Effects of pretrial publicity (PTP) on mock jurors' predecisional distortion (PDD), story construction, and judgments

A review of the literature on psychological research on pretrial publicity (PTP) is presented. PTP has been found to influence jurors' trial judgments and increase jurors' predecisional distortion. Jurors' form an opinion about the case after PTP exposure, and subsequent information about the case is evaluated and interpreted in favor of the jurors' pretrial favored party. The effects of PTP are examined in terms of Story Model Theory (Pennington & Hastie, 1992). This is the first study to-date that examines how the story jurors' construct is influenced by the story components embedded in PTP. Community members were exposed to PTP two to three days prior to serving as a mock juror on a rape case. Jurors' initial story was influenced by PTP. Jurors' final story was influenced by witness evaluations and jurors' initial story. Jurors' verdict decisions were influenced by jurors' final story and witness evaluations. It was also found that the action component of jurors' stories was the key component in jurors' verdict decisions. Future directions for the field are discussed.