Bachelor of Science in Business, Miami University, 2005, School of Business Administration - Finance

This paper performs an econometric analysis of punitive damages. A model is developed to describe the probability and amount of punitive awards, which is then applied to two data sets. The data sets, the 1996 and 2001 Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, contain information on cases tried to verdict in 45 and 46 counties respectively. The primary results, controlling for a number of trial characteristics, indicate that the probability and amount of punitive awards are higher for juries than for judges. This result is robust with the inclusion of two previously unstudied influences on punitive damages: poverty rates and political leanings. However, the results become inconsistent when controlling for selectivity bias.

Committee: Mark McBride (Advisor) Subjects: Economics, General; Law

BA, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

In this thesis, I describe research from multiple sources regarding juror bias and jury selection that requires the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” to be reexamined. Throughout this thesis, I examine juror bias in regards to social media and how information can easily be distributed to jury members that could harm the case, how jurors may be unaware of terminology and/or specific criminal justice topics and look to the Internet to teach them, and predispositions that they may have in terms of race, gender, sexuality. Next, I refer to issues with challenges during voir dire and how these challenges sometimes keep defendants from receiving a fair jury with their peers. I will discuss in detail how these challenges can negatively and positively affect cases. Lastly, I give policy and legislation recommendations to keep juror bias at bay, thus creating more fair and impartial trials for future defendants.

Committee: Michelle Foster (Advisor); Jessica Paull (Committee Member); Sarah Smiley (Committee Member); Rachael Blasiman (Committee Member) Subjects: Criminology; Law; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1981, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Communication

Research on jury decision making is interesting because there is an expectation by the justice system that if jurors take their duty seriously and put effortful cognition into their task, they should be uninfluenced by irrelevant information and reach a fair decision. However, research has shown that although jurors think thoroughly and try to reach a fair decision, they are susceptible to a variety of irrelevant factors. There have been multiple models of jury decision making that have been proposed to account for how jurors reach their decisions, but none seem to be able to fully explain the wide range of irrelevant factors that influence jurors. However, this dissertation argues that cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is a model of human decision making that also should be applied to juries. This dissertation sets out to give support to CEST as a model of jury decision making. CEST is a decision making theory that posits that humans have two systems of information processing. The first system is a rational system that engages in effortful cognition. The second system is the experiential system that is more based on emotion. This dissertation will support CEST as a model of jury decision making by showing the types of information that are considered based on how jurors process information, how these considerations will influence decisions, which jurors have the ability to update decisions based on new information, and that this model can make accurate predictions regarding these three areas at the state and trait-level. A pretest and study 2 both support CEST's assertion that people can be engaged two different types of processing at the same time. That is, information processing is not simply a tradeoff between effortful cognition and quick, heuristic based cognition. Because of this, people who are engaged in rational thought can still be influenced by irrelevant factors via the experiential system. Both studies show that jurors will (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Robert Garrett (Advisor); Zheng Wang (Advisor); Emily Moyer-Guse (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1979, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1975, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2014, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

In this thesis, we investigated an efficient framework for clustering analysis of gene expression profiles by discretizing continuous genomic data and adopting the 1D-jury approach for fast clustering that was previously used for protein model quality assessment. We demonstrated, through an empirical analysis of multiple data sets from independent studies, that the loss of information due to discretization of genomic data is limited. Patterns observed using the original data can largely be recovered from discretized expression profiles, while enabling efficient identification of genomic signatures and clustering of expression profiles. We further studied the application of 1D-Jury approach in reducing the dimensionality of genomic data. We demonstrated that discretization and 1D-Jury score projection efficiently reduced the dimensionality of feature space. More importantly, the proposed discretization-projection heuristic enhanced the discovery of cluster structure and patterns in the data. Therefore, the proposed discretization-projection method can be a valuable tool for the analysis of gene expression data.

Committee: Jaroslaw Meller Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Raj Bhatnagar Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yizong Cheng Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2013, Psychology

Mimicry is an unconscious reaction of imitating other people's behaviors, postures, and facial expressions (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). It has been shown to lead to a host of positive outcomes, such as increased liking and persuasiveness. Mimicry has not yet received any empirical attention in the courtroom. This research examines behavioral mimicry as a predictor of verdict preference. Specifically, the primary research question was whether a juror's mimicry of the plaintiff's attorney and defense attorney predicts verdict preference. Six mock trial videotapes were used (43 jurors in total). Jurors' mimicry behaviors, as well as commonly held nonverbal indicators of agreement and disagreement, were coded. It was hypothesized that overall mimicry would predict final predeliberation verdict preference, and that mimicry would be a stronger predictor of verdict preference than nonverbal agreement behaviors or disagreement behaviors. The hypotheses were partially supported. Although overall mimicry did not predict final predeliberation verdict, mimicry did predict verdict preference on a segment-by-segment basis. Furthermore, mimicry was a stronger predictor of verdict preference than nonverbal agreement behaviors or disagreement behaviors. These results suggest that mimicry may be a subtle means of communicating agreement with an attorney as she presents her argument. Attorneys can focus on jurors' mimicry as a tool for deselecting unfavorable jurors during jury selection and for assessing jurors' temporary preferences and reactions during evidence presentation.

Committee: Garold Stasser Dr. (Committee Chair); Susanne Abele Dr. (Committee Member); Carrie Hall Dr. (Committee Member); Monica Schneider Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Law; Psychology; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, History

This dissertation examines the relationship between the Reconstruction-era civil rights revolution and the rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s by tracing the history of sex and race discrimination in jury service policy and the social activism it prompted. It argues that the federal government created a bifurcated policy that simultaneously condemned race discrimination and condoned sex discrimination during Reconstruction, and that initial policy had a controlling effect on the development of twentieth-century jury service campaigns. While dividing civil rights activists' campaigns for defendants' and jury rights from white feminists' struggle for equal civic obligations, the policy also removed black women from the forefront of either campaign. Not until the 1960s did women of color emerge as central to both of these campaigns, focusing on equal civic membership and the achievement of equitable justice. Relying on activists' papers, organizational records, and court cases, this project merges the legal and political narrative with a history of social to reveal the complex and mutually shaping relationship between policy and social activism. This dissertation reveals the distinctive, yet interwoven paths of white women, black women, and black men toward a more complete attainment of citizenship rights and more equitable access to justice.

Committee: Paula Baker PhD (Advisor); Susan M. Hartmann PhD (Committee Member); David Stebenne PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American History; Gender; History; Legal Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2012, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

Previous studies of voir dire suggest that it is ineffective in detecting juror bias. One of the proposed reasons for its ineffectiveness is a lack of juror self-disclosure. Literature on self-disclosure has primarily focused on the content of disclosures without consideration for how information is disclosed. The current study proposes that an examination of the manner in which information is disclosed is necessary in that self-disclosure during voir dire may imply juror behavior within jury deliberations. Through an observational analysis of the disclosures of prospective jurors, the author investigates the different and gendered ways in which jurors disclose information. Two major influences, self-construal and emotional expressiveness, emerged, revealing four specific disclosure-types of which vary in terms of breadth, depth, frequency and gender representation. The findings suggest that women frame their disclosures in terms of others more frequently than men do. The data also suggest that emotional expression is more topic-specific than gender based. The findings of this study imply that courtroom actors rely on gender expectations when composing the jury, and that the gendered participation rates in deliberations result from an interaction between gender and disclosure-type.

Committee: Thomas Vander Ven (Committee Chair); Ursula Castellano (Committee Member); Howard Welser (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2006, History

From 1865 to 1920, the United States underwent significant constitutional change, forging the legal framework in which race and sex classifications became integral parts of the Constitution and its interpretation. By analyzing congressional debates, Supreme Court decisions, and contemporaneous legal journal articles, this thesis investigates the implications of the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments for women's jury service rights and obligations. How and why did the federal government legitimize women's exclusion from juries while simultaneously opposing racial discrimination in jury service selection? This thesis argues that the Fourteenth Amendment, the congressional debate concerning it, and the Court interpretations of it made sex and race antagonistic legal categories, as illustrated in discussions about jury service. In these jury service debates and policies, legislators and jurists relied on notions of gender difference to justify sex discrimination in jury selection as acceptable, benign, and necessary. In addition, the Reconstruction Amendments and their legacy focused the women's rights movement on attaining suffrage, shaped the scope and language of the Nineteenth Amendment, and limited its effects on women's jury service eligibility.

Committee: Leigh Ann Wheeler (Advisor) Subjects: History, United States

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Engineering and Applied Science: Mechanical Engineering

As a product market becomes more competitive, consumers become more discriminating in the way in which they differentiate between engineered products. The consumer often makes a purchasing decision based on the sound emitted from the product during operation, by using the sound to judge quality or annoyance. Therefore, in recent years, many sound quality analysis tools have been developed to evaluate the consumer preference as it relates to a product sound and to quantify this preference based on objective measurements. This understanding can be used to direct a product design process in order to help differentiate the product from competitive products or to establish an impression on consumers regarding a product’s quality or robustness. The sound quality process is typically a statistical tool that is used to model subjective preference, or merit score, based on objective measurements, or metrics. In this way, new product developments can be evaluated in an objective manner without the laborious process of gathering a sample population of consumers for subjective studies each time. The most common model used today is the Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), although recently non-linear Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approaches are gaining popularity. This dissertation will review publicly available published literature and present additional intelligent systems approaches that can be used to improve on the current sound quality process. The focus of this work is to address shortcomings in the current paired comparison approach to sound quality analysis. This research will propose a framework for an adaptive jury analysis approach as an alternative to the current Bradley-Terry model. The adaptive jury framework uses statistical hypothesis testing to focus on sound pairings that are most interesting and is expected to address some of the restrictions required by the Bradley-Terry model. It will also provide a more amicable framework for an intelli (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Teik Lim Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Hongdao Huang Ph.D. (Committee Member); J. Kim Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Thompson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanics