By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Wherever juries are used, we tend to expect quite a lot out of them. As Marie Comiskey, Senior Counsel with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, has written, “While first-year law students are given a semester to learn the rudiments of criminal law, jurors are expected to become conversant with the essential […]
Consider Planting a Decision Tree in Your Next Trial Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Sometimes the facts are right in front of the jurors’ faces, and other times they are in a black box needing to be inferred rather than observed. Intent is one such black box issue. In a recent case, for example, jurors had to decide if a defendant, John Lewis, acted in a “willful,
Slow it Down…to Emphasize Intent Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: When people laugh together, they’re willing to disclose more to each other. A recent post in Psyblog highlights a study (Gray, Parkinson, & Dunbar, 2015) in which groups of strangers sat together to watch a video documentary, a boring clip about golf, or a comedian. Those who watched the comedian were more likely to
Share a Laugh…in Order to Promote Disclosure in Voir Dire Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: One theme that long-time readers of this blog will recognize is that persuasion is essentially self-persuasion. Rather than accepting what I call the “consumer model” of persuasion, in which an advocate presents a fully-formed position to an audience who either “buys” it or doesn’t, I see persuasion as an act that requires participation from your
Should You Ask Rhetorical Questions? Yes, You Should Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A dominant factor motivating discussions of the jury is the factor of bias: Identifying it, striking the worst of it, and adapting to the the portion that remains. But if bias stems from the facts of being human, developing experience, and having attitudes (and it does), then there is no reason to
Worry About Biased Judges Too (Another Argument for a Restored Civil Jury) Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The credit for the clever title goes to Olivia Nuzzi, political reporter for The Daily Beast, who tweeted that quotation out following the email hack releasing nearly 20,000 of the Democratic National Committee’s emails just ahead of their national convention. The result of several intrusions, which seem to bear a circumstantial connection to
Dance Like No One is Watching; Email Like It May One Day Be Read Aloud in a Deposition Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of many shows that play on the ambiguity of characters who are not clearly good or evil. The Jaime Lannister who pushed young Bran Stark off a tower to his expected death on the stones below is the same Jaime Lannister who risked his life to
Consider Tolerance for Incongruence (Aintegration) Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Without looking at the back of your laptop or phone, which of the images above is the true Apple logo? You probably see it every day, many times if you are in offices or airports. It is considered one of the most recognizable logos in the world. But which version is correct?
Treat Memory as Functional, Not Photographic Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The national conversation has recently focused on police brutality against African Americans (in the wake of the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile) as well as hostility and violence toward the police (in the wake of the killing of five Dallas officers). For defense attorneys in the trial of
Use Current Events in Voir Dire Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Imagine this. The jury has just been instructed that they are the judges of credibility, and are told to pay close attention to witness demeanor during testimony. Then, the witness arrives and takes the stand, wearing a niqab, the Islamic face-covering that leaves only the eyes exposed. “Great, so what
Don’t Expect the Face to Reveal the Lie Read More »