By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: We all recognize the scene from a crime drama. Sometime late at night, under the dim lights of the state’s forensic lab, the results emerge from the sophisticated lab equipment: It’s a match! There is now no doubt whatsoever that we’ve found the killer. In the genre of criminal process […]
Measure Your CSI Effect Read More »
by Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Let’s say you’re a plaintiff’s attorney, and let’s also say you have a particular niche in personal injury law: amusement park accidents. And, as much as you might feel that primal fear on the “Mind Eraser” high-speed roller coaster, amusement park accidents are actually pretty rare. Thanks to safety standards
Expect Threat Perception to Increase, Even as Actual Threats Decrease Read More »
by Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: So you are sizing up that potential juror, wondering what she is probably thinking about you, your client, and your case. You think, “African-American woman, lives in the city, works for the government…I’ll bet she considers my client to be just one more rich and out-of-touch corporation, abusing the people
To Understand Others, Rely on Conversation Not Speculation Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Who is a juror? Experienced legal persuaders know a juror isn’t just a passive receptacle for your arguments, and isn’t just an instrument, a route or obstacle to your preferred verdict in the case. Instead, a juror is fully human, a subject not an object, and possessed of their own particular
Address Identity and Not Just Belief Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: At the end of a two-week trial last Spring, in the case of Montone v. City of Jersey City, a federal jury awarded nine former city police officers $2.17 million in a dispute over promotions. Three weeks later, counsel for the city’s former police chief receives a letter from one of the jurors:
Don’t Gag the Jury (After the Trial) Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Canada has an odd system for determining juror bias in some cases. Referred to as a “trier’s process,” it involves the section of two jurors, who do not otherwise go on to become jurors in the case, but are instead charged with determining if the grounds for a challenge for
Discovering Bias: Dig, Don’t Bury Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There is often something distinctive about the person bringing a case. Whether they are the victim in a discrimination or harassment case, a whistle-blower in an employment case, or a number of other case types, their act of coming forward has marked the individual as outside the social circle of
Account for Social Exclusion in Employment and Whistle-blower Cases Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Legal persuaders who want to know their venue are interested in polls. They keep a finger on the national pulse, and especially on the way that pulse is registering at the local level. In addition to helping you know your potential jurors, that data on public opinion can also serve
Know Your Venue: Polling Still Works Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a citizen to report to the district courthouse and sit in judgment on the disputes of strangers, it becomes vital for that citizen to remain independent of the passions, sympathies, persuasive techniques, and attorneys that the parties in dispute
Respect Jurors’ Declaration of Independence Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Conventional thinking about the two sides of the political spectrum in the United States has always held that both sides, liberals and conservatives alike, basically respect the democratic institutions of government, they just have different ideas about the policies that government should enact. In other words, both support the vehicle
Add Neo-Authoritarians to Your Political Spectrum Read More »