Pre-Trial Prejudice Case Studies of Pre-and Mid-trial Prejudice in Criminal and Civil Litigation forthcoming, Law and Human Behavior

“Extensive publicity before trial does not, in itself, preclude fairness. In many respects media exposure presents problems not qualitatively different from that experienced in earlier times in small communities where gossip and jurors’ personal acquaintances with lawyers, witnesses, and even the accused were not uncommon. Properly motivated and carefully instructed jurors can and have exercised the discipline to disregard that kind of prior awareness. Trust in their ability to do so diminishes when the prior exposure is such that it evokes strong emotional responses or such an identification with those directly affected by the conduct at issue that the jurors feel a personal stake in the outcome. That is also true when there is such identification with a community point of view that jurors feel a sense of obligation to reach a result which will find general acceptance in the relevant audience.” (U.S. v. McVeigh, 1996:1473)