Can Judges Ignore Inadmissible Information?
The Difficulty of Deliberately Disregarding,” Authored with Andrew J. Wistrich and FChris Guthrie Abstract – Procedural fairness and due process requires that courts assess evidence before them without regard to information outside of the record. Skepticism about the ability of jurors to ignore inadmissible information is widespread. Empirical research confirms that this skepticism is well-founded. Many courts and commentators, however, assume that judges can accomplish what jurors cannot. This article reports the results of studies we have conducted to determine whether judges can disregard inadmissible evidence. We found that the judges who participated in our studies struggled to perform this challenging mental task. The judges had difficulty disregarding demands disclosed during settlement talks, conversations protected by attorney-client privilege, the prior sexual history of an alleged rape victim, prior criminal convictions of a party in a civil case, and extrinsic evidence in a
