Steven Penrod, Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice at The Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is currently overseeing three projects funded by the National Science Foundation: 1) experimental studies of whether and how cost-benefit analyses favored by decision scientists and economists and often performed by civil defendants influence jury judgments; 2) experimental studies extending research on sequential lineup identification procedures in which faces are shown one at a time which have shown to appreciably reduce mistaken eyewitness identifications, and 3) a meta-analytic survey of eyewitness research designed to summarize findings from twenty-five years of experimental research examining factors that influence eyewitnesses. Professor Penrod also recently completed work on a fourth project funded by the National Science Foundation: a longitudinal study of the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's Daubert decision which changed evidence law governing the admissibility of expert scientific and technical testimony. Professor Penrod's research and writing have focused on decision making in legal contexts. He has written extensively about the jury, the effects of jury size and decision rules on jury decision making, death penalty decision making, the jurors use of probabilistic and hearsay evidence, the comprehension of legal instructions, the impact of extra-legal influences such as pretrial publicity and joinder of charges, the effects of cameras in the courtroom, and the effects of juror questioning of witnesses on jury performance.
* Adapted from 2002 Research Foundation Report