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WHAT IS REASONABLE? EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT JURY INSTRUCTIONS IN CASES OF POLICE ABUSE OF FORCE**

Abstract

According to the Graham v Conner Supreme Court case, police officers charged with an on-duty crime should be judged against the standard of a reasonable officer. However, the Supreme Court gave an unclear and subjective definition of a reasonable officer, only mentioning that an officer should not be judged with the 20/20 vision of hindsight and that jurors should consider the "split-second judgments" that an officer in the moment would have. Multiple cases cite Graham v Connor. Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Legal Division has a nine-part podcast on how the wording of Graham v Connor can be used to keep officers from going to trial or being convicted. However, some states go beyond the wording of Graham v Connor. For example, California included the totality of circumstances in their pattern jury instructions. The California instructions did not mention the concept of looking at police misconduct without the 20/20 vision of hindsight. My research seeks to determine the effects of different jury instructions in lethal police misconduct cases. I will also look for interactions between juror instructions and juror political affiliation, and Social Dominance Orientation scores. My research uses two types of jury instructions: one set based on California pattern jury instructions, which mention the concept of the totality of circumstances, and juror instructions based on the exact wording of Graham v Connor. I hypothesized that participants given the pattern juror instructions from California will be more likely to convict the police officer than participants given the Graham v Connor jury instructions.

Acknowledgements

Graduate Student Association at Georgia Southern University

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