Scots courtroom drama? It’s just like US telly!
POTENTIAL jurors lack basic knowledge of the Scottish court system because of the influence of American TV crime dramas, research has found.
People eligible for jury duty were said to have the wrong expectations of jury size, the majority required for a verdict and the available number of verdicts in Scotland.
Many expected the courtroom experience to be similar to that seen in American TV shows such as Law & Order.
Researchers from the Open University and Glasgow University recruited 227 people to act as jurors in a mock murder trial as part of a study of proposals to scrap the not proven verdict. When the recruits were asked how many members served on a Scottish jury, 34 individuals correctly said 15. However, 193 gave incorrect responses.
They were then asked to select, from a list of real and fictitious verdicts, which ones could be given by Scottish juries.
A total of 123 people ticked combinations which were incorrect.
The study – published in journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law – also found 101 were wrong when asked how many jurors needed to agree for a jury verdict to be reached. The correct response, which is eight jurors, was given by 126 participants.
The report’s authors said TV dramas seem to be having a ‘Law & Order effect’ on jurors similar to the ‘CSI effect’ which was blamed for making juries more likely to be unduly influenced by forensic evidence. They called for school pupils and those called for jury duty to be better educated on Scots law.
Lead author Dr Lee Curley, an Open University psychology lecturer, said: ‘An important, and unanticipated, finding was that our participants lacked basic knowledge and understanding of the Scottish jury system, despite all being jury-eligible Scots.’
He added: ‘A pressing issue for Scottish justice, then, may be the inadequacy of education on Scots law for the general public.’
The research found scrapping the not proven verdict would lead to an increase in convictions. Jurors were more likely to convict an accused if they had to choose between guilty and not guilty verdicts.