Six-person Juries Research Articles

Cross-Sectional Challenges: Gender, Race, and Six-Person Juries

After two grand juries failed to indict the police officers that killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014, our nation has engaged in polarizing discussions about how juries reach their decision. The very legitimacy of our justice system has come into question. Increasingly, deep concerns have been raised concerning the role of race and gender in jury decision-making in such controversial cases. Tracing the roots of juror decision-making is especially complicated when jurors’ race and gender are factored in as considerations. This Article relies on social science research to explore the many cross-sectional challenges involved in the jurors’ decision making in the George Zimmerman case. To analyze how the Zimmerman jurors’ race and gender may have affected their decision-making in the case, we present empirical studies evaluating the effect of race and gender on juror decision-making in criminal cases. Our aim in this Article is to create dialogue about an important challenge for our justice system: How can we fulfill the constitutional mandate that juries be diverse? How can we overcome the barriers to fulfilling this ideal? We conclude by demanding stronger measures to ensure that juries represent a fair cross-section of the communities that they represent. Our suggestions also include focusing on the prosecutor’s special obligations to serve justice by selecting a jury that adequately represents the community from which it is drawn. These and other changes are crucial to ensuring that communities accept even the most controversial jury decisions as legitimate.

The effects of jury size, evidence complexity, and note taking on jury process and performance in a civil trial.

A total of 567 jury-eligible men and women who were assigned to 6- or 12-person juries saw a videotaped civil trial that contained either I or 4 plaintiffs. Half the juries took notes, whereas the remainder did not. Six-person juries that did not take notes awarded multiple plaintiffs the highest amounts of compensation. Six-person juries also gave the highest punitive damages when they did not take notes and judged multiple plaintiffs. The punitive awards of 6-person juries were highly variable compared with 12-person juries. Multiple plaintiffs also increased the unpredictability of jury punitive awards. Twelve-person juries deliberated longer, recalled more probative information, and relied less than 6-person juries on evaluative statements and nonprobative evidence. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Jury nullification: The impact of judicial instructions, arguments, and challenges on jury decision making.

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 nullification arguments. Analysis of the juries' decisionmaking 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.

Another look at the impact of juror sentiments toward defendants on juridic decisions.

Abstract This experiment tested the hypothesis that jurors' preexisting biases (sentiments) toward an accused would have a much stronger impact on the sentences that jurors recommended than on the verdicts they rendered. Specifically, a balance theory analysis of juridic decisions specifies that predeliberation sentiments toward the defendant would have little if any direct effect on jury verdicts and would be associated with verdicts rendered only if the information establishing these sentiments also implied a unit relation between the defendant and the crime. Six-person juries deliberated the case of an accused robber and murderer who had no prior criminal record, a prior conviction for a dissimilar crime, or a prior conviction for a similar crime. While on the witness stand, the defendant either withheld information or provided answers for all questions. The results provided strong support for the hypothesis. In addition, jurors' predeliberation sentiments toward the accused were unrelated either to th...

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.

Racism in the Jury Box: The Hispanic Defendant

Despite the voluminous empirical literature on the social psychology of juries, very little research has centered on racial or ethnic issues. Indeed, there has been no previous research on Hispanics or on minority groups other than blacks. The present study involved an innovative methodology high in both experimental and mundane realism, incorporating a procedure whereby participants believed that they were actually on a jury whose decisions would really affect a defendant. Six-person juries, of varied sex and ethnic composition, deliberated and made decisions in cases involving Hispanic or Anglo defendants. The results highlight the importance and saliency of ethnic factors in jury research and underscore the efficacy of the methodology employed.

Management Science and Jury Size

It is impossible in a short article to sort out all the inter-related strands that together constitute the procedures of criminal justice in the United States. Clearly, a most basic principle should be to maximize conviction of the guilty and minimize conviction of the innocent, to the degree that these two goals can be sought simultaneously. This paper isolates the single element of jury size as it relates to the optimizing of these two goals. The number of jurors (usually 6 to 12 in criminal cases) is popularly, and correctly perceived to affect the probability of outcome of any trial: the difficulty lies in determining the several ways that this takes place and relating them correctly. The study described in this paper, based on the quantification of substantial legal data and extensive modeling assumptions, was quoted in some detail in a US Supreme Court case determining the constitutionality of less than six-person juries. The article is preceeded a note from Gene Woolsey, the Editor of the journal.

Influence of expert testimony regarding eyewitness accuracy on jury decisions.

To determine the influence of expert testimony regarding the general unreliability of eyewitnesses, a two-phase study was conducted. In the first phase, 24 community residents served as jurors on four six-person juries. A burglary case was tried in 120 District Court. El Paso, Texas. Two juries heard all the evidence including the expert testimony of a psychologist and the other two heard all of the testimony except that of the psychologist. During the second phase, 24 student jurors constituting four six-person juries viewed a videotape of the trial. Two of these juries saw the entire proceeding from the first phase including the expert testimony and the remaining two saw all but the expert testimony. All juries acquitted the defendant; however, those who heard the expert testimony significantly lowered their judgments of the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness identification as well as its overall importance to the trial. Further, those juries that heard the expert testimony spent a significantly longer time discussing eyewitness identification as well as other relevant evidence. No differences between community residents and college student juries were obtained.

Effects of Jury Deliberation on the Verdicts and Social Perceptions of Simulated Jurors: Vidmar Revisited

Jury deliberation was added to a partial replication of Vidmar (1972). Simulated jurors chose verdicts and indicated their perceptions of the defendant and victim, both before and after deliberation in six-person juries. Vidmar's results were confirmed—significantly mote not guilty verdicts were found when subjects were required to choose between guilty of first-degree murder or not guilty than when the choice was between second-degree murder and not guilty. Social perceptions were consistent with the verdicts they chose. Deliberation enhanced the effect of type of decision alternative on distribution of the verdicts. Jurors were also significantly more lenient after deliberation. Implications for research with simulated jurors are discussed.

Victim consequences, sentence severity, and decision processes in mock juries

Six-person juries and parallel individuals watched a mock trial (prerecorded on video tape) under conditions where the victim of an alleged rape had purportedly suffered either mild or severe consequences, and the defendant could receive either a moderate or harsh sentence if convicted. The primary finding was that a version of a majority (2/3) social decision scheme model accurately predicted verdict distributions similar to previous research ( Davis, Kerr, Atkin, Holt & Meek, 1975) that had used a case more heavily slanted than the present one toward not guilty. However, the particular version (subscheme for addressing nonmajorities) differed from earlier findings. Neither victim consequences nor sentence severity significantly influenced the over-all proportion of guilty verdicts, but interacted to significantly influence mean deliberation time. When victim consequences and potential sentence did not “fit”, longer average deliberation times resulted.