Jury selection procedures

1. Jury selection procedures • Cannot intentionally or systematically exclude cognizable groups such as racial or religious groups • But, until last 40 years, most juries were still composed of middle-aged, better-educated white men • Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 set up uniform criteria for excusing people from jury service

2. Drawing a venire • Voter registration lists are the primary souce, by law • Lists of licensed drivers • Persons receiving public assistance • Unemployment lists • Problem of exclusions and exemptions: does venire become unrepresentative?

3. Voir dire process • Really a process of excluding jurors rather than selecting them • Peremptory challenges: limited number of jurors who can be eliminated by lawyer without having to give a reason • Challenge for cause: either lawyer can request that a juror be excused for reasons of bias; theoretically unlimited

4. Lawyers’ Stereotypes • Lawyers use implicit personality theories to predict which jurors will favor their side on the basis of age, gender, occupation, religion, etc. • Similarity-Leniency Hypothesis: jurors who are demographically similar to defendant will be more sympathetic to defendant • Lawyers also try to play hunches about which juror will be selected as foreperson and who will dominate discussions

5. Can favorable juries be selected? • Demographic characteristics of jurors are only weakly and inconsistently related to verdicts • Personality characteristics of jurors only modestly affect verdict decisions • Specific attitudes may be more predictive of jurors’ verdicts • “Scientific jury selection” (“systematic” or “empirical methods”)

6. Does scientific jury selection work? • As compared to what? Random selection of jurors? Attorneys’ intuitions? • Better at what? At weeding out biased jurors, or at stacking the jury with jurors biased toward your side? • Variability in voir dire practices leads to practical limitations on scientific jury selection • Jurors may even misrepresent their attitudes during the voir dire process (Harrisburg Seven trial)

7. The Psychology of Juries Effects of extralegal information on juries • Opening statements • Prior record evidence • Character evidence/Propensity evidence

8. Juries and Civil Lawsuits Juries asked to decide two questions: • Is defendant liable (responsible) for harm? • If so, how much money should plaintiff get to compensate for loss (damages) Outcome severity is legally relevant only to damages, but research suggests that it influences liability judgments also Assessing damages: how does jury do this?

9. Can jurors disregard inadmissible evidence? Broeder (1959) study of civil case • Jurors who believe defendant had no insurance gave average damages of $33,000 • Jurors who believe defendant had insurance gave average damages of $37,000 • Jurors who heard about the insurance but were instructed to disregard it gave average damages of $46,000

10. How well do jurors understand complex scientific evidence? • DNA results often presented in terms of “random match probability” • Frequently, jurors assume that this random match probability is the actual probability of guilt, ignoring the possibility of false positive results (1-4%) or other explanations of the evidence. • Lab error rate is critical here, but mock jurors tend to ignore this information

11. Are jurors biased? • Bias is inevitable because we constantly make assumptions and form expectations about the conduct of other people • Jurors differ in their definitions of “reasonable doubt” • Prosecution-biased jurors and defense-biased jurors interpret evidence in different ways

12. Improvements to jury decisions? • Instructions on the law given in plain language • Instructions given before evidence is presented rather than at the end of the trial • Allow jurors to take notes • Permit jurors to discuss evidence during a trial rather than just at the end