When all goes well, juries make decisions based on the evidence and the law but research shows that jurors are swayed by other factors. What are those factors? And what are the implications for justice?
The popular heroic view of juries come from movies like “12 Angry Men”, where a single juror manages to change the minds of the other jurors. How likely is this in reality?
Join Evelyn Maeder, an expert in jury research, at our January 9th meeting as she discusses
* the structure and differences in the jury systems of Canada and the US.
* the influence of legal and extralegal factors on juror decision making
* special topics within jury research, such as juror decision making in capital and insanity defence trials.
Evelyn is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University, and is also cross-appointed in the Department of Psychology. She studies the influence of psychology on the law and legal decision-making, particularly with respect to juries and public policy. Her current research projects include studying the effects of extralegal information (including defendant race, victim attractiveness, and defendant gang affiliation) on juror decision-making, legal decision-making in NCRMD trials, and the effects of race salience in the criminal courtroom. She is the director of the Legal Decision-Making Lab at Carleton, and her work is funded by SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and APLS (American Psychology-Law Society).