Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1981

Abstract

This article describes how social science data and professional testimony were used to assist judicial decision-making in an application to have a criminal fraud trial moved from Middlesex County, Ontario, because of prejudicial attitudes extant in the community. Typically, in such applications, tenuous documentation of pre-trial publicity and perhaps some unsubstantiated "opinion" testimony by persons purportedly in touch with the pulse of the community are the only evidence introduced . The presiding judge is required to consider this circumstantial, indirect, evidence and draw a conclusion about the level and extent of public prejudice as the merits of the application are weighed. In the present case systematic empirical data were collected to assess levels of knowledge and prejudice among members of the population from which the veniremen would be selected, thus providing the judge with more direct evidence on which to form his opinion . Though descriptive of a particular case, the article illustrates how empirical studies can be generated and how basic research from the social sciences and other data sources can be used to bolster that empirical research . Such an approach might be used to assist judicial decisions on a number of problems.

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Library of Congress Subject Headings

Venue, Judicial process, Canada, Trials, Free press and fair trial, Social sciences--Research, Empirical

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