baldwin and Michael McConville


Uncovering "Nondiscernible" Differences: Empirical Research And The Jury-Size Cases, Richard O. Lempert Mar 1975

Uncovering "Nondiscernible" Differences: Empirical Research And The Jury-Size Cases, Richard O. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

My point is not that verdict differences associated with jury size cannot be revealed through careful empirical investigation. Indeed, at several places in this article I will suggest research strategies likely to reveal such differences. Rather, it is that typical strategies of legal-impact research, such as those utilized in the Colgrove real-world studies, are unlikely to uncover differences associated with jury size however well they control for those plausible rival hypotheses that form the usual threats to the validity of impact research. The reason lies in the unamenability of the jury-size problem to the usual techniques of aggregate data analysis.