General pretrial publicity in sexual assault trials

An experiment was designed to explore effects of general pretrial publicity in sexual assault trials. Four pretrial publicity conditions (no publicity, neutral news media, prodefendant, and antidefendant) in the form of simulated newspaper articles were presented to 356 participants. Participants subsequently read a mock rape trial summary and reported verdicts. In the absence of pretrial publicity related to sexual assault, women were more likely than men to convict the defendant, but the presence of sexual assault pretrial publicity in any form eliminated sex differences in conviction rates.