Timing of eyewitness expert testimony, jurors' need for cognition, and case strength as determinants of trial verdicts.

In 2 experiments, college students read a murder-trial transcript that included or did not include court-appointed expert testimony about eyewitness memory. The testimony either preceded or followed the evidence, and the judge's final instructions reminded or did not remind jurors about the expert's testimony. Expert testimony decreased perceptions of guilt and eyewitness believability when it followed the evidence and preceded the judge's reminder. This effect occurred whether the prosecution case was moderately weak or moderately strong. Jurors' need for cognition (NC) was curvilinearly related to convictions in a strong case. Low and high NC jurors convicted less than did moderate NC jurors. Greater scrutiny by high NC jurors may make them more likely to consider evidence for the weaker side.

The psychology of telling murder stories: do we think in scripts, exemplars, or prototypes?

According to the story model of Pennington and Hastie, jurors collect information at trial and modify it with general knowledge to create case stories. Schank and Ableson argue that human memory is organized to tell and understand stories. However, Finkel and Groscup questioned the use of manipulated, experimenter-constructed narratives to demonstrate the existence of multiple prototypical crime stories. We interviewed 76 jury eligible, death qualified citizens and asked them to imagine a first-degree murder scenario, describing the events that led to the killing. We coded the presence of dichotomous variables in the resulting stories and identified at least three shared story prototypes using cluster and profile analysis. We conclude that people do not store crime stories as simple prototypes and comment on the implications of this finding for legal decision-making.