Since the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by a Missouri police officer, there has been a push for more video recording of police officers, such as body or dashboard cameras, in order for jurors to better determine guilt. Unfortunately, as highlighted in the 2017 New York Times article, “Jurors Find Video Isn’t Providing 20/20 Vision in Police Shootings,” allowing such video evidence does not lead to a more unanimous and certain verdict. The article highlights several police shooting cases that included police video recordings as evidence. A majority of the cases mention either resulted in mistrials or no conviction. While video evidence may seem to be a compelling and reliable form of evidence in such cases, it actually can lead to more complication in the jury deliberation process. Video evidence raises several questions as to how it should be implemented and interpreted in a courtroom setting. This article raises an important question as to why most police shooting cases result in no conviction or mistrials despite having clear video evidence of the altercation.
In Dr. Yael Granot’s research article, “Justice Is Not Blind: Visual Attention Exaggerates Effects of Group Identification on Legal Punishment,” she addresses the question: why can multiple people look at the same video evidence and come to different punishment decisions? After surveys 152 New York University undergraduate students and community members on their identification with police officers, they were shown a real dashboard camera video of a police-civilian altercation that was not clear in the culpability of either party. While watching the recording, their visual attention to both individuals was tracked using eye-tracking sensors. Participants had to then come to a legal punishment decision for the officer.
Dr. Granot and her team found that participants who weakly identified with police officers and had more visual attention on the officer while viewing the clip were more likely to assign a harsher punishment. Participants who had a stronger identity with police officers and had more visual attention on the officer assigned the officer a less harsh punishment. Evidence from this research implicates that individuals have an implicit bias, an attitude or stereotype that unconsciously affects an individual’s decisions or actions, while viewing video evidence. In this instance, such an implicit bias effected the way they perceive the officer’s culpability. In the cases discussed in the New York Times article, it could very well be that jurors had implicit biases towards either the civilian or the police officer, resulting in mistrials or no convictions.
However, the question still remains, how can video evidence be implemented and interpreted in an unbiased way that leads to a unanimous and stronger conviction? Dr. Granot proposed in her February 25th lecture that possibly having video evidence verbally explained, or narrated, without actually being viewed in a courtroom may aid in eliminating the implicit bias and unequal distribution of visual attention that comes with viewing video recordings. Dr. Granot also suggested that making people aware of their biases, or just asking them to focus their attention equally on both parties, may aid in getting rid of in-group and out-group biases and aid jurors in making a more sound and unanimous decision. Before any interventions are put in place, both articles affirm that there needs to be more consideration and research conducted before video evidence can be used as a reliable and unbiased source of evidence in courtrooms, especially in cases like police shootings.
References
Bosman, J., Smith, M., & Wines, M. (2017, June 25). Jurors Find Video Isn't Providing 20/20 Vision in Police Shootings. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/us/police-shootings-trials-video-body-cam.html
Granot, Y., Balcetis, E., Schneider, K. E., & Tyler, T. R. (2014). Justice is not blind: Visual attention exaggerates effects of group identification on legal punishment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), 2196-2208. doi: 10.1037/a0037893
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