The state of California changed its jury instructions in 2003, adding one key word: “each.” Later, the instructions were revised and “each” was removed.
The Ling Law Lab and Mark Yanis, a California lawyer, believe that the removal of this word has resulted in an unjust increase in ‘guilty’ verdicts.
It leads juries to a more holistic approach of coming to their verdicts, coming to a ‘guilty’ verdict even if only two of three ‘elements’ of the crime have been proven.
Pilot study
Members of the lab recruited friends and family to complete a pilot survey, and it returned promising results.
It presented a scenario in which a defendant was charged with kidnapping, but only two of the three elements of the crime had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The “Each element” group returned a third of the rate of guilty verdicts that the Control group did (did not receive instructions with the word “each”).
Moving forward
Considering these promising results, the lab will replicate the pilot with a much larger sample size.
We also have follow-up studies planned which will examine whether the emotional nature of the crime in the Kidnapping study has an effect on the results.
Preliminary results presented at:
- Eötvös Loránd University International Student Poster Presentation Conference (Manav Mehta & Holly Lightbody)
- University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Conference (Manav Mehta)
- Cornell University Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium (Sanjna Patel & Rajvi Shah)
- Northeastern University CSSH Undergraduate Research Forum (Kayla Collins, Sanjna Patel, & Rajvi Shah)
- Northeastern University Linguistics Department poster session (Kyle Rysdam & Rajvi Shah)
- Northeastern University RISE Expo (Kayla Collins, Sanjna Patel, & Rajvi Shah)
Posters & Presentations
2023
Randall, J., M. Mehta, S. Patel, R. Shah, & H. Lightbody. Quantifiers in the Law: The California Jury Instruction Pilot Study. 13th International Student Poster Presentation Conference. Budapest, May.
Randall, J., A. Petti, K. Rysdam, S. Caruso, M. Mehta. R, Stewart, R. Shah, S. Patel & Y. Khranovska. Getting To Meaning: Experiments from the LingLawLab Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics. November.
Randall, J., M. Mehta, S. Patel, & R. Shah. Quantifiers in the Law: The California Jury Instruction Pilot Study. 17th Annual Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium, April.
2021
Randall, J., M. Mehta, S. Patel, & R. Shah. The California Jury Instruction Project: Kidnapping, a Pilot Study. Northeastern University Linguistics Research Forum, December.