Psychological Issues Raised in the California Supreme Court Case People vs Collins

Abstract

In a California armed robbery trial one member of the jury was dismissed after a significant period of deliberation. Shortly after an alternate was added to the jury the defendant was found guilty. Upon appeal the California State Supreme Court upheld the conviction but defined a new procedure requiring judges to instruct the jury to forget their prior deliberation and begin anew upon the substitution of a new juror. In a simulation of the situation, half of the subjects were assigned to juries in which two confederates argued for conviction while the other half were assigned to juries without confederates. A poll of the jury showed that the confederates were effective in persuading more subjects to favor conviction. Then a late juror was introduced and judges' instructions to begin deliberations anew were read. The new California procedure assumes that a judge's instructions can serve to negate the effect of prior deliberations. Contrary to this assumption the judge's instructions were not effective as a means of eliminating differences between the two types of jury.