The present study asked two important questions: Does prejudicial pretrial publicity produce bias which may impair juror objectivity and, if it does, can voir dire remedy its untoward effects? Subjects were 68 college undergraduates whose political attitudes had been assessed and who had or had not read case-specific pretrial publicity one week before viewing a murder trial. Trial proceedings took place at the University of Miami law school. Voir dire, trial viewing, and deliberations were conducted in UM's moot courtroom. As predicted, analyses revealed main effects for both voir dire and pretrial publicity such that pretrial publicity increased conviction rate and the extended voir dire decreased conviction rate, but the extended voir dire failed to reduce the specific prejudicial effect of pretrial publicity. These findings suggest that prejudgment of a general nature (e.g., confusion about legal concepts) may be neutralized by an extended voir dire but that prejudice specifically created by exposure to inflammatory news stories is not offset by an extended voir dire format. There is reason to believe, however, that with more time spent explaining case facts and with greater attention to individual jurors, voir dire could eliminate even the specific prejudice created by pretrial publicity.

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[pt] Essa pesquisa analisa o processo de participação dos jurados no Tribunal do Júri. Se no campo do direito existe uma escassez de trabalhos empíricos, nas ciências sociais, os estudos negligenciam a dimensão prática do trabalho dos funcionários do tribunal, dando ênfase às sessões de julgamento. Esse texto, portanto, está fundamentalmente preocupado em compreender como o Tribunal do Júri é construído socialmente, por meio das ações comuns e cotidianas das pessoas. A pesquisa de campo consistiu num intenso trabalho de observação participante no Tribunal do Júri de Juiz de Fora/MG e em entrevistas com jurados. Analisando a organização do trabalho cotidiano dos funcionários do tribunal, percebe-se que o papel dos jurados nessas rotinas é marginal, tanto pelas tarefas desempenhadas, quanto pela forma que se expressam ao longo dos procedimentos do júri. Essas rotinas – dentre as quais se inserem os mecanismos de seleção dos jurados e de votação dos quesitos – são construídas para fazer a instituição funcionar. Entretanto, como as pessoas não estão interessadas em participar, os funcionários têm de empreender esforços ao selecionar os jurados, buscando fazer o júri acontecer. Nesse cenário, surgem os jurados experientes, que ganham a predileção do juiz por se colocarem à disposição do tribunal, mas que se relacionam muito pouco com a noção de participação popular na justiça, já que utilizam estratégias de legitimação e de construção de identidade, como a criação de uma associação própria. / [en] This research examines the participation of jurors in the jury. Whether in the legal research field empirical research is neglected, in the social sciences the studies disregard the practical aspect of court staff s work, emphasizing the trial sessions. This text, therefore, is mainly concerned in understanding how the jury is socially constructed, through the people s ordinary actions. The fieldwork consisted of participant observation in the jury of Juiz de Fora / MG and interviews with jurors. Through the analysis of the organization of court staff s daily work, it is clear that jurors role in these routines is secondary, both the tasks performed, and the way they express themselves throughout jury s procedures. These routines - among which are included mechanisms for selecting jurors and voting the items - are built to make the institution work. However, as people are not interested in participating, court staff must make efforts to select jurors, trying to make the jury actually happen. In this scenario, there are experienced jurors, who have a predilection of the judge because they place themselves at the disposal of the court. Nonetheless, they have little to do with popular participation in justice, as they use strategies of legitimation and identity formation, like creating a jurors association.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal. / Depuis 1976, les personnes ayant commis un meurtre et condamnées à l'emprisonnement à vie sans possibilité de libération conditionnelle pour une période d'au moins quinze ans peuvent faire réviser ce délai par un juge et jury après avoir purgé quinze ans de cette peine. Le présent mémoire se donne comme objectif général de mieux comprendre ce mécanisme, appelé la révision judiciaire, à travers l'expérience, le point de vue, le vécu et les représentations des avocats ayant piloté de tels dossiers. Pour ce faire, nous avons réalisé des entrevues semi-directives avec des avocats ayant représenté des requérants et la Couronne dans des dossiers québécois. Nous avons également interrogé des avocats des deux parties à l'aide d'entrevues descriptives pour les provinces de l'Alberta, de la Colombie-Britannique, de l'Ontario et de la Saskatchewan. Au total, treize avocats impliqués dans quarante-huit des quatre-vingt-douze dossiers de révision judiciaire ont ainsi été interrogés. Nous avons également analysé le droit s'appliquant à ces dossiers. Cette étude nous a d'abord appris comment les avocats des deux parties se préparaient pour ces dossiers. Ensuite, elle nous donne des informations quant à la manière dont se fait leur preuve, ce qui comprend les différents critères qu'ils voulaient prouver et l'importance qu'ils y accordent, les documents présentés en preuve, les témoins entendus. Troisièmement, nous avons appris quelle était l'attitude des avocats des deux parties à l'égard de cette mesure. Dans un quatrième temps, nous avons obtenu des informations sur la manière dont ils choisissaient un jury. Finalement, nous avons fait ressortir les éléments qui, selon eux, pouvaient avoir une influence sur la décision que le jury rendait. Nous retenons de cette étude que la pratique des avocats de la Couronne du Québec est différente comparativement à leurs confrères des autres provinces canadiennes. Ceci s'expliquant en majeure partie en raison d'une différence d'attitude concernant les fonctions de la peine. Les avocats de la Couronne du Québec interrogés accordent davantage d'importance à la fonction de réhabilitation par opposition à l'effet punitif de la peine, privilégié par leurs confrères des autres provinces. Cette attitude a des répercussions à tous les stades de cette procédure. D'abord, ces derniers consultent tout le dossier carcéral de l'individu. Ensuite, ils entrent en contact avec la famille de la victime. Troisièmement, ils font entendre des témoins plus souvent qu'au Québec. Quatrièmement, ils contestent la majorité des requêtes. Finalement, ils semblent accorder une plus grande importance au critère concernant la nature de l'infraction commise.

Yes / Previous work on elucidating the tranquillity of various environments has largely focussed on prediction and validation in urban environments. The setting for the latest phase of research was an English country park and surrounding moors on the urban fringe located 8 miles west of Bradford. Within the area selected there were a number of environments and man-made features and sounds that were thought to significantly affect tranquillity and which were not covered in earlier studies. The experiment extended over a number of months and utilised a jury technique for evaluation involving leading small groups of walkers to different locations in quasi-random order. At each location participants were asked to complete a short questionnaire and measurements of the physical soundscape and landscape images were used to interpret the results and give insights into the importance of the various factors affecting tranquillity. Such data will be useful for effective environmental management and conservation in the countryside.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Ninety-eight empirical effects examining the impact of pretrial publicity (PTP) on perceptions of guilt were meta-analytically analyzed. As hypothesized, results suggested that anti-defendant PTP was associated with increased perceptions of defendant guilt, whereas pro-defendant PTP was associated with decreased perceptions of defendant guilt. Additionally, several moderator variables were examined. The results suggested that the size of the effect of PTP is dependent upon several variables, including the level of the analysis (jury-level vs. juror level), the type of crime involved in the case, the nature of the information provided to the participants in the control condition, the reality of the case used in the study, the delay between PTP exposure and the collection of the verdict preference, the medium of the PTP presentation, the publication status of the data source, and the outcome measure utilized.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T10:47:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 INACIO BELINA FILHO.pdf: 614250 bytes, checksum: 96b275d653d6cf2bfe175c400ba56e96 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-05-25 / This present study aims to analyze the institute of the Jury Trial under two plans: the first has a constitutional nature, emphasizing its origin, its historical evolution both inside and outside the giant of South America", pointing out its position in the Federal Constitution of 1988, as a fundamental right; the second one examines all the regulation foreseen in the Decree-Law n#. 3689/41 (Code of Criminal Procedure) emphasizing the challenging controversies implemented by the Law 11.689/2008, which triggered profound changes throughout the procedure, both first degree and in the appellate stage. From a critic perspective, this paper work seeks to study the mentioned reform investigating whether these changes have brought benefits to forensic routine or if they were mere political rhetoric. / O presente estudo tem por escopo analisar o instituto do Tribunal do Júri sob dois planos: o primeiro, de natureza constitucional, ressalta sua origem, sua evolução histórica tanto fora quanto dentro do gigante da América do Sul , salientando, sua posição na Constituição Federal de 1988, enquanto direito fundamental; já o segundo, disseca toda a regulamentação prevista no Decreto Lei nº. 3.689/41 (Código de Processo Penal), enfatizando as controvérsias desafiadoras implementadas pela Lei nº. 11.689/2008 à luz do princípio da duração razoável do processo, que desencadeou profundas transformações em todo o procedimento, tanto de 1º grau quanto na fase recursal. De forma critica, procura-se estudar a citada reforma, apurando se tais alterações trouxeram benefícios no cotidiano forense ou se foram mera retórica política.

In this study I analyse the performance of a democratic decision-making rule: the weighted majority rule. It assigns to each voter a number of votes that is proportional to her stakes in the decision. It has been shown that, for collective decisions with two options, the weighted majority rule in combination with self-interested voters maximises the common good when the latter is understood in terms of either the sum-total or prioritarian sum of the voters’ well-being. The main result of my study is that this argument for the weighted majority rule — that it maximises the common good — can be improved along the following three main lines. (1) The argument can be adapted to other criteria of the common good, such as sufficientarian, maximin, leximin or non-welfarist criteria. I propose a generic argument for the collective optimality of the weighted majority rule that works for all of these criteria. (2) The assumption of self-interested voters can be relaxed. First, common-interest voters can be accommodated. Second, even if voters are less than fully competent in judging their self-interest or the common interest, the weighted majority rule is weakly collectively optimal, that is, it almost certainly maximises the common good given a large numbers of voters. Third, even for smaller groups of voters, the weighted majority rule still has some attractive features. (3) The scope of the argument can be extended to decisions with more than two options. I state the conditions under which the weighted majority rule maximises the common good even in multi-option contexts. I also analyse the possibility and the detrimental effects of strategic voting. Furthermore, I argue that self-interested voters have reason to accept the weighted majority rule.