Question

How does inadmissible evidence influence juror decision making? Provide examples

Answer 1

An inadmissible evidence is a kind of evidence which cannot be received by the jury in order to come to a decision. Such evidences could be the ones which are prejudiced, misleading, confusing, etc.

When an inadmissible evidence is presented in a case, the jury faces a significant impact on their decision making. Even though jurors attempt to make fair decisions, a presentation of inadmissible evidences do have an impact on them. This happens even more when the jurors find a significant relationship between the inadmissible evidence and the case at hand, and finds it difficult to separate them and motivate themselves towards the case alone. This might further lead to the jurors having a "white bear effect", that is the inability to think of the actual case due to the confusing evidences.

Most of the times, it gets difficult for the jurors to deliberately forget the inadmissible evidences. This is because the information has already been encoded in memory, and in order to remove the inadmissible evidences from it, new and more reliable evidence would need to be presented.

For example, in a case relating to robbery the prosecutor may also use inadmissible evidences against the defendant. These evidences could have a more emotional content such as other unethical records of the defendant in the form of abusing substances, indulging in street fights, etc. It is a great cognitive task for the jurors to rule out such evidences and concentrate on the case alone. In cases as such, the jurors might get deviated towards these inadmissible evidences while making a decision and the fairness of the decision might get hampered.