Making a Juror - The Effects of Dramatized Crime on Jurors

Image Source: The Washington Post

Hot take: I have always wanted to serve on a jury. Not just because I’m in law school or because it’s a civic duty and the hallmark of the American legal system, but because I think it would be interesting, nay, even fun. Watching two sides duke it out, waiting for a witness to accidentally say something that blows the whole case wide open? Sounds like a great weekday afternoon to me. Why my piqued interest in jury duty? I have no real basis for it—I was summoned last summer, the case was settled before we even made it to voir dire, and I was probably the only one disappointed about it. My true fascination lies in all of the movies and television shows that have given me a glimpse of what jury service could potentially hold. Ever since I was little [and even admittedly now], I would turn watching CSI, Forensic Files, or even Scooby Doo into a fun, and often competitive, game of Whodunnit?, trying to identify the culprit before the actors on screen figured it out.

Out of the 8-10 million people who receive jury summons annually, only 5% actually end up serving on a jury. In our interviews of former jurors, we discovered that many people had no prior experience with the legal system before reporting for jury duty. Some were only familiar with the jury process because of what they had seen on television. Now, with the rise of true crime documentaries and podcasts, attorneys are increasingly more worried about the biases jurors have developed.

As early as the 1980s, jurors had extremely high expectations of the amount of evidence needed for a conviction. A woman in Los Angeles County refused to convict the defendant because he did not confess during trial and even blamed the prosecutor for his lack of experience. When shows like CSI and Law & Order first started running, juries turned their attention towards forensic evidence presented at trial. Aptly named the “CSI effect,” jurors expected DNA tests, fingerprinting, and autopsy reports to all point to one guilty defendant, raising the bar even higher for prosecutors. Even if the evidence is not relevant to proving the case, investigators will run forensic testing and present findings to the jury “to show they went the extra CSI mile.”

Recently, true crime media has shifted juror’s attention from evidence to the legal system itself. Unlike its CSI-counterpart, in which gruesome crimes were neatly resolved within the hour, more recent crime documentaries and podcasts focus on real cases. They speculate on cold cases, challenge wrongful convictions, and highlight allegations of attorney misconduct, creating a sense of mistrust in the criminal justice system and biases towards innocence claims. However, like fictionalized crime shows, documentaries like Making a Murderer are as entertaining and binge-worthy as they are informative. Attorneys criticize producers because the shows are “sensationalist and too simplistic,” and like everything, there is always two sides to the story. Jesse Wells, a reporter on the original trials in Making a Murderer, said that watching the documentary was like “merely read[ing] the CliffNotes” because so many key facts were omitted.

True crime allows viewers not only to be jurors sifting through evidence, but also the judge of our criminal justice system. It has the potential to blur the lines between fact and fiction, which may be even more detrimental than the CSI effect.