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Effects of a Prior Conviction and Kind of Conflicting Evidence on the Attribution of Credibility to a Witness by a Juror

NCJ Number
70627
Author(s)
E R Horn
Date Published
1976
Length
153 pages
Annotation
To assess the effects of two variables, prior conviction of the defendant, and kind of conflicting evidence on the attribution of credibility to a witness by a juror, groups of students played the roles of jurors in staged cases.
Abstract
Students playing the roles of jurors judged cases involving fellow-students charged with disciplinary offenses under the student code (i.e., theft of an examination, assault and battery, unauthorized use of a faculty account, and possession of marijuana), both by rendering a guilty or not-guilty verdict and stating their reactions to the credibility of prosecution and defendant, based on the subjects' prior knowledge that the defendant had, or did not have, a prior conviction. Contrary to the working hypotheses upon which the experiments were based, the presence or absence of a prior conviction did not have a significant effect on either the defendant's credibility or the verdict. However, for those jurors who found the defendant guilty, a more severe punishment was imposed on the defendant if he had a prior disciplinary offense than if he had no prior disciplinary record. Seventeen appendixes form the main body of this study. The text contains no footnotes. A bibliography containing 31 references is appended.

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