First-ballot votes,predeliberation dispositions,and final verdicts in jury trials

This study examines the proposition that first ballots predict jury verdicts inaactual juries, an oft-cited finding from Kalven and Zeisel, and the explicit assumption by Kalven and Zeisel that first-ballot preferences are equivalent to predeliberation opinions, referred to as the liberation hypothesis. Interview data from respondents who had served on felony juries indicate that first ballots do predict jury verdicts at a high level. However, it is probable that influence occurs in juries prior to the first ballot, making it unlikely that the distribution of votes on the first ballot is equivalent to the individual inclinations of jurors at the time they enter into deliberation, which casts doubt on the liberation hypothesis. Methodological issues in the study of real juries on these topics are discussed.     

Lesser-included offenses

The positions taken by prosecutors and defense lawyers on proposed jury instructions on lesser-included offenses provide evidence that juries do not follow the law strictly. This paper develops a simple model of expected utility to predict how jurors make their decisions. The model explains a stylized fact that is inconsistent with the idea that juries always follow the law, namely why prosecutors often object to giving the jury the option of a lesser-included offense. We use the model to evaluate the law concerning jury instructions on primary and lesser-included offenses.     

Predictors of Death Sentencing for Minority,Equal, and Majority Female Juries in Capital Murder Trials

The relatively small body of prior research investigating whether the sex composition of juries impacts sentencing decisions has produced equivocal results. Exploring this topic further, the current study used a large sample of capital cases from North Carolina (n = 675) to examine (a) whether jury sex composition predicted jury capital punishment sentencing decisions; and (b) whether there were different models of sentencing for male-majority, equal male-female, and female-majority juries. When we controlled for a number of legal and extralegal factors, our findings indicated that jury sex composition was independently related to sentencing outcomes. Specifically, equal male-female juries were significantly more likely and female-majority juries were significantly less likely to choose the death penalty versus a sentence of life in prison. In addition, different models (predictors) of sentencing were revealed for each of the jury sex compositions. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

Experts, Juries, and Witch-hunts: From Fitzjames Stephen to Angela Cannings

Angela Cannings's successful appeal against her convictions for murder has revived an old controversy about the competence of juries to evaluate expert evidence. In response to criticisms of the jury system in the wake of a series of controversial poisoning trials, the Victorian jurist J.F. Stephen argued that juries were well equipped to decide on behalf of the community which experts should be treated as authorities, whose opinions the lay public could accept for practical purposes as 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Such practical decisions did not, Stephen argued, require that juries fully understand the experts' reasons for their conclusions. This article draws on recent work in social epistemology to argue that Stephen's view of the jury remains tenable, and that his authoritarian arguments can be recast in more democratic terms. It also concurs in Stephen's blunt recognition that the courts' need to make decisions despite the uncertainties of science renders some convictions of the innocent inevitable.     

The representative jury requirement: Jury representativeness and cross sectional participation from the beginning to the end of the jury selection process

The paper specifically addresses the many ways in which the facially neutral procedures actually fail to secure representative jury pools. Although the Sixth Amendment's fair cross‐section requirement forbids systematic discrimination in the creation of the jury venire and panel, it does not guarantee that the criminal jury will in fact reflect an accurate cross‐section of the community. As a result, not only does the Court fail to focus on nonlegally recognized screening mechanisms and factors such as exemptions, excuses, failure to followup jurors, etc., may affect jury representativeness, but also the Court never examined cross‐sectional representation at the entirety of the jury selection processes, except jury panels and final juries.

The first section of this paper presents a brief overview of the constitutional law impacting impartial juries, especially addressing the fair cross‐section doctrine that is the focus of contemporary jury selection procedures. In providing empirical and systematic comparisons of jury participation at each of the distinct jury selection stages encompassing a general population, jury wheels, jury qualified pools, jury eligibles, jury panels, and actual trial jurors, the second section of this paper makes critical analyses of the cumulative effects of screening mechanisms in jury selection. The paper assesses jury compositions by looking at demographic, socio‐economic, and ideological profiles of prospective jurors, illustrating that those jury profiles do not necessarily reflect cross‐sectional representation of the community population at comprehensive stages of the jury selection process. The analytical findings show that unless some deep seated reforms are made to eliminate cumulative effects of selection biases and correct representative imbalances of jury wheels, qualified pools, jury panels, and trial juries, historically underrepresented groups such as racial minorities, the poor, and part‐time employees will continue to be underrepresented on juries, negating the public's shared responsibility for the administration of justice in one of America's most heralded democratic institutions.     

On Finding for Defendants Who Plead Insanity: The Crucial Impact of Dispositional Instructions and Opportunity to Deliberate

One hundred twenty participants functioned as mock-jurors and as members of deliberating juries in an experiment designed to assess the impact of dispositional instruction on verdicts rendered in an insanity trial. Consistent with prior research (K. E. & J. R. Ogloff, 1995), dispositional instruction had no effect on the verdict preferences of individual jurors prior to deliberating. Yet, as expected, the instruction manipulation had a major impact on postdeliberative decisions (i.e., group verdicts; individual juror verdict preferences). Content analyses of jury deliberations revealed that postdeliberative shifts toward harsh verdicts in uninstructed juries and toward lenient verdicts in instructed juries were mediated by the impact of the Instruction manipulation on the content of jury deliberations: uninstructed juries feared that an acquitted-insane defendant would be freed to act again, whereas instructed juries recognized that finding for an insane defendant implied his retention and treatment. Implications of these results for both legal policy and the conduct of mock-trial research are discussed.     

The effect of jury nullification instruction on verdicts and jury functioning in criminal trials

Jury nullification is a mechanism, and a defense, which allows the jury, as representatives of the community, to disregard both the law and the evidence and acquit defendants who have violated the letter, but not the spirit of the law. Should juries simply follow the law as articulated by the trial judge, or should they act as “conscience of the community,” and neglect the strict requirements of the law when it would lead to unjust or inequitable verdicts? The present study was aimed at providing empirical data for the following question: will the jury operate in a manner which is different than its normal functioning if given explicit nullification instructions? Three nullification instructins varying in explicitness as to nullification were combined with three criminal cases to yield a 3×3 factorial design. Forty-five six-person juries (270 subjects), were randomly assigned to the nine experimental groups. The results showed that juries given explicit nullification instructtions were more likely to vote guilty in a drunk driving case, but less likely to do so in a euthanasia case. The third case, which dealt with murder, did not show any differences due to instructions. Juries in receipt of nullification instructions spent less deliberation time on the evidence and more on defendant characteristics, attributions, and personal experiences.     

A JURY OF PEERS

The frequent inquiries received at our Chicago offices about juvenile juries prompted us to allot some space to it here. To date the National Council has taken no position on their use. A study done in 1965 by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency of eighteen teen-age juries showed many of the claims made on behalf of the teen-age jury—for example, that it gives a teen-ager “a fair trial by a jury of his peers”—are dubious. “The juvenile jury lacks legal foundation and signifies a de facto surrender of judicial authority and responsibility. No substantial evidence was found to support the assertion that the teen-age jury reduces juvenile delinquency and youth crime. The procedure perpetuates the archaic and unsound practice of jury sentencing long abandoned, even for criminal cases, in all but a few states.”     

The basis of citizen's perceptions of the criminal jury

Two studies examined citizens' perceptions of the criminal jury and their evaluations of 6- or 12-person juries operating under unanimous or majority decision rules. Study 1 was a telephone survey of 130 adult citizens in which respondents evaluated alternative jury structures in the abstract. In Study 2, students were asked to evaluate jury structures for a hypothetical trial in which they were either the defendant or the victim in a crime with a mild or serious outcome. In both studies, jury size and decision rule were related to ratings of procedural cost, and the severity of the crime moderated procedural evaluations. In Study 1, juries were preferred to judges and the 12-person unanimous jury was preferred over other jury structures when the crime involved was serious. In Study 2, there were no direct effects due to variations in jury structure, but subjects appeared to trade off procedural cost and thoroughness of deliberation as a function of the seriousness of the crime. Procedural fairness emerged as the strongest independent predictor of desirability for jury procedures, and fairness was related to representativeness and accuracy. The role manipulation did not influence subjects' responses. In both studies, respondents were very supportive of the jury as an institution, despite a perception that erroneous jury verdicts do occur.     

What are Tort Awards Really Like? The Untold Story from the State Courts*

The popular press frequently reports exorbitant money damage awards by juries. These stories cause paroxysms in the business community because juries are viewed as favoring plaintiffs over corporations. A growing body of literature has examined aspects of this complex issue, but within a limited framework. Prior studies, which are based on data from the early 1980s or before, tend to focus on federal court cases, primarily product liability and medical malpractice torts, only jury verdicts, and single jurisdictions when state courts are included. The objective of this article is to contribute to the literature by examining all tort cases reaching either a bench or a jury trial verdict during a sample period in 1989 in twenty-seven general jurisdiction trial courts. Research is organized around three basic questions. What do torts look like? Do particular types of plaintiffs/defendants gain a higher percent of favorable verdicts? When plaintiffs are awarded money damages, what is the importance of litigant status, while controlling for other factors, in influencing the size of the awards? The article begins by describing the landscape of torts - the typical configurations of the contending litigants, the composition of torts by area of law, the types of trials, verdict patterns, and the average size of awards. Basic contours of the landscape reflect the elemental facts that individuals generally are plaintiffs in these cases and the opposite tendency of corporations, insurance companies, and governments to appear as defendants. Next a model is outlined and tested to determine how strongly different possible determinants shape the size of tort awards in the twenty-seven state trial courts. Does the size of the award depend on the configuration of the parties after taking into account the type of tort, the type of trial, the length of disposition time, and the state in which the court is located? The results indicate that the group of variables representing the various pairing of litigants accounts for most of the explained variation in award size. These findings support the notion that the status of the litigants is an important factor in influencing awards. Because the variables representing some of the individual states are also significant, the evidence also suggests no single, uniform pattern applies across all the courts. Instead, the state context shapes the basic parameters of plaintiff and defendant success.     

Victim-offender race and support for capital punishment: A factorial design approach

Existing research suggests that juries are more likely to condemn murderers to death when offenders are black victims are white. It remains to be seen, however, whether these decisions reflect broader racial prejudices in society that are imported into the jury room. If they do, then insuring equity in capital sentencing may be beyond reach. Accordingly, this study uses factorial design methodology to examine whether members of the general public are more supportive of capital punishment when asked to rate a vignette describing a murder involving a white victim and black offender as opposed to other victim-offender racial combinations. Our analyses suggest that the race of the offender, but not the victim, has a significant influence on support for capital punishment. Thus, procedural safeguards alone may be unable to eliminate racial bias in capital sentencing.     

Doing Justice: Perceptions of Gender Neutrality in the Jury Selection Process

There is a paucity of research on juries in general including the jury selection process. Very little of it examines the effect of gender. This study surveyed 138 potential jurors to determine whether jurors believed they were excluded from jury service due to gender. Additionally the study assessed whether gender affected attitudes about women serving on juries and whether perceptions about women and jury service were associated with general views about the fairness of the justice system. Findings suggest that gender had little effect on jury service or views about women serving on juries, but views about women and their role in jury service was associated with perceptions of general fairness in the system, regardless of the respondent’s gender. These findings point to the need for a more complex understanding of gender when examining the jury selection process.     

A quota jury: affirmative action in jury selection

It is not too naive to believe that the use of affirmative action policies in the jury selection for the Rodney King beating trial of White police officers would have prevented the uprisings that followed their acquittal. The public outrage and riots that followed the verdict demonstrated the need for affirmative inclusion of racial minorities on jury trials to preserve and restore the public’s confidence and legitimacy of verdicts in racially motivated cases. While racially mixed juries offer many benefits, current jury selection procedures fail to provide much protection to members of racial minorities in criminal trials. From the source list to the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges, the current selection procedures provide almost no protection to racial minorities. The issue of preferential treatments of racial minorities in education, employment, and business has divided the nation and even some minority communities themselves. Affirmative action in jury proceedings and trials, however, has yet to receive much deserved attention and critical scrutiny. This article empirically examines public perceptions of possible applications of affirmative action mechanisms in criminal jury proceedings, focusing on the uses of mandatory racial quotas to engineer racially integrated juries in criminal trials. Three different types of racially mixed juries—the jury “de medietate linguae,” the Hennepin jury model, and the social science model—are examined, and the public’s perceptions of affirmative mechanisms ensuring minority participation on juries are analyzed. This article argues that the affirmative mechanism to secure racially mixed juries is essential to both the appearance and substance of fairness in criminal jury proceedings, and both the Hennepin model and the social science model are overwhelmingly supported as the ideal types of affirmative jury structures in creating racially heterogeneous juries.     

Changing views of jury power

This article highlights the major events and empirical research in the continuing debate over the power and competence of the jury in civil and criminal trials. The concept ofjury nullification, the power of the jury to return a verdict based upon their moral conscience despite the evidence and the law, is used as a convenient filter to discuss the legal and behavioral assumptions about jury power and performance. The legal, historical, and even behavioral contexts reflect a bipolar theme in the level of trust Americans have exhibited towards the jury system. One pole reflects the notion that juries lack predictability and rationality in their verdicts and are moved by emotional concerns. Antipodally, juries have been thought to reflect an historical competence at applying common sense notions of equity and rationality to conflicted and ambiguous cases. This article traces the history of these two views of jury power and competence. A critical review of the empirical research that may inform the debate about the jury's competence in both criminal and civil arenas is provided.     

A Norms Approach to Jury "Nullification:" Interests, Values, and Scripts

Juries and other lay tribunals are often justified because they leaven the law with community norms. Unfortunately, we do not have a particularly good theory of when and how juries substitute their normative judgments for the law. A first step in developing such a theory is to examine the nature of norms and the way jurors bring normative judgments to their task. In this article I compare and contrast different understandings of norms that currently are in vogue in the social sciences and then use these approaches to develop a more systematic understanding of when juries do and when they do not substitute their normative judgment for that of the law.     

中国陪审制度改革的前景与出路

陪审制度与司法现代化既存在矛盾性,也存在相容性。矛盾性使其处境困难,而相容性则给其带来生机。陪审制度在中国具有一定的实践基础,但其在现实中也存在着很多问题。必须加以改革。当前的重点是限定陪审案件的范围,强中审员的权利,吸收专家型陪审员。而根本的出路则在于现行司法体制的改革。     

Race and the decision making of juries

The relationship between race and jury decision making is a controversial topic that has received increased attention in recent years. While public and media discourse has focused on anecdotal evidence in the form of high‐profile cases, legal researchers have considered a wide range of empirical questions including: To what extent does the race of a defendant affect the verdict tendencies of juries? Is this influence of race comparable for jurors of different races? In what ways does a jury's racial composition affect its verdict and deliberations? The present review examines both experimental and archival investigations of these issues. Though the extant literature is not always consistent and has devoted too little attention to the psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of race, this body of research clearly demonstrates that race has the potential to impact trial outcomes. This is a conclusion with important practical as well as theoretical implications when it comes to ongoing debates regarding jury representativeness, how to optimize jury performance, jury nullification and racial disparities in the administration of capital punishment.     

When a corporation rapes: perceptions of rape in civil court for corporate defendants

In recent years, the coupling of poor outcomes for rape victims in criminal court and the widening scope of legal responsibility for sexual assault has prompted plaintiffs to file civil suits for rape against corporations. Unfortunately, we know little about juror perception of civilly litigated rape against corporate defendants and most jury research involving corporate defendants concerns non-sexual injury cases (e.g. premises liability, automobile accidents). With the increasing number of corporations being sued civilly for rape, we need to understand how civil juries perceive these cases. The present study investigated mock jurors’ perceptions of a fictional civil rape trial against a hotel. Community members (N?=?155) read one of three trial summaries: Civil rape trial against the alleged perpetrator, civil rape trial against a hotel, or criminal rape trial. Results indicate females have higher pro-plaintiff judgments than males in civil court, perceptions of greed typically associated with civil litigation apply to rape, and favorable plaintiff decisions are most likely against a corporate defendant. Also, mental models suggest mock jurors conceptualize criminal and civil rape cases against an individual similarly. We discuss our results in terms of psychological, legal and practical expectations when suing for rape.     

Jury nullification

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of nullification information to the jury from two sources, judge's instructions and lawyers' arguments, on juries' verdicts and decision making in three criminal cases. In addition, the research tested the impact of challenges to nullification information on trial outcomes. The results, gathered from 144 six-person juries, indicated that when juries are in receipt of nullification information from the judge or defense attorney they are more likely to acquit a sympathetic defendant and judge a dangerous defendant more harshly than when such information is not present or when challenges are made to nllification arguments. Analysis of the juries' decision-making processes suggested that nullification information may alter the way in which juries perceive and use the trial evidence. In those trials in which a nullification defense was successful, juries used the outcome of the case, as well as the intent of the defendant, to evaluate the worth and weight of the evidence. Pronullification conditions devalued the currency of the evidence and permitted juries to utilize nonevidentiary factors in deciding the cases used in this study.This research was supported by a grant from The University of Toledo Graduate School.     

Discussion Content and Perception of Deliberation in Western European Versus American Juries

Jury research has dealt almost exclusively with the American system wherein 6-12 laypersons decide verdicts under a unanimity or non-unanimity rule. However, most Western European countries follow the escabinado system, in which laypersons and judges together decide verdict and sentence, under a non-unanimous rule. We experimentally compared the processes and outcomes of both types of juries. Under the guise of a Student Judicial panel, seven undergraduate students in Spain comprised 10 juries, whereas five undergraduates and two fifth-year Law students comprised 10 escabinado juries. We assessed pre- and post-discussion verdict, penalty, and confidence, discussion content, and subjective reactions to the discussion and outcome. Escabinado jury deliberations were driven by the imbalance of power between trained and lay jurors. Escabinado and lay juries differed in their perception of the deliberation but not in their outcomes. Implications for the impact of cultural differences and task requirements in jury decision-making are drawn.