Russian Roulette & The Courtroom: 'Bias has a significant effects upon Verdicts'.

So this week has been a strange'ol time.

Firstly, I haven't managed to sit down and send one single post into the Steemy ether in what, a whole week?! Not enough research has been conducted into the opiate-like effects of blogging-withdrawal, but I now know it to be very, very real.

I imagine groups of tweaking millennials all around the globe are congregated under bridges & bus-stops as we speak, huddled around the light of their Windows-95 Dell filing cabinet, trying to squeeze the last few drops from the latest blog they'd managed to score that morning. The poor wretches.

Anyway, at some point in the wee hours of this morning I did get about half-way through what inevitably represented - through my JimBean-fuelled eyes - a literary revolution. Fortunately, I didn't manage to finish it. This morning it was all wrong, like warm milk left too long on the counter - my post had curdled. I think it was something about Labradors - don't ask.

Why the enforced Steemy withdrawal period?

Jury Service.

A dirty, misleading word, which suggests nothing of the emotional war-zone you - alongside eleven other damned souls - are about to find yourself trapped within. No united nations here, no smuggling past the border, this is a bare-knuckles brawl, and Brad Pitt wants'yer'shoelaces.

Nevertheless, it no doubt represents an important civic duty, as well as a valuable - if at times unpleasant - learning experience. You see, I went into this experience with a largely idealised view of the process, its supposed objective infallibility (Did somebody say naive?). What I experienced was something quite different, a game of legal Russian roulette, subjectivity seeping in through the cracks in the fluorescent lighting.

And so I decided to have a root around the relevant research, maybe my experience was something of an anomaly? Maybe not.

'Bias has a Significant effect upon Jury Verdicts.'

In a study conducted between a group of British Universities, jurors preconceived bias', alongside variations in their understanding of the term 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt' accounted for a 37% variation in their final verdicts. All details were kept consistent between all of the study's experimental groups.

37% may not sound like a particularly huge variation, indeed, some variation is inevitable when we consider the fundamentals of our justice system. However, considering the inherent gravity of the decisions made here, surely there must be more we can do to better prepare people for this process.

'Surely we can do better than this?'

Preconceived bias is a difficult issue to tackle - how do you ensure that people treat the process with the up-most level of objectivity? I suppose removing this confounding factor altogether is unfortunately, impossible, we're only human after all.

I'm certainly now expert here, however speaking from my personal experience, very little is done to cultivate an environment within which objectivity is seen as key to the jurors. Instead it seems to be assumed that people carry this knowledge with them inherently. Stressing the need for objectivity, for all bias' to be dismissed as best as they can be would surely represent an improvement upon the current state-of-affairs, if nothing else.

The same can, in my opinion, be said for the issue of 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt'. It may seem a straight-forward phrase to those of us reading it on our laptop screens, sunken sofa cushion in support, dressing gown and Nutella on toast at the ready.

Within the beige-walled Octagon of the jurors deliberation room however - the minutiae of each and every word can seemingly become murky & confused, mixed up like a bowl of alphabetti spaghetti - somebody's eaten all of the 'D's' and suddenly I don't know which way is up. An induction process wherein this term is probed and explored with the potential jurors would, I feel, go a long way towards reducing the variation which, I'm sure we all can agree, should not be accepted in our country's legal system.

After all, peoples lives are depending on us making the correct decisions, on each side of the dock.

Perhaps more importantly, can anybody get their hands on a tin of Alphabetti Spaghetti?

Asking for a friend.

Follow me: @callumogilvy

Source material and further (Very interesting!) reading can be found at:

• https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/practice/bias-has-significant-effect-on-verdicts-jury-research-says/5039295.article
• https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/ (Image)
• https://moviesratedgreg.files.wordpress.com/ (Image)

Well! I hope you've enjoyed this post, as always any feedback (or just general chat) is more than welcome! If you found it bearable or perhaps even, dare I say, alright? Then you're more than welcome to follow me for more weird and wonderful bits and bobs from the world of Psychology.

Have a wonderful day all!