Reply to Vidmar.

Abstract

the results relating jury verdicts to the content and processes of their deliberations. Based on a detailed analysis of the nature of the mock jury deliberations we found that verdicts depended on how thoroughly the jury dealt with the legally necessary conditions for punitive damages as stated in the judge's instructions. There was a striking negative relationship between the extent to which a jury considered the necessary conditions for punitive damages and the decision to award such damages: 100% of juries which failed to discuss explicitly even one of the legal conditions voted to award punitive damages, while only 44% of juries that explicitly discussed all of the conditions made the same decision. Unfortunately, many of the juries did not thoroughly consider the legal elements for their decision as stated in the judge's instructions. Our finding relating the proportion of Yes, liable verdicts to the reported thoroughness of deliberations was reinforced when we examined jurors' written postdeliberation explanations for their verdicts. The extent to which individual jurors referred to the instructions when justifying their verdicts was strongly, and negatively, correlated with Yes verdicts (r = -.43, p < .001). Furthermore, there was remarkably poor recall of the instructions on punitive damages.