Browsing by Subject "Jury"
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Item How age and race of defendant and victim influence mock jurors' perceptions in a child sexual molestation case(Texas Tech University, 2001-12) Escamilla, GuadalupePeople often use preconceived biases to make judgments about other people. This phenomenon is also known to occur in the justice system. Juror bias research has investigated how characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, age, race, and gender, of a defendant can influence jurors' and even judges' decisions about guilt verdicts and sentencings. The characteristics of the victims have also been found to create biases in juror research. More specifically, in cases involving child sexual assault, the age of the victim has been found to influence jurors' perceptions. This dissertation investigated how the effects of defendant and victim characteristics (victim and defendant age and race) combined influenced jurors' perceptions of defendant guilt, defendant and victim credibility, honesty, responsibility, and mental competence. The results indicated that participant gender and victim age were far more likely to influence perceptions of the defendant and the victim. Defendant age did not influence results significantly.Item Legal and literary discourse on the jury in the Victorian period(2015-05) Shapley, Kathleen Adelaide; MacKay, Carol Hanbery; Christian, George (George Scott); MacDuffie, Edward A; Hoad, Neville; Ferreira-Buckley, LindaThis dissertation critically examines representations of the jury in Victorian novels. I argue that studying the jury, as a concept and in practice, offers a unique window to both the social and literary vision of Victorian novelists. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a decline in the use and cultural perception of the jury, and the controversy surrounding the jury’s competency to administer justice implicated broad social questions of education and class that shaped the formation of British identity. The Victorian debate over the future of the jury was a public conversation occurring in legal treatises, the press, and in literature. By engaging in the debate over the future of the institution of the jury, Victorian novelists forge their own “juryman’s guidebook” to educate the readers, the potential jurors of England. In addition to social questions, I examine how the novel uses features of the jury—the jury’s role as a “finder of fact” and the jury’s narrative silence—as narrative techniques. Novelists explore the jury’s role as a “finder of fact” while negotiating their own role as “finder of fact” by balancing legal realism with legal imagination in fictional legal narratives. Additionally, examining the jury’s narrative silence is essential to understanding each author’s legal imagination. By analyzing the narrative techniques and descriptive strategies surrounding the jury in the works of Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M.E. Braddon and Henry Rider Haggard, this project demonstrates how the Victorian cultural anxiety over the future of the jury is captured in literature across genres. The responses of these authors to the jury debate range from ambivalence to concrete visions for legal reform; however, each of these authors, through serious engagement with a legal controversy, writes the law.Item The Utilization of Jurors in the American Judicial System(Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas (LEMIT), 2017) Clay, SonjaThis Leadership White Paper discusses the utilization of jurors in the American judicial system. After many sensational court trials over the last century and beyond, the question has arisen whether this is truly the best system to be utilized. While the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution affords a defendant the right to be tried by an impartial jury (U.S. Const. amend. VI, 1791), it does not stipulate the requirement of being tried by one's peers (“What is a Jury,” n.d.). Many spectacular cases and their outcomes are good indicators that this system might be flawed. Other areas of concern are the biases and mindsets of jurors, the incomprehension of legal aspects involving the case tried, the overall attitudes of potential jurors selected to serve on these panels, and the extensive media coverage surrounding some of these trials. Supporters of this system argue better fact-finding can take place by having a panel of jurors from all walks of life, therefore decreasing the impact of prejudice (Vidmar & Hans, 2007). Another point raised is jurors tend to be more sympathetic toward plaintiffs in civil cases. The danger in the latter, however, is higher amounts of damages are being awarded to plaintiffs in civil cases, causing a negative impact on the economy, even crippling it at times (“Litigation,” 2013). And even the fact-finding can be counterproductive if jurors tend to see themselves in the role of a representative of a certain group and argue and decide accordingly so that this group may benefit from it (Vidmar & Hans, 2007). Changes should be considered to the American court room proceedings and its jury system.