Plea Bargains & Guilty Pleas
These three elements can be bargained or changed during plea negotiations.
What are facts, sentences, and charges?
Jurors engage in _____ when filtering case evidence through their own experiences, expectations, values and beliefs.
What is top-down processing?
The theory that repression occurs because a child who has been abused by a trusted adult will experience conflicting emotions/motivations
What is betrayal trauma theory?
This is the primary way the Innocence Project exonerates people who were wrongfully convicted.
What is post-conviction DNA testing?
This occurs when the results of a forensic analysis are biased by other evidence totally unrelated to the analysis.
What is forensic confirmation bias?
This is one of the clear benefits of plea bargains/negotiations.
What is judicial efficiency (faster and less resource-demanding cases)?
The plaintiff in a civil lawsuit is suing the defendant for $1.4 billion in psychological damages due to an unsafe workplace. Although the jury knows that $1.4 billion is an outrageous figure, the settlement they agree upon after finding the defendant responsible was still $650k. ______ phenomenon is most likely responsible for this high settlement.
What is the anchoring (heuristic) or the anchoring and adjustment (heuristic)?
This emerges when research participants predict the study hypotheses and choose to alter their intuitive responses to responses that will "help" the researchers (by supporting their hypotheses).
What are demand characteristics?
Any cue that lineup administrators provide to witnesses after they make their identification that appears to convey information about accuracy.
What is post-identification feedback?
Describe the filler-control method and two of its advantages.
What is analysts would be sent samples from known-innocent fillers in addition to the suspect and crime scene sample; it would address contextual (confirmation) biases, reveal error rates, provide calibration info., and uncover fraudulent labs/techniques faster?
This normative model proposes that defendants evaluate plea offers by comparing them to the expected value of trial outcomes.
What is the shadow-of-the-trial model?
These are the nationwide requirements to be a juror in the United States.
What is U.S. citizenship, an age of 18 years (sometimes 21), and basic literacy (sometimes there are other residency requirements)?
A robust phenomenon wherein the presentation of false or misleading information significantly impacts memory accuracy (negatively)
What is the misinformation effect?
The errors that can occur in target-present and target-absent lineups.
What are a miss and a filler identification in target-present lineups, and a suspect or filler identification in target-absent lineups?
The National Academy of Sciences (2009) report describes three important purposes for strengthening the forensic sciences.
What are (1) assisting law enforcement with their investigations; (2) reducing wrongful convictions (which will also help to ensure the right offenders are punished); and (3) improving homeland security?
This theory differs from the shadow-of-the-trial model in that it is descriptive and accounts for differential decision-making based on reference points.
What is prospect theory?
_____-_____ juries take an early vote and then structure the discussion around available verdict options, seeking to identify the option that is most acceptable to jurors. ____- ____ juries spend time evaluating the evidence and attempting to discern the ‘truth’ from conflicting facts.
What is verdict-driven and evidence-driven (respectively)?
These are three contributing factors to the creation and eventual endorsement of false memories.
What is social pressure, imaginative activities, and general encouragement not to question one's constructions?
List two examples of a system variable and two examples of an estimator variable.
What are the lineup format/instructions, expert witnesses, interview protocols for system variables and witness conditions, juror biases, defendant/witness characteristics for estimator variables?
These are four forensic tests to which the filler-control method could be applied.
What are fingerprints, hair, fiber, soil, ballistics, bite marks, handwriting, shoe prints, etc.?
These are four potential costs of plea bargains/negotiations.
What are inappropriate criminal sanctions (in both directions), potential coercion (in demanding waivers of Constitutional rights), reduction in citizen engagement with and approval of the legal system, transfer of sentencing power to prosecutors (from judges), etc.?
These are three evidence-based jury-centered reforms.
What are providing (simplified) preliminary jury instructions, allowing jurors to take notes and ask questions, providing mid-trial summaries, and debriefing jurors who serve on difficult/stressful cases?
Describe three alternative explanations for the phenomenon of repressed memory.
What are people might not want to talk about the trauma, which could lead to natural forgetting; people might mistakenly believe memories that have not been retrieved for many years were repressed (forget-it-all-along); memories could be reinterpreted as abuse when retrieved as an adult?
Three objectives of the pre-lineup interview.
What is documenting descriptions of the culprit and witness conditions, noting prior familiarity, warning against co-witness discussions and self-investigations?
These are some of the proposed objectives for NIFS.
What are establish and enforce best practices (e.g., accreditation, certification, standardization, quality control, code of ethics), promote new research (via funding) & education, assess the development/introduction of new technologies, and separate labs from law enforcement agencies?