Jurors' Responses to Videotaped Trial Materials: Some Recent Findings

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a series of studies dealing with the effects of videotaped trial materials on jurors' re sponses to trial proceedings. In general, jurors who viewed live and videotaped presentations responded comparably with the single exception of retention of trial-related information. Here, jurors who viewed videotaped testimony retained more in formation from the latter portions of the testimony than jurors who viewed the same testimony live. Moreover, jurors who view ed the testimony on monochromatic tape retained more informa tion than jurors who viewed the same testimony on colored tape. Finally, within the procedural confines of these studies, there was no evidence that deletion of varying amounts of inadmissible testimony significantly affected jurors' verdicts or their perceptions of the credibility of the offending attorney. Several important limitations and problems of the studies are also discussed.