Search

The composition of the American jury has changed substantially over time. The 21st century American jury is far more heterogeneous and representative of the citizenry at large than was the early English jury or even the jury in the 20th century. Automatic occupational exemptions for individuals in particular occupations (e.g., physicians, lawyers, certified public accountants),(1) which used to be common, have been eliminated in half the states. In addition, over two-thirds of the states have reduced the number of occupations receiving exemptions.(2) The result is that venires are more likely to include prospective jurors who may have occupational experience with the issues presented at trial. Although the assumption is that such prospective jurors will be eliminated during jury selection by attorneys anxious to avoid jurors who are expected to exert too much influence, the evidence indicates that nurses, engineers, and lawyers have increasingly been appearing on juries, posing a dilemma for the legal system to the extent that they may be both valuable resources and uncontrolled influences. Courts give jurors ambiguous guidance on how juror expertise should be handled. On the one hand, jurors are told "You will decide what the facts are from the evidence presented here in court." By direct implication, then, jurors should not use outside information to evaluate the evidence. Jurors are also told, however, that they should "consider all of the evidence in the light of reason, common sense, and experience." The mixed message is particularly unhelpful because it is clear that all decision-makers, including jurors, are unavoidably influenced by their own backgrounds and experiences as they evaluate evidence and reach decisions. This paper reviews the case law on occupational threats to juror impartiality. It then draws on three sources to examine the role played by juror occupational experience: (1) a survey of experienced litigators who responded to questions about the occupational make-up of the jury in their most recent trial; (2) the actual deliberations of jurors in 50 civil trials from the Arizona Filming Project which reveal how real jurors use their occupational expertise during deliberations; and (3) a survey of judges and attorneys who evaluated examples of juror behavior in which the juror drew on his or her occupational background. Our findings reveal both the tensions created by, and the value of, juror occupational experience in the trial process. (1) Joanna Sobol, Hardship Excuses and Occupational Exemptions: The Impairment of the "Fair Cross-Section of the Community, 69 S. Cal. L. Rev. 155, 165-66. (2) Id; See Anne Skove, Jury Management: Exemptions from Jury Duty, (www.ncsconline.org/WC/Memos/JurManExemptionsMemo.htm (May 2, 2006)) ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In one image of the jury, jurors as a group compile multiple reasons for believing or disbelieving a witness or one side of a case. As part of this process, some jurors may turn to their own past experiences to consider the plausibility of what has been presented in court. In this image, personal experience is but one of many ways of understanding evidence and testimony. It may hold no greater weight than, for example, arguments based on reason and logic. In a different image of the jury, a juror offers personal experience more as a "trump card" - a mechanism for asserting the superiority of his or her position, to the exclusion of other perspectives. A juror might assert a total unwillingness to consider anything that contradicts his or her own beliefs and past life events. Used in this way, personal experience indicates bias and a mind that is closed to alternative interpretations. To date there has been little empirical data on which image of the jury is more correct. There is first a lack of basic information on the ways that personal experience informs jury deliberations. This includes questions of frequency, or how often jurors raise personal experience as part of their discussions with others. Further, we do not know the manner in which jurors offer this knowledge. Do jurors present events from their lives merely as something for others to consider, or do they appear to offer their experiences as definitive proof of their claims? Beyond what individuals do, it is unclear how fellow jurors treat a juror's revelation about his or her own experience. It is possible, for instance, that jurors actively resist someone who insists that her experiences are particularly diagnostic of truth. This presentation draws on a unique dataset, the Arizona Jury Project, which consists of the deliberation transcripts of 50 actual civil juries. We have systematically reviewed and coded each transcript for instances in which jurors talk about an event that happened to them (or to someone they know). We are further coding the nature of the claim (i.e., what is the juror attempting to assert?), the context of the remark (e.g., is the juror explaining his or her position by way of a reference to a personal experience, or is the juror instead trying to dispute someone else's position by offering a personal experience?), as well as how other jurors responded to the remark, if at all. We will also examine patterns in the use of personal experience, such as whether jurors are particularly likely to refer to personal experience when it bears on an issue in dispute. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For generations, Latinos were systematically excluded from jury duty. In the 1950s, the Supreme Court tackled the issue when a Latino convicted of murder argued that he had been discriminated against because those of Mexican heritage had been "deliberately, systematically, and willfully excluded from the grand jury that found and returned the indictment in the case and from the petit jury panel from which was selected the petit jury that tried the case." (Footnote 1) The evidence of systematic exclusion was striking: in Jackson County, Texas, while those of Mexican heritage represented more than ten percent of the adult population, no person of Mexican ancestry had served on a jury in that county in twenty-five years. (Footnote 2) On appeal the Supreme Court held in Hernandez v. Texas that the U. S. Constitution prohibited the systematic exclusion of Latino jurors from the pool of potential jurors. Inequities in the jury selection process have continued since the Hernandez ruling. Critics raised questions as to whether African Americans, Latinos, women, and the poor were disproportionately excluded from jury service. Various reasons explained the under representation of Latinos, including gerrymandering of the districts so as to reduce the number of summonses received and language barriers. One of the assumptions underlying concerns about the under representation of Latinos is that their exclusion affects the deliberation process. Data from the Arizona Jury Project (AJP) provide an opportunity to examine how the composition of the jury affects jury deliberations in a jurisdiction (Pima County, Arizona) in which Latino litigants and jurors appear with some frequency. Thus far, research about the jury and race has focused on White and Black jurors, with little research regarding Latino jurors. Data from fifty cases from the AJP were coded and analyzed to determine the frequency and context in which cultural factors, discussions about the diversity of the jury, and non-English language use occurred. Although most cases included no ethnic references, in 5 of the 9 cases in which at least one Latino juror was present on the jury and one of the parties was Latino, the jury discussed cultural factors, such as why a Latino plaintiff might choose a holistic remedy over a doctor for treatment, during deliberations. In addition, in 1 of the 2 cases in which there were no Latino jurors on the jury and one of the parties was Latino, cultural factors emerged as a topic for discussion during deliberations. In that single case, specific questions regarding the plaintiff's Mexican heritage were raised by a juror, but no juror could address them. The argument that diverse juries render fair verdicts was also bolstered on several juries when various jurors mentioned during deliberations that they were comfortable with the verdict because they viewed the jury as diverse. Although based on a small sample of cases, these results provide evidence that Latino jurors can contribute an important perspective to the jury, and support efforts to ensure that ethnic minorities are not underrepresented on the jury. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its ideal state, the American jury brings together a heterogeneous group of citizens who pool their recollection and perceptions of evidence and, through an egalitarian deliberation process, arrive at a consensus on a verdict. The jury departs from this ideal if some individual jurors dominate the conversation. Prior research suggests that conversation dominance reflects social status differences in society. To study participation, we will draw on a set of actual jury deliberations from the Arizona Jury Project, which has information on over 400 jurors discussing 50 cases. We analyze the word counts of each juror for each thirty-second period of deliberation, resulting in approximately 90,000 data points across the 50 cases. We then examine which, if any, juror background factors (e.g., gender, race, age, education) predict not only an individual's mean level of contribution, but also how that contribution changes over the course of deliberations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presiding juror is responsible for overseeing the deliberations and telling the court when a verdict is reached, but little or no direction is given beyond that general advice on what the presiding juror should do. Juries are generally given the task of choosing their own presiding juror. Most juries select the member who will preside over their deliberations swiftly, but the choice is far from random. Using a set of 50 real jury deliberations, we examine the process of selection, describe the behavioral (e.g., speaking first) and background (e.g., education) factors that predict the jury's choice, and investigate how presiding jurors behave during deliberations. Our analyses include: (1) the relative overall participation by presiding versus other jurors; (2) reference to the instructions by presiding versus other jurors; (3) other leadership behaviors of presiding jurors, such as calls for votes, expressions of verdict preferences, and attempts to draw out participation from the more silent jurors. We will also examine the relationship between the attributes of presiding jurors, their behavior in deliberations, and their influence on outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]