Accountability in legal decision-making

Abstract

Having to explain a decision has often been found to have a positive effect on the quality of a decision. We aimed to determine whether different accountability requirements for judges (i.e., having to justify their decision or having to explicate their decision) affect evidence use. Those requirements were compared to instructions based on the falsification principle and a control condition. Participants (N = 173) decided on the defendant’s guilt in a murder case vignette and explained their decision according to the instructions. The explication and falsification (but not the justification) instructions increased the use of exonerating evidence. There was no significant difference between the groups in guilt perception. The use of exonerating evidence was a significant positive predictor of acquittal rates. The implications for the different forms of instructions in practice are positive, but suggest a difference between the evidence considered and the evidence used to account for the decision.

Key words:

• accountability
• confirmation bias
• falsification
• legal decision-making

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by a fellowship awarded from the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program The House of Legal Psychology (EMJD-LP) with Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) 2013-0036 and Specific Grant Agreement (SGA) 532473-EM-5-2017-1-NL-ERA MUNDUS-EPJD. We would like to thank Carina Overdulve for her help with data collection and Stephanie Blom for her help with creating the material. In addition, we would like to thank Gwijde Maegherman for his input on the revisions.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2021.1904452.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.