加入是一个法律术语,指的是单个审判中几个罪名,政党或起诉书的组合。尽管进行了有限的经验研究,研究了连接试验,但进行的研究几乎完全集中在纳入陪审员决策的其他起诉方面的影响上。在这种情况下,加入审判是指一项审判,其中一名被告因具有相似特征或源于同一事件而产生的多种罪行进行了审判。法院有权在单独的审判中单独为每个罪行审判每个罪行,或者如果犯罪相关,则将罪行合并为单一审判。但是,研究人员之间已经达成了一般共识,犯罪的审判导致犯罪偏见。陪审员在加入罪行时更有可能投票赞成定罪,而不是针对每个罪行单独审判被告。尽管法院通过指定保护被告的保障措施来解决加入罪行或被告固有的潜在偏见,但这些保障措施的充分性仍需辩论。
有关加入审判的法律
Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allows for defendants to be tried for two or more offenses in a single trial if the offenses are similar in character or are part of a single scheme or plan of action. Furthermore, Rule 8(b) allows for two or more defendants to be tried in a single trial if they are accused of jointly engaging in the same criminal transaction. Although these rules are for federal courts, many states have patterned their own rules of criminal procedure after these federal rules. The primary purpose of the combination of offenses is judicial expediency. Separate trials for each offense or defendant would result in many more trials, increasing court costs. In essence, the issue becomes balancing the need to conserve resources with providing defendants fair trials.
法律确实认识到,加入罪行和/或被告可能会导致促进偏见。联邦刑事诉讼规则的第14条规定,法院必须通过将指控分为单独的审判,切断了两名或更多被告的审判,或采用任何其他必要的补救措施来保护被告免受加入审判的偏见。如果被告希望分别对每项指控进行审判或与其他被告分开审判,则可以提出遣散罪或被告的动议。但是,法官经常会裁定加入罪行和被告,除非可以提出一项案件,否则审判会损害陪审团。如果被告有可能依靠矛盾的辩护策略,如果指控被裁定,陪审团可能会从被告有刑事诉讼的指控中推断出,则可以推断出偏见。to accumulate evidence across charges when determining the defendant’s guilt.
法官可能会被剥夺加入罪行或被告,因为判例法认为,任何偏见都可以轻松补救。具体而言,美国最高法院裁定,可以通过指示陪审员单独考虑每个指控的证据,并独立确定每个指控或被告的判决,从而阻止加入罪行的偏见或单一审判中的被告偏见。
经验证据
研究人员试图确定法院对陪审员决定联合审判判决的方式的假设是否得到经验证据的支持。尽管该地区的研究有限,但进行的研究产生了相对一致的发现。一些研究人员认为,加入犯罪可能会导致被告享有公正审判的权利。经验证据表明,当一次审判中合并犯罪时,被告人比单独审判罪行更有可能被定罪。几项陪审团的仿真研究表明,与在单独的审判中尝试的每一次犯罪相比,与每次犯罪相比,犯罪的审判导致定罪率更高。此外,尽管法院认为加入罪行所产生的偏见可以通过适当的司法教学来阻止,但大多数研究表明,司法教学不足以防止这种偏见。此外,其他因素可能会影响加入试验的偏见性质的性质和程度。
In one of the first studies to examine the effects of joining offenses in a single trial, researchers examined the differences in conviction rates when mock jurors made judgments in severed trials, where the defendant was charged with a single count of rape in each of two trials, or in a joined trial, in which the defendant was tried for two charges of rape in the same trial. When the offenses were joined, the judge also instructed the mock jurors that they were to consider each charge with its respective evidence separately. Despite the judicial instruction, the jurors were more likely to find the defendant guilty of the first offense when the offenses were joined than when the offenses were severed. Joinder did not influence rates of conviction on the second offense, but of course, in real cases, the same jury would never hear evidence for both of the severed offenses. This bias toward conviction has been demonstrated across a number of studies that vary on a number of dimensions, including participant type, the presence of deliberations, and the medium used to present the trial (written, audiotaped, or videotaped stimulus).
研究还研究了在加入试验中的这种促进偏见的调解人。如前所述,法院在一项联合审判中承认三种可能的偏见来源:(1)将证据与指控联系起来的混乱,(2)(2)在整个指控中积累证据,以及(3)陪审员推断被告已推断被告已有证据“刑事处置”是因为他或她因多次犯罪而受到审判。由于早期的研究仅表明加入罪行增加了定罪,并没有解决加入罪行如何改变导致判决的陪审员评估,诸如莎拉·坦福德(Sarah Tanford)和史蒂芬·佩罗德(Steven Penrod)等研究人员开始经验地检查加入的审判的各种属性,例如负责相似性,负责相似性,指控,,负责的相似性,收费,evidence similarity, and judicial instruction, increase jurors’ confusion about which evidence relates to which charges, their accumulation of evidence across charges, and their tendency to draw inferences about the defendant’s criminal disposition. After watching a videotaped mock trial in which the similarity of the charges, the similarity of the evidence, and the presence of judicial instructions were manipulated, jurors were more likely to render a guilty verdict when the offenses were joined than when they were tried separately, which is consistent with earlier research. In contrast, evidence similarity had no effect on verdicts, and charge similarity was related to verdicts in some studies and not others. Across studies, joining offenses did result in confusion of the evidence, an accumulation of prosecution evidence, and negative inferences about the defendant’s criminality. Although the jurors’ perceptions of the defendant’s criminality mediated the effects of joinder on verdicts, confusion of the evidence did not. Early research by this research team using representative jurors suggested that elaborated judicial instruction designed to reduce the prejudicial effects of joinder had no effect on verdicts; however, follow-up research conducted with undergraduate students found the same instructions to have an ameliorative effect.
Edie Greene and her colleagues have explored other potential mediators of the prejudicial effect of joinder on verdicts. In two experiments, these researchers replicated previous findings that conviction rates are higher in joined trials. They also tested several previously examined mediators of these effects, including negative inferences about the defendant and evidence confusion. Their findings comported with previous research findings that jurors’ inferences that a defendant had a criminal disposition seem to drive the increased conviction rate in joined trials. They also examined previously untested mediators of the joinder effect. They hypothesized that jurors who possess the knowledge that the defendant is charged with multiple offenses may be more distressed than jurors who are aware of only a single offense. This increase in distress may lead jurors to lower their criterion required for a conviction; that is, jurors in joined trials may have a lower threshold for finding a defendant guilty than jurors who hear the severed charges. It is also possible that joining offenses creates a greater memory load for jurors in joined trials and this greater load leads to less accurate or detailed memories of the trial evidence. A third hypothesis is that the greater amount of information presented at joined trials may cause jurors to remember only the more salient information that confirms their verdict choice. There was no evidence to support the viability of any of these additional potential mediators of the prejudicial joinder effect.
尽管在某些领域中,经验证据是模棱两可的,但关于加入陪审员对陪审员的影响的某些发现反复证明。人们普遍认为,在一次审判中,犯罪的加入会导致促进偏见。还达成共识,陪审员对被告的犯罪行为的看法,而不是对证据的混乱,对判决的影响是由陪审员的看法所介导的。同样,尽管法院指出,司法指示是对偏见的适当保障,但人们达成共识,即当犯罪加入一项审判时通常提供的司法指示无效地保护陪审员的决定免受JOINDERD的偏见影响。有证据表明,旨在减少连接效果的替代司法指示在某些情况下可能会起作用;但是,需要进一步的研究来复制这些发现,并确定这些详细说明的局限性,以减少加入陪审员决策的偏见影响。
References:
- Greene, E., & Loftus, E. I. (1985). When crimes are joined at trial. Law and Human Behavior, 9, 193-207.
- Horowitz,I。A.,&Bordens,K。S.(1985)。犯罪犯罪的加入:法律和心理文献的审查。法律与人类行为,9,339-353。
- Tanford,S。和Penrod,S。(1984)。多犯罪试验的陪审员判断中的社会推论处理。人格与社会心理学杂志,第47卷,第749-765页。
- Tanford, S., Penrod, S., & Collins, R. (1985). Decision making in joined criminal trials: The influence of change similarity, evidence similarity, and limiting instructions. Law and Human Behavior, 9, 319-337.