Perspectives of juror-eligible adults: validation of the Juror Questionnaire of Values and Viewpoints (JQVV) for capital cases

ABSTRACT

Criminal defendants have a 6th Amendment right to an impartial jury, but customary methods of jury selection often fail to uncover deeply held juror attitudes. Addressing the death penalty as a polarizing issue, the Juror Questionnaire of Values and Viewpoints (JQVV) was validated and cross-validated with two separate MTurk studies of capital jury-eligible adults. With complete anonymity assured by MTurk, Study 1 assessed death-penalty attitudes for 354 juror-eligible participants and their likelihood of mispresenting their views during voir dire. Validity of the JQVV was assessed with the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ) and predicted differences for Support-Death and Support-Life group. Study 2, with an entirely new sample of 313 juror-eligible adults, cross-validated the JQVV and tested the effects of positive impression management (PIM). Importantly, Support-Death mostly expressed their candid views even with the PIM condition. Although Support-Life frequently denied their death-penalty views, the JQVV Prosecution-Cynicism (Pro-Cyn) scale proved moderately effective at identifying their denials. Professional implications for capital jury selection are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Jury selection
• 6th Amendment
• Juror Questionnaire of Values and Viewpoints
• JQVV
• positive impression management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Percentages exceed 100% because participants may be excluded for multiple reasons.

2 In Study 2, this group was observed to have highly variable responses; they were then reclassified as ‘Conflicted’.

3 The alternative with high sensitivities was also considered but failed to be effective because of the distribution of scores.