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.     

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.     

Prediction of first ballot mock jury votes by the Analytic Juror Rater

Two scales of Abbott's (1987) Analytic Juror Rater (AJR) were used with 24 mock jurors to predict first ballot mock jury votes. Each participant observed one of two mock trial proceedings involving an actual second degree murder case. In a moot courtroom, they heard arguments from attorneys and witnessed examination of the defendant and actors portraying witnesses. The Cosmopolitan Lifestyle Scale of the AJR successfully predicted first ballot votes of participants (p<.02), while the Non-Authoritarian Scale showed a non-significant trend in the hypothesized direction. It was concluded that, in cases where evidence is not strong, the AJR may lend modest assistance to the attorney using peremptory challenge to eliminatevenire members who may be biased against a defendant.     

A concept in search of a definition: The effects of reasonable doubt instructions on certainty of guilt standards and jury verdicts

Eighty (6-person) juries heard 1 of the 5 reasonable doubt instructions in a trial that either had strong evidence for guilt or favored acquittal. None of the instructions produced acceptable criteria of self-reported reasonable doubt, although instructions that informed juries to be firmly convinced (FC) elicited the highest standards of proof. The FC instructions yielded verdicts that tended to correspond with the evidence in both versions of the trial. FC juries focused proportionately more on the evidence and less on non-probative issues than juries given other instructions. Juries had lower self-reported standards of proof when the trial evidence was weak for conviction as opposed to when it was strong. The discussion addresses the surprisingly low self-reported standards of proof.     

Estimating Juror Accuracy,Juror Ability,and the Relationship Between Them

This article advances a method based on standard test theories and measurement models to determine correct verdicts for jury trials, and to estimate juror accuracy, juror ability, and trial difficulty (and the relationships among them). With five vignette cases and 1,318 juror eligible adults as the subjects, the model consistently identified verdicts that accorded with the judge’s instructions on the law as correct. With the correct verdicts, the strength of the relationship between juror accuracy and juror ability was found to be substantial. These findings suggest that the assumption of equivalent accuracy of jurors underlying the Condorcet’s jury theorem (Condorcet, Essai sur l’Application de l’Analyse a la Probabilite des Decisions Rendues a la Pluralite des Voix, Paris, 1785) may be untenable for general cases where jurors of diverse dispositions and abilities serve together; and that the role of juror ability in determining the accuracy of legal decisions could be more significant than that of attitudes and values because, unlike attitudes and values, ability could affect juror’s legal decisions regardless of the type of the case.     

Juror decision making

Much of the research on juror decision making is concerned with whether jurors are swayed by irrelevant-or extralegal-issues in their judgments of defendants. Such studies examine whether jurors' attitudes and victims' and defendants' characteristics have a measurable impact on these decisions. Yet, in the typical study, evidential issues are either poorly measured or ignored, hence the effects of extralegal issues may be exaggerated. Moreover, jury simulations are often chosen to study these questions despite critics' concerns about the generalizability of the results. The present study uses data gathered from actual jurors to assess whether the emphasis on juror competence is justified. The results indicate that these jurors' decisions are dominated by evidential issues, particularly evidence concerning the use of force and physical evidence. Jurors were considerably less responsive to characteristics of victims and defendants, although some of these factors significantly affected their decisions.The research reported here was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under grant No. R01 MH29727 and the National Institute of Justice under grant No. 82-IJ-CX-0015. The author would like to thank Douglas Smith, Barbara Reskin, and Lowell Hargens for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Juror notetaking and question asking during trials

Juror notetaking and question asking is examined in 160 trials. Results do not support the hypotheses that juror notes aid memory or increase satisfaction with the trial or verdict. Jurors do not overemphasize noted evidence; their notes do not produce a distorted view of the case. Notetakers can keep pace with the trial, and they do not distract other jurors nor have an undue influence over non-notetakers. Juror notetaking does not favor either party and it consumes little time. Results support the hypothesis that jury questioning promotes juror understanding of facts and issues. Questions do not clearly help get to the truth, alert trial counsel to significant issues, or increase trial or verdict satisfaction. Potential disadvantages of questions are not supported: Jurors do not ask inappropriate questions, are not embarrassed or angered by objections, do not become advocates rather than neutrals, and do not overemphasize their own questions and answers. Counsel are not reluctant to object to juror questions. The jury does not draw inappropriate inferences from unanswered questions, and questions do not have detectable prejudicial effects.     

Making inferences about jury behavior from jury verdict statistics

The jury research that appears to have had the most impact on judges, policymakers, and legal academics concerned with the civil justice system involves studies using data on jury verdict statistics. This article sets forth the serious methodological problems with such studies and documents the fact that, for many purposes, the conclusions that authors have drawn from them are scientifically invalid because plausible rival alternative hypptheses cannot be eliminated. The article concludes with cautions about the seductive appeal of jury verdict data and the need to clearly recognize and state their limitations.Professors George Christie, Samuel Gross, Valerie Hans, Richard Lempert, James Levine, Michael Saks, Joseph Sanders, and Clive Seligman made many helpful comments on this article, and so did my research assistants: Jessica Buranosky Lee, Elaina Cohen, and David Landau. I also want to gratefully acknowledge an intellectual debt of over three decades to Professor Joseph E. McGrath, who scribbled about research designs and the meaning of data, and to Professor Lloyd G. Humphreys, who first introduced me to problems of measurement.     

Juror interpretations of ambiguous evidence

In the context of a mock jury study, we tested the hypothesis that people's interpretations of ambiguous evidence depend on how (i.e., by whom) that evidence is introduced. Subjects watched a 45-min interrogation of a murder suspect who emphatically asserted her innocence but told an imperfect story. Before the tape, subjects read either the prosecution or defense lawyer's arguments concerning the suspect's interrogation performance; after the tape, they read counter-arguments from the opposing side. Results indicated that subjects high in the need for cognition (NC) were influenced more by arguments that preceded the evidence, whereas low-NC subjects were more influenced by arguments that followed the evidence. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Juror background characteristics and attitudes toward rape

Although numerous writers have discussed the importance of and link between juror characteristics and juror decisions in rape trials, anempirical investigation of the relationships between these characteristics and juror verdicts has not been made. Using data obtained from a sample of 896 citizens serving as mock jurors, the principal focus of the present research was on the correlations of jurors' background characteristics and their attitudes toward rape with their decisions in a simulated rape case. Results of the study showed that the jurors' background and attitudinal variables were associated with their decisions. In addition, the pattern of the correlations was quite stable as the characteristics of the case evaluated (in terms of defendant and victim race, victim physical attractiveness, victim sexual experience, strength of evidence presented, and type of rape committed) were found to have only negligible effects on these relationships. Other tests showed that only the attitudinal variables accounted for differences in the jurors' decisionsafter characteristics of the case had been considered. Further, as compared to background data, the jurors' views of rape were the most important predictor of their decisions. Implications of the role of jurors' views of rape in jurors' decisions in rape trials and the use of rape attitudes for selecting jury members in rape cases discussed.     

Impact of Juror Attitudes about the Death Penalty on Juror Evaluations of Guilt and Punishment: A Meta-Analysis

This literature review summarizes the existing research examining how the attitude a potential juror has toward the death penalty impacts on the probability of favoring conviction. The summary of 14 investigations indicates that a favorable attitude toward the death penalty is associated with an increased willingness to convict (average r = .174). Using the binomial effect size display, this favorable attitude towards the death penalty translates into a 44% increase in the probability of a juror favoring conviction.     

Juror reactions to child victim witnesses

Trial variables that might affect juror decisions were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the impact of (1) corroboration, (2) type of case (civil vs. criminal), and (3) victim age (6. 9, or 12 years) was examined. Participants (N=379) read a trial summary describing a wrongful injury or sexual abuse case and were asked to make decisions regarding the case. Results revealed a significant interaction between age and corroboration. Corroboration increased the number of guilty verdicts for the 6- and 12-year-olds, yet had little impact in the case with the 9-year-old. the type of the case did not interact with child age in affecting jurors' decisions. Experiment 2 examined the role of a child's age more systematically. The trial summary described the corroborated sexual abuse case (utilized in Experiment I) and varied the age of the victim from 6 to 14 years. Analyses revealed that number of guilty verdicts and credibility decreased with age, whereas amount of blame attributed to the victim increased with age. Reasons for the negative age bias are discussed.     

Juror sensitivity to eyewitness identification evidence

A mock-jury study was conducted to examine juror sensitivity to eyewitness identification evidence. Subjects were 129 eligible and experienced jurors from Dane County, Wisconsin, who viewed a videotaped trial that involved an eyewitness identification. Ten factors associated with the crime and the identification (e.g., disguise of the perpetrator, retention interval, confidence of the witness) were manipulated. The results of this mock-jury study were combined with those of a previous study using the same experimental stimuli and procedures, but using undergraduates as subjects. This analysis showed that the confidence of the eyewitness was the most powerful predictor of verdicts (p<.05) and that differences between undergraduates and eligible jurors in their sensitivity to eyewitness evidence were negligible.     

Juror Sensitivity to the Cross-Race Effect

Black and White mock jurors' sensitivity to the cross-race effect was investigated by varying the race of the eyewitness in a simulated murder trial of a Black defendant. Participants heard an audiotape of a trial after which they rendered a verdict and rated the credibility of the witnesses. White participants found the prosecution witnesses (including the eyewitness) more credible, and the defense witness less credible, than did Black participants; they were also more likely to find the defendant guilty. The Black eyewitness was perceived as more credible than was the White eyewitness, but eyewitness race had no effect on verdict. These results are consistent with the literature indicating that jurors of different races reach different verdicts, and also that jurors are relatively insensitive to factors that affect eyewitness testimony, such as the cross-race effect.     

Jurors' interpretations and jury decision making

In arriving at their verdicts, jurors must determine what really happened in the case at hand. Their interpretations then guide their decision making and become influential in the group deliberation process. This article uses conversational data from simulated jury deliberations to describe jurors' practice of articulating schematic interpretations as accounts for their verdict choices, and as means for persuading other jurors. As jurors contribute additional interpretations during deliberations, the group decision-making task becomes more complex, deliberations las longer, and they are more difficult to resolve. A significant negative relation is established between the number of interpretations articulated and the jury's likelihood of reaching a unanimous verdict. Articulating multiple interpretations in support of a candidate verdict appears to militate against its unanimous adoption.I am endebted to Andre Modigliani and Joseph Sanders for their invaluable assistance on this project.     

Juror decision making in eyewitness identification cases

The lay-person's knowledge of the factors that influence eyewitness memory was examined by evaluating the manner in which mock jurors integrated eyewitness evidence to draw inferences about defendant culpability and the likelihood that an identification was correct. Three hundred and twenty-one undergraduates viewed a videotaped trial within which ten witness and identification factors were manipulated between trials. Manipulation checks showed that subjects demonstrated superior memory for the evidence and the manipulated variables had their intended impact on appropriate rating scales. However, only one variable, witness confidence, had reliable effects on subjects' perceptions of culpability, on the perceived likelihood that the identification was correct, and on several other relevant dependent variables. Eight variables that have been shown to affect identification accuracy in the empirical literature had trivial effects on mock jurors' inferences. It was concluded that lay-people are insensitive to the factors that influence eyewitness memory.