Law Commons^™

On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Eighth Circuit, Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Gregory P. Warger, V. Randy D. Shauers, Susan Crump, Bennett Gershman, Victor Gold, Paul F. Rothstein, Ben Trachtenberg

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

Petitioner asks this Court to interpret Fed. R. Evid. 606(b) as permitting statements made by jurors during deliberations to be admitted to support a motion for a new trial. The practical consequences of petitioner’s rule would be significant and problematic, not only fundamentally altering the purpose and practice of voir dire, but also providing a new, fact driven, basis for post-trial motions. These expanded proceedings would place substantial additional burdens of courts, lawyers and jurors alike. In light of existing mechanisms to ensure juror honesty and impartiality, petitioner’s rule would disrupt a well-functioning system for little to no benefit.

The Jury Wants To Take The Podium -- But Even With The Authority To Do So, Can It? An Interdisciplinary Examination Of Jurors' Questioning Of Witnesses At Trial, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Family Capital Of Capital Families: Investigating Empathic Connections Between Jurors And Defendants' Families In Death Penalty Cases, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Ask And What Shall Ye Receive? A Guide For Using And Interpreting What Jurors Tell Us, Barbara O'Brien, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

We review the extensive body of studies relying on jurors' self-reports in interviews or questionnaires, with a focus on potential threats to validity for researchers seeking to answer particularly provocative questions such as the influence of race in jury decision-making. We then offer a more focused case study comparison of interview and questionnaire data with behavioral data in the domain of race and juror decision-making. Our review suggests that the utility of data obtained from juror interviews and questionnaire responses varies considerably depending on the question under investigation. We close with an evaluation of the types of empirical questions most …

Wired: What We've Learned About Courtroom Technology, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Race And Recalcitrance: The Miller-El Remands, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor may not peremptorily challenge a juror based upon his or her race. Although Baston was decided more than twenty years ago, some lower courts still resist its command. Three recent cases provide particularly egregious examples of that resistance. The Fifth Circuit refused the Supreme Court's instruction in Miller-El v. Cockrell, necessitating a second grant of certiorari in Miller-El v. Dretke. The court then reversed and remanded four lower court cases for reconsideration in light of Miller-El, but in two cases the lower courts have thus …

Bound And Gagged: The Peculiar Predicament Of Professional Jurors, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article advocates two changes to the law. First, parties should be allowed (but not required) to strike professional jurors for cause in cases involving their expertise without any additional showing of a particular bias toward one side or the other. Second, if such jurors are empanelled, they should not be “gagged.” Rather, they should be free to draw on and share their expertise as are all other jurors. This Article proceeds in four Parts. Part I discusses recent reform efforts that have fundamentally altered the jury system by opening it up to increased numbers of professional jurors. Part II …

Juror First Votes In Criminal Trials, Stephen P. Garvey, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Valerie P. Hans, Nicole L. Mott, G. Thomas Munsterman, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror's race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury's first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury's final verdict.

One Inspiring Jury, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Reviews

Americans love to complain about the jury. They complain about being called for jury duty. They complain about jury verdicts in highly publicized cases. They are outraged by the failure to convict "obviously guilty" criminals, such as the police officers in the cases of Rodney King and Amadou Diallo, the Menendez brothers in their first trial, and of course O.J. Simpson. In civil cases, they are appalled when plaintiffs win huge damage awards in "obviously frivolous" lawsuits. Juries are ignorant and uneducated, juries are gullible, juries are swayed by passion and prejudice rather than reason. Criticizing jury verdicts allows us …

How Much Do We Really Know About Race And Juries? A Review Of Social Science Theory And Research, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The past decade has witnessed numerous high-profile criminal trials in which controversial verdicts have been attributed to racethe race of the defendant, the racial composition of a jury, an attorney "playing the race card," and so on. A predominantly Black jury's acquittal of O.J. Simpson and White jurors' leniency in the police brutality cases of Rodney King and Amadou Diallo not only sparked public debate, but also led to rioting and violence. In the wake of trials such as these, many have questioned the viability of the American jury system.' More specific questions regarding the influence of race on jury …

Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This paper has its roots in Old Chief v. United States, a case the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1997. I will begin by describing this case; then comment on its implications for the Supreme Court’s conception of the jury, and conclude by examining the agenda one may draw from it for empirical jury research. Old Chief arose when Johnny Lynn Old Chief was charged not only with assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, but also with violating a law that forbids convicted felons from possessing …

Race In The Courtroom: Perceptions Of Guilt And Dispositional Attributions, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The present studies compare the judgments of White and Black mock jurors in interracial trials. In Study 1, the defendant’s race did not influence White college students’ decisions but Black students demonstrated ingroup/outgroup bias in their guilt ratings and attributions for the defendant’s behavior. The aversive nature of modern racism suggests that Whites are motivated to appear nonprejudiced when racial issues are salient; therefore, the race salience of a trial summary was manipulated and given to noncollege students in Study 2. Once again, the defendant’s race did not influence Whites when racial issues were salient. But in the non-race-salient version …

Jury Reform At The End Of The Century: Real Agreement, Real Changes, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Complaints about the jury system and calls for its reform are nothing new-they have probably existed as long as the jury system itself. Warren Burger called for the reform of the civil jury in 1971'; in 1905 William Howard Taft decried the contemporary tendency "to exalt the jury's power beyond anything which is wise or prudent .... ,2 Judges complain to judges, lawyers complain to lawyers, legal academics write articles about the jury for other legal academics, social scientists report their research on juries to other social scientists, and the jurors themselves go home and express their exasperation to their …

Sticks And Stones, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

I believe that research should be refuted by research. More and more of our scarce journal space is being taken up by attacks, rebuttals, and rebuttals to the rebuttals, often ending with a whimper of recognition that the adversaries were not so very far apart to begin with, and that the only way (if possible) to resolve the disagreement is through empirical research. Communication of scientific disagreement does not require a published article. Grant proposals and manuscripts submitted to refereed journals like this one are sent out to reviewers, who provide written evaluations that are communicated to the author. Papers …

Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This paper has its roots in Old Chief v. United States, a case the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1997. I will begin by describing this case; then comment on its implications for the Supreme Court's conception of the jury, and conclude by examining the agenda one may draw from it for empirical jury research. Old Chief arose when Johnny Lynn Old Chief was charged not only with assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, but also with violating a law that precludes convicted felons from possessing …

Why Do Juries Get A Bum Rap: Reflections On The Work Of Valerie Hans, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

The paper by Professor Valerie Hans that I have been asked to comment on examines the widespread expectation that jurors are prepared to hold businesses responsible in tort actions when they would not hold individual actors similarly responsible.1 Two reasons are commonly offered for this expectation. The first is that jurors naturally sympathize with individuals (like themselves) when people sue businesses, either because they identify with the plaintiffs as individuals or because they hold antibusiness attitudes. The second is that because businesses are often wealthy, a "deep pockets" effect exists such that jurors in negligence cases will find for undeserving …

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The jury's competence, unlike that of the judge, rests partly on its ability to reflect the perspectives, experiences, and values of the ordinary people in the community - not just the most common or typical community perspective, but the whole range of viewpoints.

Settling For A Judge: A Comment On Clermont And Eisenberg, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

Trial by Jury or Judge: Transcending Empiricism,1 by Kevin Clermont and Theodore Eisenberg, is not only an important article, it is unique. To most Americans, trial means trial by jury. In fact, over half of all federal trials are conducted without juries2 (including 31% of trials in cases in which the parties have the right to choose a jury3), and the proportion of bench trials in state courts is even higher.4 And yet, while there is a large literature on the outcomes of jury trials and the factors that affect them,5 nobody else has systematically compared trials by jury to …

Real Jurors' Understanding Of The Law In Real Cases, Alan Reifman, Spencer M. Gusick, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

A survey of 224 Michigan citizens called for jury duty over a 2-month period was conducted to assess the jurors' comprehension of the law they had been given in the judges' instructions. Citizens who served as jurors were compared with a base line of those who were called for duty but not selected to serve, and with those who served on different kinds of cases. Consistent with previous studies of mock jurors, this study found that actual jurors understand fewer than half of the instructions they receive at trial. Subjects who received judges' instructions performed significantly better than uninstructed subjects …

Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

There are three ways in which stories may figure prominently at trials. First, litigants may tell stories to jurors. Not only is there some social science evidence that this happens, but trial lawyers have an instinctive sense that this is what they do. Ask a litigator to describe a current case and she is likely to reply, "Our story is ... " Second, jurors may try to make sense of the evidence they receive by fitting it to some story pattern. If so, the process is likely to feed back on itself. That is, jurors are likely to build a …

To Tell What We Know Or Wait For Godot?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Professor Elliott raises two questions about the American Psychological Association's practice of submitting amicus briefs to the courts. First, are our data sufficiently valid, consistent, and generalizable to be applicable to the real world issues? Second, are amicus briefs adequate to communicate scientific findings? The first of these is not a general question, but must be addressed anew each time the Association considers a new issue. An evaluation of the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about racial discrimination, for example, tells us nothing at all about the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about sexual abuse. "Are the data …

Law Reform By Courts, Legislatures, And Commissions Following Empirical Research On Jury Instructions, J. Alexander Tanford

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Empirical research demonstrates that jurors have difficulty understanding and following traditional instructions about the law. The social science literature recommends several procedural reforms, including giving important instructions at the start of the trial and providing jurors with written instructions. This article examines changes in the law following the publication of this social science research, comparing courts, legislatures and rule-making commissions. Analysis reveals that although all three institutions are dominated by lawyers, they have acted differently. Commissions have made substantial changes in the law consistent with the recommendations of social scientists, legislatures have made few changes, and courts have changed case …

Expert Evidence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It seems that the use of expert witnesses in common law courts has always been troublesome. In his Treatise on the Law of Evidence, first published in 1848, Judge John Pitt Taylor describes several classes of witnesses whose testimony should be viewed with caution, including: enslaved people (which accounts for "the lamentable neglect of truth, which is evinced by most of the nations of India, by the subjects of the Czar, and by many of the peasantry in Ireland"); women (because they are more susceptible to "an innate vain love of the marvelous"); and "foreigners and others ... living out …

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Few advocates of the jury system would argue that the average juror is as competent a tribunal as the averagejudge. Whatever competence the jury has is a function of two of its attributes: its number and its interaction. The fact that a jury must be composed of at least six people,' with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, provides some protection against decisions based on an idiosyncratic view of the facts. Not only must the jury include at least six people, but they must be chosen in a manner that conforms to the ideal of the jury as representative of community …

Impressions Of A Not-So-Average Juror, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Faculty Publications

Direct observation of jury decision-making is impossible without tainting the quality of the observations, and perhaps the jury's decision itself. Another reason for the difficulty attorneys have in understanding how juries will respond to their efforts is lack of experience. Because attorneys rarely serve on juries, the typical attorney cannot converse with colleagues about personal observations of how juries decide cases.

It is probably fair to say that I am one of only a few lawyers who has served on a jury. My own recollections of my service may well be incomplete, skewed, and deficient. Generalizations from my recollections must …

Voir Dire In Kentucky: An Empirical Study Of Voir Dire In Kentucky Circuit Courts, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Voir dire is the stage of a jury trial at which prospective jurors are questioned under oath by court or counsel to determine their suitability as jurors in the case to be tried. Kentucky's high court has repeatedly recognized the importance of voir dire to the exercise of for-cause and peremptory challenges.

The trial judge's wide discretion in voir dire, however, necessarily makes a review of appellate decisions of minimal assistance in ascertaining what actually occurs during this important phase of a jury trial. Published opinions provide little guidance in this area; information about voir dire must come from a …

Jurors On Trial, Joseph Brodley, Harold M. Hoffman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.