Abstract
An experiment was designed to assess the influence of viewing a tape intended to educate mock jurors to jury duty and the jury process and sex of juror on juror verdicts and sentencing in a rape case scenario. The subjects were 35 male and 51 female college undergraduates of a traditional college age. The educational tape significantly influenced jurors' verdict and sentencing. Jurors exposed to the tape assigned a guilty verdict significantly less often than those in the control group. Of those jurors who assigned a verdict of guilty after exposure to the tape, they also imposed a significantly longer sentence than did the control subjects who assigned a verdict of guilty. Female jurors also assigned the guilty verdict significantly more often than did the male jurors. The implications and limitations of these findings as well as suggestions for further research were discussed.
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