The Effects of Confession and Retraction on Simulated Juries: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Most research on the behaviour of juries using simulated trials has concentrated on the effects of judges’ instructions and rules of procedure (e.g. Simon, 1967; LSE Jury Project, 1973a; Sealy, 1975, Davis et al. 1975, Kerr et al. 1976). These experiments have studied the rôle of such instructions as those on the legal definition of insanity, burden of proof, corroboration and majority verdicts. The main reason for concentrating on such factors is that some general instructions form a part of every trial. They recur from trial to trial, and are controversial. The simulated trial can also be used to study the effects of specific elements of evidence in the outcome of a trial, but the results would usually be of little value, since every trial is unique and generalisation from the simulation would be very limited. However, certain categories of evidence frequently occur in trials by jury. One such category, which often seems to be critical to the verdict, is the confession.