Question
Assignment 1: Case Study Analysis
Case Study: Guilty or Not Guilty: Does It Matter?
Dr. Jennifer Bauer has been asked by the defense attorney to assist in jury selection. The defendant is a battered wife who has been accused of murdering her abusive husband one night when he was drunk and became verbally abusive.
The defense attorney has also hired a prominent psychiatrist who has suggested that the defense attorney use the battered woman syndrome as a defense strategy. Dr. Bauer thinks that this is a poor decision since the syndrome evidence has not been very successful in court cases, and she believes that the argument would be more successful using posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a defense. However, she was hired to assist in jury selection and not to help develop the defense strategy. Additionally, the psychiatrist retained by the attorney has developed a career arguing the syndrome evidence in courts and is not very receptive to criticism.
Dr. Bauer reads through the discovery materials, including the evidence provided by the defense and the prosecution. Despite her empathy for battered women, Dr. Bauer feels that the weak defense strategy along with the strong evidence against the defendant will lead to a guilty verdict for the defendant.
During the voir dire process, Dr. Bauer decides that many of the potential jurors are not sympathetic toward the defendant. She decides that the only possibility is to hope for a mistrial by employing the poison pill strategy. She hopes to select jurors whose strong personality differences make them clash so much during the deliberations that they are unable to come to a unanimous verdict.
Tasks:
In a minimum of 250 words, analyze the case study and address the following:
How should Dr. Bauer proceed? Provide reasons to support your answer.
Should she offer her advice regarding the syndrome evidence? Why or why not?
Should she pursue the poison pill strategy? Why or why not?
Sample paper
Guilty or Not Guilty: Does It Matter? Case Study Analysis
Question 1
How should Dr. Bauer proceed? Provide reasons to support your answer
Given the fact that the doctor has more knowledge and skills regarding such cases, he should advise the defendant’s and her team to change their strategy to posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a mental disorder that is likely to develop when an individual is exposed to a traumatic event such as sexual assault. In our case, the doctor can try to defend the defendant by simply stating that she had PTSD after having a fight with her drunken husband because it matters to the jury and because this will ensure that an innocent woman is not wrongly convicted (Shiromani, 2014).
Question 2
Should she offer her advice regarding the syndrome evidence? Why or why not?
Being a professional as well as a worker in the court, she has the sole responsibility of respecting and observing the code of conduct which advocates for honesty, truth, justice, and fairness. As a result, she should not sit back and watch an innocent woman rot in jail or prison while she would have simply provided the evidence to save her life. As a result, she should give her advice to the court, especially to the defendant counsel on the best strategy to use.
Question 3
Should she pursue the poison pill strategy? Why or why not?
The doctor should pursue the poison pill strategy to save the life of the defendant. The poison pill strategy is a technique used by individuals and organizations to make their strategies or technique less attractive and appropriate for the attack and scrutiny from other individuals. As a result, by implementing this strategy, the doctor will take away the attention of the defendant and direct it to the facts of the case and thus save her from being thrown in prison (Lie, 2015).
References
Lie, E. &. (2015). The Effect of Poison Pill Adoptions and Court Rulings on Firm Entrenchment.
Shiromani, P. K. (2014). Post-traumatic stress disorder. . Humana.
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