Video Analysis: 'How Statistics Fool Juries'

Forcelli explains his displeasure of our broken criminal justice system when he states, “The sad part is that getting an innocent man out of jail is way, way, way harder than putting a guilty man in jail.” When detectives are constantly pressured to close cases and produce high conviction rates it can cause in accuracies in convictions. Garry’s case is a perfect example of how a case with minimal evidence can result in an innocent getting placed in prison. Garry has sat in prison for over 20 years waiting to appeal his case and plead his innocence. The ease of convicting an innocent man should be consistent with difficulty of exonerating an innocent man. In Garry’s case he awaits a decision from a judge where the judge has three options, to exonerate him, grant a retrial, or

In the article " Trial Lawyers Cater to Jurors' Demands for Visual Evidence" by Sylvia Hsiech, visual evidence can be used very effectively to reach jurors in courtrooms cases, but such evidence must adhere to the rules of evidence and should not be overdone. According to the author, There is a high demand for lawyers to use sound bite-like presentation and hiring visual artists to illustrate piles of documents and basically bringing them to life. For example hiring an visual artist you can keep the jurors entertained and present it visual so they can see and understand it. In the article, the author talks about Brain Carney because according to him every case can be visual. For instance whether you think your case can't be transfer into a

In the video Don't Be Fooled By Bad Statistics posted by Emily Dressler three forms of bad statistics are discussed, poorly collected data, leading questions, and misuse if center. Information collected poorly will lead to misleading results and false conclusions. Dressler uses the example of data collected by researchers pertaining to magazine preference during business hours. The data is skewed because of the time of day the information was gleaned rendered the sample not representative of the entire population. Another form of bad statistics has to do with how the desired information was elicited. Leading questions may result in biased responses. Questions need to be worded carefully so the information collected is not influenced by the interviewer. Finally, the video talks about misuse of center. Data can be misleading if not appropriately analyzed. Outliers, an individual value that falls outside the overall pattern of data can prejudice the conclusion leading to incorrect assumptions. An example might be that of the man who drowned in a pond with an average dept of one inch. The pond was one quarter inch deep everywhere but in the center where there was a ten foot hole.

To properly follow due process, an unbiased jury, resistant to influences outside of the court, is necessary. With the advancement of communication, courts must insure that juror bias is never used against the accused in a court of law. Though there is nothing that restricts the media from reporting events in the court, the judge should continue the trial until the threat of bias shows. If too much bias shows the case shall be sent to another county that received less publicity of the

To begin with, Bias in the court room can be many things: Race, Religion, Sex, etc. For example, In the case: Rodriguez v. Colorado Miguel Angel Peña Rodriguez was charged with sexual assault. According to the article, "Racial bias in the jury room..." the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Miguel Angel Peña Rodriguez despite evidence that a juror said, "I think he did it because he's Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want." Mr. Rodriguez was accused of making sexual advances toward two teenage girls in the bathroom of a horse-racing track. The juror, H.C., was a former law enforcement officer who also said during deliberations that "where he used to patrol, nine times out of 10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive

Let me start by saying that I feel the proliferation of media and devices, particularly social media, make ALL information available to EVERY person across the globe 24/7. This being said, the availability of an uninformed jury pool is virtually impossible. In today’s society, everyone has information, therefore to assume that any perspective juror is unaware of at least the basics of every meaningful crime in their local, state and national scene is naïve at best. The best a defendant and defense attorney can hope for is that the jurors will put aside any preconceived notions of the guilt or innocence of the accused, follow the jury instructions, and render an unbiased verdict. Do I feel that this happens…NO. Jurors lie, attorneys and judges

Discussing yourself ethically isn’t really as easy or hard as I thought it would be, hopefully I’m not missing the point, then. I use Weston’s chapters 10-13 to discuss the meanings presented and how I can apply them to my own “ethical self-reflection”.

It also shows that the public receive a view the court aspects of the sentencing, where the offender may be perceived to have received a lenient sentence when convicted. This leads to the public not knowing all the facts of the case and perceiving that ‘criminals’ are getting off lightly.

According to the law, every person participating in a trial of court has the right to a fair trial. However, the system demonstrating this has not always portrayed that of a fair and just trial. The basis of a fair ruling is mainly influenced by how the rules put in place determine how someone can be judged. One instance in where a rule could impact the way in which a person was judged is the time setting in which the rule exists pertaining to the trial. Laws regarding trials in the 1800s could be drastically contrasted with the laws in the 2000s in numerous ways, such as the absence of lawyers and short trials that were potentially inaccurate. Along with quick conclusions, their laws were not as fully developed as they are now in modern

The Downside of the Jury System In the popular play Twelve Angry Men, by Reginald Rose, twelve men partake in a very tense jury case. She chooses to write about a murder trial where a boy was accused of stabbing and killing his father. This is the most consequential case a jury can be assigned, meaning that those twelve people have the ability to sentence someone to death. Rose shows excellent examples of how bias and inexperienced these selected people can be and how that affects the outcome of the case.

A psychological research suggested that once people begin to form an impression, they unwillingly interpret, seek and begin to create behavioral decision making, and data can verify that (Rassin, Eric; Sommer, Samuel; Miller, Monica; Yaniv, Oren). Even if there is no prior personally relevant reason to confirm a hypothesis, people seem to favor confirmation as the default testing strategy. Further hypothesized that the preference for confirming evidence is influenced by two main factors, Facts v. Perception.

He gives many examples for this argument. Joel Best states that bad statistics are created because of four things, “guessing, dubious definitions, questionable

Experts in the legal field can have biases that influence decision making. These biases can be controlled for by training. In other words, I am interested in the kinds of biases legal experts can have and the effects of training on mitigating those biases. The importance of mitigating biases is to allow for objectivity in decision making so correct decisions are made. Both of these articles together, highlight the importance of experts in relation to cases of homicide. Flynn, Gask, Appleby and Shaw (2016) in their paper address the relationship between mental disorder and homicide-suicide. Homicide-suicide, in this case, refers to people who commit homicide and within a 3-day window. Fahsing and Ask (2016) in their paper look at the

In How to Lie with Statistics (Huff, 1954), Darrel Huff deciphers statistical examples and explains the means of deception that statistics and statisticians sometimes use to relay false information. Huff also conveys an underlying message of don’t believe everything you’re told, something him and my mother have in common. At first glance, a reader might think that this book will teach people how to actually lie using statistics, but that is not the case. It gives the reader a glimpse or a behind the curtain view of how easily it is to be deceived using numbers and how it is slyly achieved. Ironically he calls the book How to Lie with Statistics almost to tease his audience that the content in this book is not as it appears. To my utmost surprise, I actually rather enjoyed this book. It was a fairly simple read that was filled with new information and showed me how to look closer at statistical figures in the future. The humor was spot on so much, so that I even chuckled aloud occasionally. For the icing on the cake, I even expanded my vocabulary to learn fun words such as rotogravure.

From the findings, it can be concluded that the results do support the hypothesis that mock jurors place a harsher sentence on the unattractive defendant in the manslaughter case. Whereas, it was not seen as significant on the unattractive defendant in the theft case, this finding is counterintuitive to the hypothesis however, one can speculate that being attractive may be more beneficial to those that are on trial for a serious crime. The implications here could be down to the serious consequences to the defendant’s life if they found guilty for manslaughter, when in actual fact it may not be entirely their fault. Whereas, with the theft case there was no doubt in the jurors mind that that individual was responsible for the