Members in the Media
From: The Huffington Post

The Oscar Pistorius Trial: Psychologists Predict How a Jury Would Decide

The Huffington Post:

‘Are Celebrities Charged with Murder Likely to be Acquitted?’ is the title of a unique psychology experiment, inspired by boasts of a famous US lawyer, Eric Dubin, who claimed practically unbeatable court room strategies for representing celebrities, accused of committing serious crimes.

Dubin helped win in 2005 a $30million jury verdict in the wrongful death lawsuit against actor Robert Blake, accused of murdering his wife. Blake, had become famous, ironically enough, for his TV portrayal of Tony Baretta, an undercover police detective.

The psychologists who conducted the experiment on celebrities in court, Maria Wong, Michael Murtagh, Alan Goodboy, Amy Hackney and Lynn McCutcheon, were partly inspired by Dubin. His book on this subject: The Star Chamber: How Celebrities Go Free and Their Lawyers Become Famous, argued psychology was crucial in verdicts from trials of celebrities.

The initial acquittals of Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson of serious crimes, seemed to support some of Dubin’s stratagems, leading to the current study, published in the ‘North American Journal of Psychology’.

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post

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