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25 Law & Psychol. Rev. 59 (2001)
The Impact of an Expert's Gender on Jurors' Decisions

handle is hein.journals/lpsyr25 and id is 63 raw text is: THE IMPACT OF AN EXPERT'S GENDER ON JURORS' DECISIONS Regina A. Schuller* Deborah Terry** Blake McKimmie'* I. INTRODUCTION The introduction of expert witness testimony in both crimi- nal and civil trials has become a practical necessity in the Unit- ed States judicial system.' The impact of expert testimony in a trial has the potential to be great; because experts are generally considered to be believable and credible, they may often both influence the outcome of the trial and make a difference in the verdict.2 The influx of scientific evidence in the courtroom has * Regina A. Schuller is currently an Associate Professor at York University, Toronto, Canada. Ph.D. 1990, The University of Western Ontario. The research for this Article was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re- search Counsel of Canada to Regina A. Schuller. ** Deborah Terry is currently a Professor at the University of Queensland, Bris- bane, Australia. Ph.D. 1989, Australian National University. *** Blake McKimmie is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. 1. See, eg., Jeffrey J. Parker, Contingent Expert Witness Fees, Access and Legit- imacy, 64 S. CAL. L. REV. 1363, 1363 (1991) (citing, e.g., Natural Soda Prods. Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 240 P.2d 993, 994 (1952) (asserting it is widely recognized that expert testimony is virtually indispensable in cases where the facts are outside the realm of understanding of lay jurors or judges)). See also Samuel R. Gross & Kent D. Syverund, Getting To No: A Study of Settlement Negotiations and the Selection of Cases for Trial, 90 MICH. L. REV. 319, 337 n.53 (1991) (according to their testing, plaintiffs called at least one expert in eighty-three percent of the trials they based their data on); Eric G. Jenson, When 'Hired Guns' Backfire: The Witness Immunity Doctrine and the Negligent Expert Witness, 62 U.M.KC. L. REV. 185, 186 (1993) (noting that the use of experts in the legal system has proliferated in the past thir- ty years); Joel Cooper et al., Complex Scientific Testimony: How Do Jurors Make Decisions?, 20 L. & HUM. BEHAV. 379, 380 (1996). 2. See, e.g., Jenson, supra note 1, at 188 (citing Joan M. Cheever & Joanne Naiman, Expert Witnesses Found Credible by Most Jurors, NAVL L.J., Feb. 22, 1993, at S7) (A 1993 poll conducted by the National Law Journal and Lexis/Nexis found that paid experts were thought to be believable by eighty-nine percent of recent criminal and civil jurors. This same poll found that jurors not only found experts to be generally credible, but that they often influenced the outcome of the trial; par- ticularly, seventy-one percent of the jurors polled said experts made a difference in

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