When deciding tough cases, the emotional appeal of the a person's argument is very persuasive. Many jurors would be tipped by these sad stories and want to help the families or individuals that had suffered. In all of the presentations there was a lot of emotional appeal. The Johnson family was too busy to buy anything other than fast food for their children and it lead to them having high cholesterol and abnormal weight gain. Ebony got an opportunity she would not have normally had at a college and took advantage, eventually opening a charity to help others achieve their dreams. the Chestnut family could still be intact if the insurance company had only blood tested. These all are things that could sway jurors. However, I think that the most persuasive evidence that "tipped the scales" for me were the facts and statistics brought to light during the debates.
I was already against the Johnsons, as I knew that it was easy to gain information about McDonald's foods and that most, if not all, of the nutrition information is readily available at the restaurant, but I could see that when these facts were shown to the rest of the class that they seemed to lean more towards the McDonald's side than the Johnsons'. The same can be said of the affirmative action case. When some facts were shown an overwhelming majority was against affirmative action, again the facts defeated the emotional story. I thought surely the sad story of the Chestnuts would win over these tough "jurors," but I was wrong. After considering the costs of mass drug testing and the invasion of privacy they decided unanimously against the Chestnuts. All of this points to evidence and facts as opposed to emotional appeal as the most persuasive in cases, at least with this group.
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