Jury: Behavioral Aspects

The American constitutional right to a free press occasionally provides the public with information or misinformation about the case that a jury will be asked to decide. Under such circumstances, the constitutional rights to a free press and to a fair trial are potentially at odds. This conflict is not faced in countries like Canada and Great Britain where the press is prohibited from writing about impending trials. For example, pretrial publicity about a defendant's alleged confession can affect the expectations and beliefs of prospective jurors in the United States. Although some limited research indicates that the effects of some types of pretrial publicity are generally small, it also suggests that jury selection and the passage of time may not eliminate them. In some high-profile cases, the legal system faces not only the cost of moving a trial, but also the increasing difficulty of identifying a location that has not been saturated with pretrial media coverage.