Term
| Intended goals of jury selection |
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Definition
• Jury of peers (defendant and victim)
• Jury representative of society
• Jury of impartial listeners
• Jury of accurate processors of information |
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Term
| Process of choosing a jury |
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Definition
• Master list of potential jurors
• Jurors randomly called to jury duty
• Jurors randomly called to a particular trial and go through Voir Dire
• Jurors are the survivors of the process |
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Term
| Master list of potential jurors |
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Definition
• Voter registration, DMV, welfare lists
• No vote, no car, not poor enough → not summoned |
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Term
| Jurors randomly called to jury duty |
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Definition
• Eligibility (18 years old, citizen of US, resident of the county, speak English, no felonies in last 3 years
• 20% ignore the summons
• Some excused due to hardship or recent jury duty
• Not eligible, ignore summons, or excused |
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Term
| What is a jury? (According to H.L. Manchen) |
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Definition
| A jury is "a group of twelve people who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health, and business engagements, have failed to fool him" |
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Term
| Selecting jurors based on stereotypes |
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Definition
| • Most lawyers select/deselect jurors guided by an implicit personality theory |
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Term
| Do stereotypes work in choosing a jury? |
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Definition
• Juror characteristics only related to the verdict in some cases
• There's enough to say that there's something there
• General consensus among psychologists who have watched trials and systematically observed attorneys is that when the cases is ambiguous, some juror variables may play a role |
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Term
| Examples of some connections in stereotypes relating to the jury/verdict |
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Definition
• Women
• Men
• SES
• Ethnicity/race
• Personality traits |
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Term
| Correct female stereotypes with jury decisions |
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Definition
| In general, women are harsher toward defendants on some cases of domestic violence, child molestation, and sexual harassment |
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Term
| Correct male stereotypes with jury decisions |
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Definition
• Discuss more
• More likely to have influence
• More likely to be selected as foreperson (especially when "well off") |
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Term
| Correct socioeconomic status stereotypes with jury decisions |
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Definition
| "Well off" jurors tend to be more conservative and vote defendant as guilty (especially those that are educated) |
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Term
| Ethnicity/race stereotypes with jury decisions |
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Definition
| Too much interaction with other variables to make concrete conclusions |
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Term
| Correct personality trait stereotypes with jury decisions |
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Definition
• Locus of control
• Authoritarian
Both play a role in many cases. Very strongly related to verdicts. |
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Term
| Authoritarian personality trait |
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Definition
| How we view law/authority |
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Term
| Locus of control personality trait |
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Definition
• How we view a situation
• Internal: Associate crime to internal factors such as oneself
• External: Associate crime to external factors such as the environmental factors around them |
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Term
| The history of the science of selecting jurors |
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Definition
• Goes back to 1971 in a trial of antiwar activists
• Since the 1980's, it's a big industry
• "Scientists" are called jury consultants |
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Term
| The science of selecting jurors - approaches to jury selection during Voir Dire |
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Definition
• Broad based: Assessing general attitudes and traits in jurors (Juror Bias Scale)
• Case specific: Looking at particular facts and issues of the case to try to develop a juror profile (or learn jurors' "stories") |
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Term
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Definition
• Used in assessing general attitudes and traits of jurors
• 22-item survey to assess pro-prosecution or pro-defense bias (for criminal cases) |
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Term
| What are "jurors' stories"? |
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Definition
• Humans: Two modes of thinking
• System 1: Fast, automatic, intuitive; based on impressions and feelings; links circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes in a causal chain; jumps to conclusions based on limited evidence
• System 2: Slow, deliberate, orderly, analytical, computational, statistical; requires focused attention; generally endorses and supports impressions of System 1 |
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Term
| Courtrooms encourage heuristic biases |
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Definition
• System 1 thinking is encouraged and System 2 thinking is discouraged
• Story Model of Juror Decision Making
• Critical to know the experiences that will color their stories |
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Term
| Story Model of Juror Decision Making |
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Definition
| Research shows that jurors do create stories based on their experiences right after the opening statements |
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Term
| In auto cases, plaintiff jurors differ significantly from defense jurors on... |
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Definition
• More experience with accidents and disabilities
• Lower risk tolerance
• Fear of potentially harmful products
• Uncertainty about ability to protect self from harm
• Distrust of corporations
• Desire for government regulation
• Positive feelings about lawsuits against corporations |
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Term
| Does scientific jury selection work? |
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Definition
• The research is simply not there to answer this
• Famous cases have been used to measure success (The OJ Simpson case) |
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Term
| The OJ Simpson case - scientific jury selection |
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Definition
• The prosecution fired their pro-bono consultant
• The defense followed the advise of their jury consultant
• Defense attributes some of their success to the scientific jury selection process |
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Term
| Other functions of jury consultants |
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Definition
• Change of venue requests
• Witness preparation
• Organizing cases |
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Term
| Presentation evidence on jury verdicts (multimedia) |
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Definition
| Recent case with guru of powerpoint presentations won 253 million for the plaintiff |
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Term
| Is the scientific selection process ethical? |
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Definition
• Highly controversial due to the lack of concrete findings of effectiveness
• Issues of inequality |
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Term
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Definition
• Not designed to be neutral and unbiased
• Logic was that previous dealings with the defendant and prior knowledge of his or her reputation would be useful in assessing the defendant's credibility |
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Term
| Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 |
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Definition
• Taylor v. Louisiana
• Supreme Court determined that federal and state courts must assemble juries that constitute a "fair cross-section of the community" |
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Term
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Definition
| The prospective jurors that show up |
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Term
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Definition
• Final stage in the jury selection process
• Attorneys and the judge ask potential jurors a series of questions to determine who will serve on the jury
• Two types of challenges: challenges for cause and peremptory challenges |
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Term
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Definition
• One type of challenge in the voir dire stage of jury selection
• When a lawyer challenges a would-be-juror because he or she is claiming that because of bias or prejudice, it is unlikely that the juror will be able to render an impartial verdict based only on evidence and law |
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Term
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Definition
• One type of challenge in the voir dire stage of jury selection
• If a judge refuses to dismiss a potential juror for cause, the lawyer must decide whether or not to use this
• This is when an attorney can dismiss a juror without giving reason and without approval from the judge
• Prosecution usually gets 6, defense usually gets 10 |
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Term
| Similarity-leniency hypothesis |
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Definition
| Predicts that jurors who are similar to the defendant will empathize and identify with the defendant. Consequently, they will be less likely to convict. |
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Term
| Story model of jury decision making |
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Definition
• Proposes that jurors create stories to make sense of evidence presented at trial
• Initiating events cause characters to have psychological responses and to form goals that motivate actions, and then these actions lead to consequence |
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Term
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Definition
• Proposes that in most trials, jury verdicts are determined by the strength of the evidence because evidence for conviction or acquittal is usually compelling
• However, in cases where the evidence is ambiguous or close, jurors will be "liberated" from the constraints of evidence
• Lack of clear evidence favoring the defense or prosecution forces jurors to base their decisions on factors such as prior beliefs, assumptions, pretrial publicity, or even prejudice |
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