How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will support disagreeing with the conclusion.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

Whenever lawyers engage in such behavior, therefore, it is reasonable to doubt whether the verdict is correct.

Journalist: [BACKGROUND]. [SUPPORT]. [CONCLUSION].

Did you catch how strongly worded the conclusion is? It’s saying “it is reasonable to doubt” a verdict “whenever” lawyers do these bad things. Like, no matter what, every time, with no exceptions. It’s giving a necessary condition, but couldn’t there be cases where it’s not “reasonable to doubt whether the verdict is correct”? Probably the right answer will call that out.

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) Court proceedings overseen by judges who are very strict…

…aren’t mentioned in the passage anywhere. The “behavior” the conclusion is about happens specifically “when judges do not maintain strict control”. This info is pretty much irrelevant.

(B) Lawyers tend to be less concerned than are judges…

Cool story. But how would that support that it’s not reasonable “to doubt whether the verdict is correct”? The passage doesn’t compare lawyers to judges, so this is bringing in something new. And it doesn’t talk about the lawyers’ “behavior” either. This doesn’t map to what’s in the passage well at all.

(C) People who are influenced by inflammatory language…

…are never mentioned. It only says “lawyers often try to influence”. Does it work on juries? We have no idea.

(D) Obstructive courtroom behavior by a lawyer is seldom effective…

Aha! If this is true, then there’s no reason “to doubt whether the verdict is correct”. The support only says lawyers “try to influence”, and this is nicely calling out that if it doesn’t actually work, the conclusion is bogus.

(E) …an assessment of the likelihood that they are free of bias.

This is bringing in something new. That could be okay if it’s obviously relevant. But we’d need to add a host of our own assumptions to make this work. Does the assessment work? We don’t know. Does “bias” actually leads to incorrect verdicts? We don’t know. It also says it’s only “based in part” on this bias test. How big a part? We don’t know. No way you could say this is obviously relevant to whether “it is reasonable to doubt” verdicts.

(D) is the correct answer.