Research has shown that jurors in many types of cases frequently fail to understand the jury instructions they receive. However, this failure to understand has special implications in capital, or death penalty, cases. As in other cases, juror comprehension of instructions in death penalty cases is very low, and the difficulty of some of the
Early studies by Martin Orne on demand effects and Robert Rosenthal on experimenter expectancy effects established the impact of a sender’s nonverbal communication and the way in which it might alter the behavior of others. In the courtroom, judges’ nonverbal behavior (e.g., tone of voice, demeanor) often communicates their expectations (sometimes termed leakage) about the
When a jury trial is conducted, community members who typically have no special legal training or knowledge are called on to serve as jurors. During the trial, the judge instructs jurors as to the relevant law and the procedures to be used to determine an appropriate verdict in the case. Unfortunately, jurors do not always
In American trials, the verdict is reached by either a judge or a jury, raising questions as to how these two fact finders reach their decisions and whether their decisions systematically differ. Most research has focused on the jury, though some key studies have compared the decisions of judges and juries. The available archival studies