¶ … American legal system is that a person innocent of a crime he or she may be accused of until proven guilty by a jury of peers. This means that the mutual decision of a jury had innumerous affects on both an individual and society. Based on this, it is clear that all aspects of how and why a jury makes decisions should be examined. An area that is particularly important is the presentation of evidence and its affect how a jury's verdict. More specifically, how does the presentation of DNA evidence affect the verdict in a trial?
To find an answer to this particular question, it is possible to set up an experiment that will mimic a court case with the presence of DNA evidence. Some metholodgical questions are:
Why is an experiment the best choice to answer this question, and what are its drawbacks?
How should the dependent variable be controlled?
Who are the subjects and how should they be chosen?
An experiment is the best way to find the affects of the presentation of DNA evidence to a jury because it would be difficult to control the dependent variable with any other method. Participant observation would be impossible in this scenario because there is no way for a researcher to take part in a jury that has all of the necessary parameters, unless he or she takes part in a fake trial. If the researcher takes part in a fake trial, then the method becomes more experimental than observational. If one was working with limited resources, a case study could be used, but it would be difficult to guarantee that the true reason for a jury's decision was based on the presentation of the DNA evidence. In an experiment, the researcher could present subjects with a "court transcript" that varies only in the presentation of the DNA evidence. Additionally, an experiment would provide facts that could be useful in a number of follow up experiments that would give further insight into jury decision making. An experiment is the only way to prove causality, so any other research method would limit the conclusions to this relatively small area of interest.
While an experiment is the best way to find the answer to this substantive question, it is critical that the dependent variable is controlled correctly. To do this, there needs to be three different court transcripts. All three will be exactly the same, but in the control group no DNA evidence will be presented. In the second group the DNA evidence will be presented in a way that makes people think that the probability of DNA match between the suspect and DNA found is low. In the second scenario the DNA match statistic will be the exact same as in group two's transcript, but it will be presented to make it seem as though the probability of a match is higher. This differentiation is made by either focusing on the number of other people that could possibly DNA match (ex: at least 7 in 1,000 people could have the same DNA match statistic), or focusing on the amount people that is does not match (ex: there is on a .7% chance that this DNA match could belong to someone else) respectively.
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