Jury Deliberation Process Research Articles

Eyewitnesses in the courtroom: a jury-level experimental examination of the impact of the Henderson instructions

The New Jersey Supreme Court in New Jersey v. Henderson (2011) proposed judicial instructions designed to assist juries in evaluating eyewitness evidence. The current work examines the impact of the Henderson instructions on deliberating jurors, and whether the jury deliberation process helps jurors use the Henderson instructions to evaluate eyewitness evidence. Seventy-nine juries composed of five to nine jurors each viewed a re-enacted criminal attempted rape trial in which the quality of the eyewitness variables (both system and estimator variables) and the presence of judicial instructions were manipulated. The Henderson instructions did not impact the deliberating jurors’ verdicts or the jury verdicts. Juries displayed sensitivity to the quality of system variables (e.g., unbiased instructions), rendering more guilty verdicts when the quality of system variables was good, and more acquittals when the quality of system variables was poor. For estimator variables (e.g., presence of a weapon), the observed pattern was in the opposite direction. Jurors discussed both system and estimator variables during deliberations more often when their quality was poor. The results indicate the importance of examining jurors’ sensitivity to eyewitness evidence at the jury level, and that the Henderson instructions do not aide/improve jury deliberations in cases involving eyewitness evidence.

Assessment of the Jury Systems in Asia: A Comparison of Korea and Japan

AbstractThis article compares the Korean and Japanese jury systems, evaluating the performance of jury trials as reflected in empirical studies in these countries, and identifying some innovative practices in Korean and Japanese systems that can be adopted by other jurisdictions. This comparative study of Korean and Japanese jury systems will also address common problems and investigate different approaches to those problems. At this juncture, numerous existing empirical studies conducted in both countries provide a good framework for comparison. Although jury trials are firmly entrenched within the Korean and Japanese legal systems, there are several common challenges faced by each country that uses lay juries: avoidance of bias, judicial oversight and intervention for reasoned decision-making, importance of rationality in the jury deliberation process, etc. A careful analysis of the Korean and Japanese experiences will provide useful guidance to not only policymakers in Asia but also criminal justice scholars around the world.

Changing the International Justice Landscape: Perspectives on Deaf Citizenship and Jury Service

In Australia and other countries with adversarial court systems, such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, deaf people have not typically been permitted to serve as jurors because of a prohibition against having a sign language interpreter in the jury room. The United States is one country where there is an exception in that deaf people frequently serve as jurors in several states. We know that deaf people can understand courtroom discourse via sign language interpreters, but there has been no evidence as to how deaf people can participate in the jury deliberation process, or the impact of having a sign language interpreter present as “stranger” in the jury room. This had never been tested until this study, funded by the Australian Research [End Page 240] Council Linkage Program scheme, which is the first of its kind internationally to investigate whether deaf people can realistically participate as a juror in a trial and in the jury deliberation process. The project took the form of a simulated mock trial in a district court in Sydney with: a real jury; real police informants; current practicing lawyers; and a recently retired judge of the court. The results of this project will demonstrate whether the prohibition of a stranger (i.e., a sign language interpreter) in the jury room should be overturned. It will also explore the extent to which a deaf person can participate in jury deliberations via sign language interpretation, and how this study will pioneer domestic and international law reform. This article will: briefly track the prior research that led to this study and the current case law affecting the area; share the results of interviews with mock-trial participants and the stakeholder focus groups on their perspectives on the feasibility of deaf people serving as jurors; and present recommendations for the inclusion of deaf people as jurors.

Goffman on the jury: Real jurors’ attention to the “offstage” of trials.

Social psychologist Erving Goffman, in his classic work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, provides a framework that explains why jurors may turn their attention at the courthouse to information not formally presented from the witness stand. We dub this "offstage observation," a type of juror behavior that has not been systematically examined empirically. Analyzing a unique data source of 50 actual jury deliberations in civil trials, we find that jurors do look to the offstage in evaluating the claims of the parties. However, in contrast to predictions, these observations played a surprisingly minor role in the jury deliberation process.

Justice for Hire: Financial Incentives in Jury Deliberation

Trial by one's peers is a foundation of the American legal system. In this paper, I present evidence that in addition to legally relevant facts, financial incentives influence the jury deliberation process. I take advantage of cross county variation in the opportunity cost of serving as a juror, and find that a 10% increase in juror compensation increases the time juries spend deliberating by 5%. While preliminary, these results suggest that the opportunity cost of jurors' time does influence how long they spend determining legal culpability, which has implications for legal and sociological research on deliberation length and judicial outcomes. In addition, jurors are able to choose they number of hours they work without the typical labor demand constraints faced by workers, and in particular low wage workers. My results suggest that the failure of existing empirical studies to identify an intensive labor supply response to wage changes is due to incorrect specification of the demand for low wage labor and measurement error in hours worked.

Jury Decision Making: Using Group Theory to Improve Deliberation

Jury decision‐making process is usually protected from the prying eyes of the public and social scientists. Our knowledge of the experience comes mainly from mock juries, post‐verdict interviews, and occasional television documentaries. These methods have their limitations. Information about juries is currently driven by those few notorious trials, both criminal and civil, that attract high media attention. Unfortunately, that attention invites challenges to the ability of juries to make complex decisions and undermines the entire jury process. Group theory describes five special characteristics of successful group decision making: small size, purpose, identification, interaction, and accepted behavior. The author advocates that an understanding of group theory can help court officials improve the jury deliberation process by moving the deliberations to a higher level of reasoning and, consequently, improve the jury experience, the overall quality of jury decisions, and the public’s faith in those decisions. Specific suggestions for change are also included. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. —Magna Carta (1215)

Jury Trials in Japan

Seeking to involve their citizens in the judicial system as well to establish a check on the power of the judiciary, the Japanese have enacted legislation to create jury trials. The type of jury trial enacted by this legislation, which takes effect in 2009, is a mixed-jury system where judges and citizens participate together in jury deliberations. This article first explores the differences between mixed juries and the American jury system. It then suggests why the Japanese opted for a mixed-jury system. From that point the article explores psychological theory surrounding collective judgment and how dominant individuals influence group dynamics. With these theories in mind, the article explores Japanese cultural attitudes and suggests that the objective of meaningful citizen participation might be impeded in the jury deliberation process. Finally, the article proposes specific procedural devices to ensure meaningful citizen participation.

Experimental Research on Jury Decision-Making

Because trial juries deliberate in secrecy, legal debates about jury functioning have relied heavily on anecdote and speculation. In recent years, investigators have begun to challenge many common assumptions about jury behavior. An important tool in this effort has been the mock jury experiment, in which research participants are randomly assigned to alternative trial conditions and asked to reach a verdict in a simulated case. Researchers have used mock jury experiments to test hypotheses about causal influences on jury behavior and to develop theoretical models of the jury deliberation process.

Pretrial Publicity, the Timing of the Trial, and Mock Jurors' Decision Processes

Pretrial publicity and a temporal interval between the news and trial were explored for their effects upon the jury's deliberation process and verdict. Publicity (neutral, negative) and trial timing (immediate, delayed) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. Twenty 12‐person simulated juries were exposed either to neutral or negative publicity and viewed a videotaped criminal trial immediately following news exposure or after a one‐week delay between news and trial. Dichotomous pre‐and postdeliberation verdicts, probability of guilt scales, trial recall, ratings of companion jurors, perceptions of attorneys, assessments of the news article, and recall of news facts were measured. Deliberations were tape recorded and content analyzed. Juries exposed to neutral and negative publicity did not significantly differ on conviction rate, deliberation length, or on quality of deliberations. Prejudicial news elicited counter remarks about the threatening nature of the publicity to the defendant's right to a fair trial. Individual juror data revealed that while the news manipulation did not significantly affect predeliberation verdicts or attention to trial events, negative news lowered jurors' probability estimates of guilt and facilitated their recall of news facts. A discriminant analysis predicting jury verdict indicated a lack of support for prior research showing damaging effects from prejudicial pretrial publicity. Findings are explored for methodological implications and for usefulness of theoretical notions of reactance, and “sleeper effects”.

Jury Deliberations: Discussion Content and Influence Processes in Jury Decision Making1

The present research investigated the jury deliberation process. Representative juror subjects viewed a realistic videotaped trial consisting of three offenses, deliberated in groups of six and reached verdicts on each charge, and completed a post‐deliberation questionnaire that assessed individual cognitions. Deliberations were videotaped and content‐analyzed. The results indicated that the initial vote distribution was a good predictor of the final verdict; majorities tended to prevail. Deliberation content was concentrated primarily in two areas: (a) the facts of the case and (b) statements of preference for guilty or not guilty verdicts. Path analyses suggested that decisions on the first charge were based jointly on the content of deliberations and on the group vote distribution, whereas decisions on later charges were based largely on normative pressures. Jurors' post‐deliberation impressions of the trial were affected by whether or not they had changed votes during deliberations.

“Recipe for a Jury” Revisited: A Balance Theory Prediction

This study examined the relationship of three variables to verdict confidence in an experimental simulation of the jury deliberation process. The three variables were: sex of juror, verdict (guilty or innocent), and the similarity or dissimilarity between juror and confederate verdicts (congruence or incongruence). The subjects were 35 male and 37 female college students. They deliberated in groups containing a male confederate who role‐played an obnoxious anti‐White or anti‐Black juror. Results indicated that before deliberation, male and guilt verdict jurors were more confident than females and innocent verdict jurors. After deliberation, however, sex differences in verdict confidence were absent while innocent verdicts jurors were more confident than guilt verdict jurors. Most important, as predicted from Heider's Balance Theory, males who deliberated with a confederate whose verdict was congruent with theirs' became less confident in their verdicts. Unexpectedly, females became more confident. The study's major hypothesis, then, that it may be advantageous for the defense to accept a juror who zealously advocates a guilty verdict, was only supported for males.

Markov chain theory and jury deliberation process

The paper develops a Markov chain model for the jury deliberation process. Appearance of guilt of the defendant, capability of a juror to present a convincing argument and his/her receptiveness to the views of others are considered inputs to the model. For the simple model developed, the paper also presents results showing the effect of jury size (12 vs 6) on the jury deliberation process and the time required for a final verdict. The scope of the analysis and our ability to compare the model results with the real processes are severely limited by lack of data on the details of actual jury processes.