We know from long experience that angry jurors award more damages in civil cases. And we assume that angry jurors in criminal cases are more punitive. And sometimes assuming pays off.

But it’s more interesting than just “make ‘em angry” if you’re a prosecutor. Researchers focused on anger and how it relates to judgments of criminal intent, causal control, and punishment. What they found will make intuitive sense.

Researchers designed a somewhat ambiguous white-collar crime scenario where a man was accused of embezzlement after he did not return a large sum of money to the owner. The man said he had simply ‘forgotten’ to return the money and that he had no intention of keeping it.

For Phase 1 of the experiment, participants were assigned to three conditions: angry, sad or neutral. These mood states were elicited by having the participants read a sad story, a story where the protagonist was treated extremely unfairly, and a story producing no real emotional response.

Researchers “checked” the conditions after all experimentation was over by asking the participants to complete a questionnaire about how they ‘felt’ following the first vignette.

All participants ‘felt’ the desired emotional response. That is, those in the ‘angry condition’ were angry; those in the ‘sad condition’ were sad and those in the ‘neutral condition’ were emotionally neutral.

The goal was to see if the mood elicited in the very first study would have impact on how participants reacted to the actual experimental conditions in Phase 2. But, the researchers waited until after Phase 2 was over to assess participant’s sense of their mood following the initial experiment.

So, going back to our post. Participants were set up for three different mood states (angry, sad, neutral) in Phase 1 of the experiment and then, in Phase 2 they were given information about the embezzlement story (where the man did not return a large sum of money to the owner). And here’s what happened.

Angry participants were more likely to see malevolence of intent. The researchers describe an “intuitive prosecutor” mindset that evolves when anger is present that colors judgment as to responsibility of the defendant. And therefore, the angry participants were more punitive.

The results are pretty easy to use as you consider your own cases in the sentencing phase.

If you are defense, you want to emphasize the ‘sad’ nature of the case. Frame mitigating events into ‘sad’ ones that happened for your client.  If complicity is unavoidable, emphasize the situational aspects that contributed (perhaps even mandated) the accused behavior. In essence, you want to present your client as a victim of circumstances who takes responsibility for what he has done but perhaps doesn’t understand exactly how it happened. [Obviously, your case presentation will need to contain this thread throughout or you will make jurors mad, not sad.]

If you are prosecution, you want to activate that “intuitive prosecutor” mindset. Present the defendant as an angry and violent person who took action to reach a planned goal. The victim was an innocent whose life was forever changed by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it was not a random event. It was planned and executed with malevolent intent but the perpetrator is here today and deserves to be punished.

Ask, K., & Pina, A. (2011). On being angry and punitive: How anger alters perception of criminal intent. Social Psychological and Personality Science

Related posts:

1. Simple Jury Persusasion: Make them sad and they can’t be mad
2. Simple Jury Persuasion: Can walking to the jury room make jurors forget your evidence?
3. Simple Jury Persuasion: Alpha and Omega Persuasion Strategies
4. Simple Jury Persuasion: The more things change…
5. Simple Jury Persuasion: “You know you want to trust me!”