The Effects of Jurors’ Initial Views of Jury Service on Predeliberation Preferences for Prosecution or Defense

Abstract

Jury trials are considered a key element of the American criminal justice system, even as many question the continued legitimacy of the jury system and its ability to be fair. Using data from actual jurors collected at both the beginning of jury service and after deliberations, this research examines whether jurors’ views of the fairness of the jury system affect perceptions of evidence presented to them at trial. By surveying jurors at the beginning of jury service, this research uses measurements of jurors’ views which are not affected by the court process itself. We find that jurors who enter jury service with a stronger belief in the fairness of juries are more likely to favor the defense after hearing the evidence. Policy implications are discussed, including using caution with harsher methods to improve juror rate of appearance because of the potential effects on jurors’ views.

Keywords:

• Juror decision making
• juror attitudes
• legitimacy
• criminal courts

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the many jurors who participated in this research and the editors and anonymous reviewers at Justice System Journal for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A small proportion (nine) of Time 2 surveys were returned by mail when jurors were dismissed by phone.

2 Given the ethical concerns with maintaining juror anonymity with the Time 1 data, we were not allowed to track and record the specific trials on which jurors served. Therefore, we cannot estimate any nested effects.

3 Scales of seven or more, as in this case, provide an approximation of a continuous variable justifying the common use of OLS analysis (Johnson and Creech 1983; Norman 2010; Sullivan and Artino 2013).

4 Prior to analysis, data were also checked for normality, outliers, heteroscedasticity and potential multicollinearity and were found to be within normal ranges for each. In addition Power Analysis was run, using GPower 3.1.0, the power (1-β) for detection of type II errors at 0.90 and the alpha (α) for detection of type I errors at 0.05.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Saint Anselm College and the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Alabama.