CANCELLED TALK - Friday 13th March 2020, 12-1pm. Dr Sam Lundrigan - Jury Responses to Stranger Rape

*** CANCELLED TALK ***

Date: Friday 13th March 2020
Time: 12-1pm
Room: CG04, College Building

Dr Sam Lundrigan (Anglia Ruskin University) 

Abstract

In the courtroom, the likelihood of conviction should rest solely on a jury’s consideration of the facts of the case. However, past research has found that jurors are often influenced by extra-legal factors such as characteristics associated with the victim, witness, or defendant. Also, since rape trials involving strangers are relatively rare, public knowledge of these cases is shaped largely by media portrayals of a small number of cases, often marked by lengthy, challenging, and sensational trials. This may result in misconceptions about stranger rape that jurors bring to the courtroom. Currently, there is very little research regarding stranger rape against either adults or children and the features of this particular type of rape that may influence jury verdicts.

In this seminar I will discuss the findings of two studies, conducted with colleagues from Middlesex University and the London Metropolitan Police Service, that explore the factors that predict juries’ decisions to convict or acquit in stranger rape cases. For both studies, data (spanning a 15-year period) was extracted from a sexual offence database maintained by the London Metropolitan Police Service. In Study 1, we analysed 394 stranger cases involving adult female victims and in Study 2, we examined 70 stranger cases involving child victims. In both studies, our analysis revealed that jury verdicts were predicted predominantly by certain offence-related factors. I will discuss the implications of the findings of these studies for both prosecution case building and courtroom policy. 

~ This talk is aimed at anyone interested in psychology, particularly forensic psychology.

Students are encouraged to attend.

Attendance would benefit both undergraduate and postgraduate students from psychology and related fields ~

Biography

Dr Lundrigan is interested in the interface between psychology and crime, and how psychology may be applied to the understanding and investigation of stranger sexual crime.

She joined Anglia Ruskin in January 2009 where she is now the Director of PIER, the Policing Institute for the Eastern Region. Prior to this she was at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University and before that spent seven years at the Institute of Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. 

As well as teaching, Dr Lundrigan has also conducted a range of research projects into geographic profiling systems, the spatial behaviour of serial rapists and the behavioural consistency of serial offenders. She has worked closely with police and provided offender and geographic profiles on a series of serious crime investigations. Her research interests include: offender profiling, male sexual violation, stranger interpersonal violence, juror decision making, rape, online child sexual abuse, the management of registered sex offenders.