Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
One Inspiring Jury, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
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 …
Jury Sentencing As Democratic Practice, Jenia I. Turner
Jury Sentencing As Democratic Practice, Jenia I. Turner
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
After a century of reform and experimentation, sentencing remains a highly contested area of the criminal justice system. Scholars as well as the public at large disagree about the proper purposes and functions of punishment, and dissatisfaction with the sentencing status quo is high. Most recent critiques of the sentencing process have focused on the amount of discretion tolerated by the system. This Article goes further in arguing that the source of sentencing discretion is also very important to the legitimacy and integrity of the sentencing process. In the absence of wide consensus on sentencing goals, it is best to …
Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Book Chapters
Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by "the weight of the evidence," and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, …
Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman
Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman
Articles
A great deal of the rhetoric of evidence discourse concerns the supposed cognitive inadequacies of the jury. In various contexts we are told that although an item of evidence is probative, it must be excluded because the jury will give it too much weight. I believe this approach has played far too great a role in evidentiary law, and that it is an interesting project to see whether we can construct a satisfactory body of law without relying at all on the cognitive inadequacy argument. I think that, at least to a large extent, we can. In some settings, where …
How Much Do We Really Know About Race And Juries? A Review Of Social Science Theory And Research, Samuel R. Sommers, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
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 …