Strange things happen when you study psychology in college and then go on to become a trial lawyer. You start trying to figure out the psychology of your jury. You start evaluating your case from the psychological perspective of your jury. And of course, you keep reading psychology books, only now they deal with jurors and trials.
One such book is Practical Jury Dynamics 2 by Dr. SunWolf. The good doctor has written a pretty good book that deals with, oddly enough, the practical side of the the juror's psychology.
A great section is what is referred to as Evidence-Anxiety for Jurors. Dr. SunWolf created a simple list of 10 sources of Evidence-Anxiety for Jurors. This is useful when preparing your trial so as to present your evidence in a way the jury can understand effectively.
1. They do not understand the information.
2. They suspect they are alone in not understanding the information.
3. Information is presented too quickly.
4. Information is presented through only one communication channel.
5. The amount of information is overwhelming.
6. Multiple sources of different information are being presented simultaneously.
7. There is too little information about the information.
8. They do not know whether further information about the information will be presented.
9. The information is contradictory to old information they had before hearing the new information.
10. The do not know whether they will need the information.
When presenting our case to a jury, all too often we have lived with the case for months, maybe years. When that happens, we take for granted the information of the case. It becomes routine for us. Although we might have been overwhelmed initially by the medical evidence of the wounds to the alleged victim, or the shear volume of documents in our fraud case, or whatever, we figured it out. But we did so likely over months of preparation.
The jury will be listening to the evidence for the first time. The amount of information can be overwhelming to them as well. In addition, they are confronted with the reality that they will not be able to take the file home and reread it like we did. This is where evidence-anxiety can come to play.
By remembering that jurors are only seeing snapshots of everything we have spent months with, as well as the corresponding fear and anxiety that goes with learning new things, we can present better cases to juries, and as a result, obtain better results.
But what the hell do I know?
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Posted by: Health News | March 21, 2011 at 08:42 AM