Why would prospective jurors with more knowledge about the case also be more likely to convict Timothy McVeigh?

At 9:02 A.M. on April 19, 1995, a massive explosion destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bombing killed 163 people in the building (including 15 children in the building's day-care center, which was visible from the street) as well as 5 people out- side. The explosion trapped hundreds of people in the rubble and spewed glass, chunks of concrete, and debris over several blocks of downtown Oklahoma City. It was the country's most deadly act of domestic terrorism.

Approximately 75 minutes after the blast, Timothy McVeigh was pulled over while driving north from Okla- homa City because his car lacked license tags. Two days later, the federal government filed a complaint against McVeigh on federal bombing charges. By August 1995, McVeigh and codefendant Terry Nichols had been charged with conspiracy, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives, and eight counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officials who had been killed in the blast.

The bombing, the heroic actions of rescue workers, and the arrest of McVeigh all generated a tremendous amount of publicity. Millions of Americans saw images of McVeigh, wearing orange jail garb and a bullet- proof vest, being led through an angry crowd outside the Noble County Jail in Perry, Oklahoma. Predict- ably, McVeigh's defense team requested that the trial be moved from Oklahoma City to a more neutral (or at least a less emotionally charged) locale.

As part of their motion to move the trial, McVeigh's attorneys enlisted the help of a group of psychologists to

provide information to the court about the extent and type of publicity in the Oklahoma City newspaper and in the papers from three other communities (Lawton, Oklahoma, a small town 90 miles from Oklahoma City; Tulsa; and Denver) (Studebaker & Penrod, 1997). Their media content analysis identified all articles per- taining to the bombing in these four papers between April 20, 1995, and January 8, 1996, and coded the content of the text, including positive characterizations of victims, negative characterizations of the defendant, reports of a confession, and emotionally laden publicity. They also measured the number of articles printed in each paper and the amount of space allotted to text and pictures (United States v. McVeigh, 1996).

The data were compelling: During the collection period, 939 articles about the bombing had appeared in the Oklahoma City newspaper and 174 in the Denver Post. By a whopping 6,312-558 margin, the Daily Oklahoman had printed more statements of an emotional nature (e.g., emotional suffering, goriness of the scene) than the Denver Post (Studebaker & Penrod, 1997). On the basis of this analysis and other evidence presented at the hearing, Judge Richard Matsch moved the trial to Denver. In June 1997, McVeigh was convicted on all 11 counts and sen- tenced to death. He was executed in June 2001.

Critics have long suggested that studies of pre-trial publicity lack usefulness because they do not measure the public's reactions to naturally occurring publicity. (As we pointed out, researchers often "expose" partici- pants to news reports in the context of an experiment.) To address these concerns, Christina Studebaker and her colleagues conducted an online study to examine how differences in naturally occurring exposure to pre- trial publicity affected public attitudes, evidence eval- uation, and verdict and sentencing preferences in the McVeigh case (Studebaker et al., 2002). They found, among other things, that the closer people were to the bombing site, the more they knew about it and the more they believed that McVeigh was guilty. This study employs a novel methodology to explore important real-world effects of pre-trial information.

CRITICAL THOUGHT QUESTION

Why would prospective jurors with more knowl- edge about the case also be more likely to convict Timothy McVeigh?