Psychological Manipulation in the Courtroom

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Trial lawyers have for centuries exploited psychological principles derived from intuition and experience. But amateur courtroom psy- chology is now giving way to science. For a price, professional psychol-

Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, California.

This commentary is drawn from a recent article by Professor Gold. See Gold, CovertAdvocacy: Reflections on the Use of PsychologicalPersuasionTechniques in the Courtroom, 65 N.C.L. REV. 481 (1987).

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ogists are available to advise lawyers on all aspects of trial advocacy including what to say, where to stand, how to select a jury, when to object and what suit to wear. In the words of one expert, “all in all, we help lawyers position their cases to juries in much the same way you would sell a bar of soap …. -“

Historically, lawyers have employed these experts when the eco- nomic or political issues at stake warranted the expense. Now, how- ever, lawyers are developing the capacity to systematically employ psychological courtroom techniques on their own. Continuing legaleducation programs are currently offered on these subjects. Recently published books on trial advocacy are devoted in whole or in part to psychology. In the last decade, scientists have published dozens of ar-

ticles in journals for trial lawyers describing various psychology-based advocacy techniques. These articles reflect an even larger and still growing body of academic literature concerning jury cognitive processes. As psychologists refine this research and as the advocacy techniques based upon it become more effective, increasing numbers of lawyers will likely use those techniques. Like executives in other growth industries, trial lawyers are eager to employ the latest scien- tific or technical advance to gain a competitive advantage.

Little concern has been expressed about this use of psychology as an advocacy tool. Perhaps lawyers are too eager, embracing psychology as the long awaited means of controlling the uncertainties of jury trial, to worry about its broader implications. Some behavioral scien- tists may be too overcome with the prospects of economic or academic rewards to care much about what they may be doing to another profession. Judges seem largely unaware of the development.

Yet there is reason for concern. Many of the psychology-based ad- vocacy techniques being taught to lawyers can be used to induce juries to employ legally irrelevant or improper considerations in decision- making. These considerations include seemingly innocuous matters such as attorney language, dress, and other elements of what one might call courtroom style. But some techniques also involve un-

abashed efforts to induce jury reliance on bias. Lawyers can use other techniques to induce juries to evaluate evidence illogically. Lawyers can produce this illogic by confusing the meaning of evidence or dis- torting the jury’s perception of it. All these techniques seek to influ- ence subconsciously: the jury is unaware of what is influencing its decision making or how that influence works.

I argue in this essay that subconscious persuasion, which I call cov- ert advocacy, threatens to deprive the jury of its capacity to critically evaluate evidence and reliably reflect community values in its verdict. As a consequence, I contend that covert advocacy threatens the legiti-

1. Dance off, Hidden Persuaders of the Courtroom, BARIMSTERS, winter 1932, at 8,17.

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macy of both the jury and adversary systems in a way and to a degree never before threatened by conventional advocacy methods. After ex- amining the techniques of covert advocacy and the dangers created by their use, I conclude that expanding the powers of the jury is the most effective way of dealing with this threat.

I. THE TECHNIQUES OF COVERT ADVOCACY

A. Techniques to Induce the Use of Extra-Legal Basis for Decision making

Trial practitioner journals make frequent reference to psychologi- cal techniques aimed at inducing the jury to employ an extra-legal ba- sis for its decision. A decision making input is extra-legal when it is either irrelevant to the legal or factual issues of a case or is considered by the law to be an otherwise improper basis for decision making. This group of techniques is itself classifiable into two subgroups: court- room style techniques and techniques aimed at inducing the use of bias.

1. Courtroom Style as an Extra-Legal Basis for Decision making

Courtroom style refers to how a lawyer and the witnesses tell their stories in the courtroom. Courtroom style techniques involve body movement, physical appearance, demeanor toward the jury, and use of language. Courtroom style is an extra-legal basis for decision making because lawyer or witness demeanor usually has no connection to the legal or factual issues which should be the basis for the jury’s verdict.

Language and voice are important elements of courtroom style. For example, several articles recently written for trial lawyers by be- havioral scientists focus on a series of studies concerning the use of various verbal strategies in the courtroom. In one experiment, scien- tists found that lawyers can induce jurors to make judgments about the credibility of a speaker by manipulation of the “powerfulness” of the speaker’s language. Powerless speakers use hedge words (sort of, kind of, around), intensifiers (very, really), meaningless filler words (you know), and terms of personal reference (my good friend, Mrs. Smith). Another element of powerless speech is the use of an inquisi- tive intonation at the end of a declarative sentence, suggesting the speaker seeks the listener’s approval for the declaration. Powerful speech avoids the features of powerless speech. In experiments, jurors consistently evaluated powerful speakers as more credible than pow- erless speakers and gave plaintiffs with powerful speech witnesses substantially larger damage awards than plaintiffs with powerless speech witnesses. However, linking credibility with speech style proved to be a mistake. The experimenters found that the “power” component of linguistic style was not correlated with witness credibil-

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ity. Instead, it was correlated only with witness social status. Wit- nesses who were poor, uneducated or unemployed had a tendency to use powerless speech while witnesses with business or professional backgrounds tended toward powerful speech. Nonetheless, the psy- chological correlation between speech style and credibility is strong; jurors persisted in linking credibility with the power component of speech even when the judge’s instructions cautioned against it.

These results encourage lawyers to train their own witnesses to use powerful speech and to use that linguistic style themselves. These re- sults further encourage lawyers to induce powerless speech in oppos- ing witnesses to the extent possible. But since the distinction between powerful and powerless witness speech is not probative of witness credibility or any other relevant matter, efforts to exploit that distinction support an extra-legal basis for jury decision making. If the jury believes the distinction is probative of witness credibility, it has been misled. Further, when counsel uses powerful speech to enhance his or her credibility, he or she seeks to focus the jury’s attention on another extra-legal matter. The credibility of counsel is neither relevant nor evidence.

The manner in which this extra-legal consideration shapes jury decision making makes it particularly dangerous. Most jurors would reject an overt suggestion to evaluate witness credibility based on social status. When an attorney makes the suggestion covertly through manipulation of linguistic style, the jury may be unable to detect and reject the subtle thrust of the attorney’s efforts. Similarly, a verdict overtly based on considerations of social status would raise serious moral and constitutional questions that any trial or appellate judge could identify. When damage awards decrease with a decrease in the apparent social status of plaintiff and those witnesses associated with the plaintiff, the law improperly values individual rights and life differently for the powerful than it does for the powerless. These issues are no less pertinent when counsel subtly influences a verdict by exploiting the psychological divisions between the linguistic patterns of poor people and inaccurate stereotypes of supposedly more credible speakers. But the likelihood that any judge could detect the use of this technique and, thus, the presence of these issues, seems slim.

Many other courtroom style techniques seek to capitalize on this psychological correlations between credibility and social status. Rec-commendations concerning dress, physical positioning of counsel relative to the witnesses and the jury, and other aspects of attorney courtroom demeanor are aimed at psychologically enhancing the credibility of counsel by manipulating his or her social image. By seeking to create the impression of power, these techniques focus the jury’s attention on extra-legal bases for decision making: the social status and credibility of counsel are not relevant. These techniques always

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affect jury decision making through subtle means since an overt re- quest to consider the attorney’s social status would probably be ineffective, if not offensive.

The result is not only to distract the jury with extra-legal matters but also to obscure the importance of relevant evidence. The goal of courtroom style techniques aimed at enhancing attorney credibility is to influence how jurors perceive the evidence. Attorneys can have this influence because jurors tend to evaluate evidence in light of the credibility of the attorneys presenting or attacking that evidence. But by focusing the jury’s attention on the extra-legal matter of attorney credibility, these techniques mislead the jury as to the actual meaning or value of the evidence. Attorney credibility is simply not a reliable basis upon which to evaluate evidence.

Other courtroom techniques dealing with linguistic style seek to exploit additional psychological tendencies of the jury. For example, research reveals that juries are highly susceptible to the indirect assertion of facts by a lawyer during witness examination. The mere asking of a question is sometimes sufficient to induce the jury to draw an inference, even in the absence of confirming testimony. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is the questioning of a rape victim regarding prior sexual history. Research suggests that juries typically infer the validity of the unspoken premise of the questions- the victim encouraged the rape-irrespective of the strength of the responding testimony supporting that inference. This has been termed “the biasing effect” of a question: jurors tend to misperceive the evidence due to biases contained in the question, regardless of the answer. Due in part to recognition of this effect, many jurisdictions now limit the admissibility of evidence concerning a rape victim’s prior sexual history.

However, the opportunity for lawyers to indirectly assert facts through manipulating the form of questions is not limited to rape cases and the use of this technique is often not so obvious. Research suggests that jurors enter the courtroom in all cases with a tendency to draw inferences from the manner in which questions are phrased in accordance with rules of speech commonly followed in society.

Research also has indicated that attorneys can use their knowledge of such everyday conversational and psychological rules to formulate non-leading questions that indirectly communicate information to the jury. Jurors who accept the premises embedded in the questions resist rejecting those premises even when the responsive testimony or other evidence suggests the premises are invalid. In this way counsel can subconsciously communicate theories and arguments to the jury that he or she never overtly stated by simply asking questions during wit- ness examination. Since an attorney’s questions are not themselves

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of covert advocacy is to induce the jury to employ bias while concealing from the jury the fact of their reliance on bias. Empirical studies suggest that this goal is well within reach. Juries often apply bias un- consciously while operating under the misapprehension that data is being evaluated objectively. When the jury is unaware of its use of bias, it cannot critically evaluate the appropriateness of that use in the same way the jury would evaluate an overt appeal to bias. Recall that a similar result is produced by covert advocacy techniques that focus on courtroom style. As described in section II of this essay, this effect of covert advocacy compromises the legitimacy of the jury system and the adversary process.

B. Techniques to Induce Illogical Evaluation of Evidence

The second category of psychological techniques described in trial practitioner journals seeks to induce the jury to evaluate the evidence illogically. The jury illogically evaluates evidence when it incorrectly decides that evidence is or is not probative of a fact in issue. I call techniques directed at inducing these errors of logic “meaning manip- ulators.” The jury also illogically evaluates evidence when it permits evidence to have an effect on decisionmaking that is disproportionate to the probative value of that evidence. I call techniques to induce these errors “weight manipulators.” Psychological techniques to mis- lead the jury as to the meaning or weight of evidence attempt to inter- fere with either the jury’s inferential or perceptual abilities.

1. Meaning Manipulators

One article discussing the psychology of courtroom perception notes that lawyers can diminish the ability of jurors to perceive evi- dence by simply manipulating other stimuli in the courtroom. The author, a behavioral scientist specializing in advising trial lawyers,suggests

[a]s a defense tactic, an attorney can load the courtroom with spectators, presenting a variety of new contextual stimuli which might succeed in drown- ing out the stimuli presented by the opposing lawyers…. [A] particularly damaging witness for the opposing side can be made through various tech- niques to blend into the background stream, so that it is difficult for the jurors

2

Such efforts to disrupt jury perception in the courtroom could cause the jury to commit a logical error: the jury could accord per- fectly probative evidence no effect. Of course, the attorney must en- gage in such manipulation covertly. The affect on jury decisionmaking would be very different if the jury knew <