Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Criminal justice, Administration of
- All Subjects: Juror Decision-making
- Creators: Salerno, Jessica
- Creators: Cruz-Torres, Maria L.
Description
The vigorous efforts of advocates to help victims of domestic violence have resulted in the criminalization of domestic violence in the United States and in various countries around the world. However, research studies indicate mixed success in the protection of victims through the use of the legal system. This study examines the experiences of 16 victims/survivors and their perspectives on the criminal justice system's (CJS) response to domestic violence through in-depth interviews throughout the state of Arizona. This comparative study analyzes the experiences of U.S. born non-Latinas, U.S. (mainland and island) born Latinas and foreign born (documented and undocumented) Latinas who are victims/survivors of domestic violence. The empirical cases reveal that at the root of the contradictory success of the criminal justice system are a legal culture of rationalization and a lack of recognition of the intersection of systems of power and oppression such as gender, class, race/ethnicity, and of essence to this study, legal status.
ContributorsSalcido, Maria Olivia (Author) / Menjivar, Cecilia (Thesis advisor) / Cruz-Torres, Maria L. (Committee member) / Varsanyi, Monica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Factors affecting juror decision-making have been studied extensively to determine what drives juror's decisions (Skorinko, Laurent, Bountress, Nyein, and Kuckuck, 2014). In utero androgen exposure measured using the 4D:2D ratio has been studied to understand how the amount of in utero androgen individuals are exposed to affects their personality and emotional development (Manning et. al., 2010; Kempe and Heffernan, 2011; Hampson, Ellis and Tenk, 2008; Fink, Manning and Neave, 2004; Knickmeyer, Baron-Cohen, Raggatt, Taylor and Hackett, 2006; Knickmeyer and Baron-Cohen, 2006; Wakabayashi and Nakazawa, 2010). Using 106 undergraduate students, the current study sought to understand how the 4D:2D ratio affects juror decision-making in civil cases by having participants assign a proportion of liability to a defendant. Participants reviewed jury instructions, as well as three case vignettes. One of these case vignettes was removed due to a description error that led almost all of the participants to find the plaintiff at fault. This study had three different experimental groups where age of the plaintiff was counterbalanced to control age as a factor in the amount of liability assigned. It was hypothesized that a higher 4D:2D ratio would result in lower defendant liability. Here we show that there was a significantly lower proportion of defendant liability assigned by the high 4D:2D ratio group as compared to the low 4D:2D ratio group; t(210) = 2.89, p < 0.01, d = 0.36. Interestingly, despite the difference between the group means, variability was such that the 4D:2D ratio was not predictive of the proportion of defendant liability assigned for experimental conditions.
ContributorsAnderson, Kayla Jo (Author) / Holloway, Steven (Thesis director) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Van Etten, Kathy (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Cultivation theory states that consuming television cultivates a social reality in the real world which aligns with the reality present in television. When the television show CSI was released, researchers studied a form of cultivation stemming from the show titled the "CSI Effect." One of the components of the CSI Effect is the tendency of those who watch CSI to be more likely to overestimate the presence of forensic evidence present in a trial and place more trust in such evidence. In recent years, several true crime documentaries that examined controversial cases have been released. In a similar vein of research conducted on CSI, the current study examines true crime documentaries and their possible impacts on viewers’ judgments and beliefs about the criminal justice system. In the current study, participants were provided with a mock case and asked about their perceptions of the case along with their viewership habits. While overall true crime documentary viewership did not influence judgments of evidence manipulation or perceptions of police, findings point to viewership of the targeted documentaries being associated with feelings of mistrust towards the criminal justice system overall, while the lesser-viewed documentaries correlated with judgments of strength and responsibility of the defendant in the case. One possible explanation is that individual characteristics may serve as the driving factor in how individuals choose what to watch when the popularity of the show is not as well-known.
ContributorsDoughty, Kathryn A (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas J. (Thesis advisor) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
There is conflicting evidence regarding whether a biasing effect of neuroscientific evidence exists. Early research warned of such bias, but more recent papers dispute such claims, with some suggesting a bias only occurs in situations of relative judgment, but not in situations of absolute judgment. The current studies examined the neuroimage bias within both criminal and civil court case contexts, specifically exploring if a bias is dependent on the context in which the neuroimage evidence is presented (i.e. a single expert vs. opposing experts). In the first experiment 408 participants read a criminal court case summary in which either one expert witness testified (absolute judgment) or two experts testified (relative judgment). The experts presented neurological evidence in the form of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and the evidence type varied between a brain image and a graph. A neuroimage bias was found, in that jurors who were exposed to two experts were more punitive when the prosecution presented the image and less punitive when the defense did. In the second experiment 240 participants read a summary of a civil court case in which either a single expert witness testified or two experts testified. The experts presented fMRI data to support or refute a claim of chronic pain and the evidence type again varied between image and graph. The expected neuroimage bias was not found, in that jurors were more likely to find in favor of the plaintiff when either side proffered the image, but more likely to find for the defense when only graphs were offered by the experts. These findings suggest that the introduction of neuroimages as evidence may affect jurors punitiveness in criminal cases, as well as liability decisions in civil cases and overall serves to illustrate that the influence of neuroscientific information on legal decision makers is more complex than originally thought.
ContributorsHafdahl, Riquel J (Author) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Neal, Tess (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016