JURORS' RESPONSES TO UNUSUAL INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE

Two experiments investigated jurors' ability to disregard unusual inadmissible evidence. Participants listened to an audio recording of a theft trial. Those in four experimental conditions heard critical testimony favoring the prosecution, which was ruled either admissible or inadmissible and which contained either neutral details or details that were unusual in terms of semantic content (Experiment 1) or form (Experiment 2). Control jurors received no critical evidence. Exposure to unusual rather than neutral evidence led jurors to see the defendant as more guilty but only if that evidence was inadmissible instead of admissible. Additionally, jurors remembered unusual evidence better than neutral evidence. The results are consistent with Wegner's ironic-process theory and suggest that attempts at thought suppression are less successful if the forbidden information is especially memorable.