Do age and media type influence the effects of pretrial publicity on verdicts?

Concerns about Pretrial Publicity (PTP) have grown with the rise of the internet and social media, leading to a near impossibility of selecting a jury that can ignore PTP and focus only on facts presented at trial. Previous research has shown participants exposed to negative PTP were more likely to find the defendant guilty, and tended to misattribute PTP as having been evidence presented during the trial. This study compared jury verdicts among older and younger jurors when PTP was presented in different media formats (text vs video). Results suggest both older and younger jurors tend to misattribute PTP information as trial information, which leads to more guilty verdicts. However, younger adults exposed to PTP were significantly more likely to render a guilty verdict and scored lower on a source memory test compared to older adults. Finally, format (text vs video) did not significantly moderate these effects.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Akera

Contributors dc:contributor

• Warren, Amye
• Holcombe, Jenny; Shelton, Jill
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Free press and fair trial
• Jurors
• Verdicts

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/748

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1924