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MichaelBerkovits-FirstPaper 10 - 18 Feb 2008 - Main.MichaelBerkovits
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper%25" |
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> | [This edit, which comes after the submission deadline, simply corrects a typo in the section "Evidence of Errors..."] | | |
Out to Sea in an Ocean of Distortion: Cognitive Psychology in the Jury Box | | | Applying the Reasonable Doubt Standard
Evidence of Errors by Other Juries | |
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< | A trial creates an artificially narrow focus on one or more bad acts by the defendant. Because directing cognitive focus to a single event can distort decision-making (Gilbert), it would be reasonable to provide juries as much context as possible. Instead, the jury is shielded from evidence of errors made by previous juries, similarly situated. Many convicted individuals have been exonerated in modern legal history. No one doubts that many wrongful convictions go unredressed. Yet evidence and argument going to the frequency of wrongful convictions would be shielded from the jury on relevance grounds. Of course, if reasonable people applying a "no reasonable doubt" standard get it wrong more than a negligible proportion of the time, evidence to that effect is highly relevant to a jury made up of such people. An extreme, but possibly justifiable position would be that it is always incorrect for reasonable jurors to convict: a reasonable doubt present, by definition, given that past collections of reasonable people with "no reasonable doubt" have been mistaken. | >
> | A trial creates an artificially narrow focus on one or more bad acts by the defendant. Because directing cognitive focus to a single event can distort decision-making (Gilbert), it would be reasonable to provide juries as much context as possible. Instead, the jury is shielded from evidence of errors made by previous juries, similarly situated. Many convicted individuals have been exonerated in modern legal history. No one doubts that many wrongful convictions go unredressed. Yet evidence and argument going to the frequency of wrongful convictions would be shielded from the jury on relevance grounds. Of course, if reasonable people applying a "no reasonable doubt" standard get it wrong more than a negligible proportion of the time, evidence to that effect is highly relevant to a jury made up of such people. An extreme, but possibly justifiable position would be that it is always incorrect for reasonable jurors to convict: a reasonable doubt is present, by definition, given that past collections of reasonable people with "no reasonable doubt" have been mistaken. | | | Underweighting Low Probabilities of Innocence |
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