Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson’s court verdict won’t be influenced by the media circus surrounding their current or upcoming trials, a new study said.

Though pre-trial coverage usually casts the defendant in a negative light, a study of more than 1,100 criminal trials found no statistical difference between heavily publicized guilty verdicts and trials that received little media attention.

“Courts have developed ways of dealing with the publicity factor that makes it a non-issue,” said William Loges in his book, “Free Press vs. Fair Trials: Examining Publicity’s Role in Trial Outcomes.”

Loges, an assistant professor of new media communications at Oregon State University, co-authored his book with Jon Bruschke, associate professor of speech communication at California State University at Fullerton.

They traced their interest in the role of publicity on trials back to the O.J. Simpson case, where many people blamed the media for the verdict. He said Simpson’s verdict of being found not guilty was the exception and not the norm, since a majority of defendants in murder cases are convicted.

In about half of the cases they investigated, the trials received no publicity and the defendant was found guilty 79 percent of the time. In the highly publicized cases, the defendants were found guilty 82 percent of the time. The difference isn’t statistically significant, the researchers said.

However, most legal experts disagree with Loges.

Current trial laws are built on the concept that media coverage can alter a case, especially in the instance of selecting jury members. Judges have the power to move a trial to a different city or state if they believe media coverage has altered opinions of potential jury members.

Timothy Gartin, attorney at Hastings and Gartin, 409 Duff Ave., said the new research contradicted widely-held beliefs about the effects the media have on trials.

“It’s counterintuitive because there are cases that pre-trial publicity affects juries decisions ahead of time,” he said. “The law already recognizes that the media can affect juries, which is why the laws are there.”

This is similar to Stewart’s trial, Gartin said. Stewart’s trial faced these problems during jury selection. Many potential jury members either strongly liked or disliked Stewart, causing their dismissal because the judge and lawyers said they were biased.

Other lawyers believe that some jurors become biased from news information about court cases for which they are jurors.

“People can’t fully remove this media information from their minds,” said Pat Peters, attorney at Payer, Hunziker and Rhodes, 535 Main St.

“It’s human nature.”

Loges’ study disagrees with this opinion. He said media coverage may not affect juries as much as it affects judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. For judges, the impact came in sentencing.

“In general, the more publicity a trial gets, the stiffer the sentence,” said Loges. “This may be due to the nature of the crime. Other studies show that judges don’t want to be soft on crime, so there is an incentive for stricter sentencing.”