Author name: ken.brodabahm

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Based on a recent and extensive report from New York’s Attorney General, the state’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo, is now facing numerous credible claims of a pattern of sexual harassment, with his fellow Democrats, including the President, calling on him to step down. Some of the claims against him, including the

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The jurors assemble and begin watching the trial — not the actual jurors but the shadow jurors, the ones who are recruited by one side, matched to the real jurors, and offer feedback on the trial as it comes in. They watch opening statements, and each of the witnesses, and

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: One trait of jurors is that, at the start of a case at least, they are not already savvy about the case’s subject matter. So, how do they learn? Through expert testimony. They won’t necessarily just sign-on to an expert’s conclusions, but they are likely to be influenced by both

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It is as if the public health groundhog emerged from its den, saw its shadow, and now promises six more months of confusion, polarization, and pandemic fatigue. With the more-transmissible Delta variant of the Coronavirus surging across the country, there is concern that we may not be over the hill

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm In any challenging communication situation, it is best to combine the visual with the verbal. This is good practice because pictures tend to make things more “truthy,” in the sense that claims that are accompanied by relevant images are more likely to be considered true, even when logically the picture

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I often hear questions such as, “Do I want Millennials on my jury?” or “Are Boomers likely to be more conservative on damages?” This focus on the attributes of these generational groupings is part of larger fixation on the categories we can see during voir dire: age, race, income, etcetera.

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: In the context of voir dire, the tension between social science and court practice is becoming close to intolerable. On the court side, we continue under the assumptions that potential jurors are aware of their biases (despite mounting evidence of bias “blind spots” and unconscious bias), that potential jurors are

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: At the start of the case, a trial judge somberly addressed the jury, letting them know what adjustments were expected of them. The instructions told them they, “must as jurors, take all the decisions you have made, all the opinions you have about how people act, how people behave, what