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78 Judicature 120 (1994-1995)
The Effects of Pretrial Publicity on Jurors

handle is hein.journals/judica78 and id is 122 raw text is: According to a growing research literature, not only can pretrial publicity bias jurors, common remedies may not be very effective in preventing or overcoming such bias. by Norbert L. Kerr P erhaps nowhere do basic con- stitu tional rights come into clearer conflict than on the issue of pretrial publicity. On the one hand, the First Amendment guarantees the press the freedom to NORBERT L. KERR is a professor of psychology at Michigan State University. investigate and report on matters of public concern, including the op- eration of the courts. On the other hand, the Sixth Amendment guaran- tees defendants the right to a public 120 Judicature Volume 78, Number 3 trial by an impartial jury. The conflict arises when the content of pretrial publicity may be prejudicial, threaten- ing jurors' impartiality. Recent promi- nent cases such as those involving O.J. Simpson, Susan Smith, Manuel Nor- eiga, Oliver North, and Rodney King have raised these issues and called them to the public's attention. At the core are a number of behav- ioral questions: Under what, if any, conditions does pretrial publicity af- fect juror impartiality? What kinds of publicity create the greatest risk of bias? How well do existing safeguards and remedies for exposure to prejudi- cial pretrial publicity work? This ar- ticle examines a number of the at- tempts by behavioral scientists to ex- plore such questions.' One could argue that bias due to pretrial publicity is not much of a prob- lem. Relatively few crimes appear to re- ceive more than cursory attention in the media. For example, Frasca has es- This article is based on Kerr, Behavioral research on the effects of pretrial publicity, FROM THE MIND'S Eve, Vol. 1, Issue 3 (1992). 1. Note in this summary of the literature that al- though much of the actual research was done with criminal cases, the principles of memory and judg- ment that underlie the reported effects should produce similiar effects for civil cases. November-December 1994

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