{"id":450,"date":"2007-05-26T02:56:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-26T08:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=450"},"modified":"2007-05-26T02:56:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-26T08:56:00","slug":"goldsmith-on-the-contempt-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/05\/goldsmith-on-the-contempt-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Goldsmith on the contempt laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>n 1996, the Judge Richard T. Matsch took the decision to move America\u2019s biggest domestic terrorist trial<\/a> from Oklahoma to Colorado. Newspaper and television stories about Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had been so pervasive inside Oklahoma that \u201cthey have been demonized,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThere is so great a prejudice against these two defendants in the state of Oklahoma that they cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial at any place … in that state.\u201d<\/p>\n

So do juries get prejudiced by media reporting before trials? Lord Goldsmith<\/a> would respectfully disagree with Judge Matsch, and he would like some research. According to the BBC<\/span><\/a>: <\/p>\n

Lord Goldsmith said research in other countries has concluded the effects of pre-trial reporting was less significant than might be thought.<\/p>\n

A study in Australia found jurors were not likely to recall the publicity in detail, and any such information was superseded by the evidence they heard in court.<\/p>\n

A Canadian study concluded pre-trial publicity had little effect, even in sensational cases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah yes, that would be a study from New South Wales<\/a> in 2000 – the pre-broadband era. Although they reviewed 41 cases, only a third of jurors agreed to be interviewed. Still, the research concluded that as long as a trial was held long enough after the initial media coverage, jurors had mostly forgotten all about it. The Canadian study? Likely to be that of a single case \u2013 the Paul Bernardo trial<\/a> in the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n

But the Attorney-General wants more research. And you can\u2019t have enough research, can you? But guess what? There is<\/span><\/u> a lot of research.<\/p>\n

In 2004, academics at Aberdeen University introduced their paper, Understanding Pre-trial Publicity: Predecisional Distortion of Evidence by Mock Jurors<\/a>, like this:<\/p>\n

over 35 years of research examining the effects of PTP [pre-trial publicity<\/span>] has produced a considerable body of literature that demonstrates a prejudicial impact of PTP on juror decision making…<\/p>\n

Broadly, this research identifies a negative impact of PTP on juror perceptions of the defendant\u2019s criminality and likeability, in addition to an increased frequency of guilty verdicts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what did their<\/span> study show?<\/p>\n

For jurors exposed to negative pre-trial information about the defendant, this distortion process is exacerbated and the prosecution is more strongly favoured as the leader.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, there\u2019s a nice line in research that says buttering up reporters and softening public opinion prior to a trial will get you exactly the result you want. Elevator? Going down.<\/p>\n

Just last June, some psychology researchers in Florida published Effects of pre-trial publicity and jury deliberation on juror bias and source memory errors<\/span><\/a>. Their findings?<\/p>\n

Exposure to PTP significantly affected guilty verdicts, sentence length, perceptions of defendant credibility, and misattributions of PTP as having been presented as trial evidence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the balance of academic studies suggests that Lord Goldsmith is either:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. woefully ill-informed, or<\/li>\n
  2. that he knows exactly how the land lies and is cynically trying to up the conviction rate in terrorism trials where the evidence is a little \u2013 how should we put it \u2013 wobbly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Let me say, in an effort to be modestly controversial, that research isn\u2019t going to tell us a great deal about this issue.<\/p>\n

    Juries are not the ultimate focus group, they\u2019re a legacy of an ancient system that has on occasion worked well for British civil servants<\/a> wanting to challenge their employers, and badly for young black men<\/a> in the United States facing capital charges.<\/p>\n

    Juries are, like the rest of us, weak, vain and easily manipulated.<\/p>\n

    Media publicity is a fact of modern life, so let defence teams argue back and battle begin. Or wrap jurors in cling film. Of course, judges might like that\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In 1996, the Judge Richard T. Matsch took the decision to move America\u2019s biggest domestic terrorist trial from Oklahoma to Colorado. Newspaper and television stories about Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had been so pervasive inside Oklahoma that \u201cthey have been demonized,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cThere is so great a prejudice against these two defendants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}