Effects of withheld evidence on juridic decisions: Amount of evidence withheld and its relevance to the case

Simulated jurors (384 undergraduates) read a trial transcript in which the defendant invoked the 5th Amendment (FA) 1, 3, or 5 times in response to questioning that was either relevant or irrelevant to establishing his involvement in the crime (CR or CIR, respectively). Defendants who invoked the FA to CR interrogation were judged more likely to be guilty and more deserving of conviction than defendants who withheld CIR information. Moreover, an increase in the number of FA responses led to harsher juridic decisions only if the evidence withheld did not affect jurors' impressions of the defendant's character; analyses of the character attributions revealed that jurors perceived the defendant in increasingly disparaging terms the more often he took the FA to either CR or CIR interrogation. Results are consistent with predictions derived from balance theory and further illustrate that the act of withholding evidence has separate and independent effects of jurors' impressions of a defendant's involvement in the crime and their evaluations of his character.