Law Commons^™

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 …

Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A sample of almost 500 jury-eligible citizens considered a series of experimental situations involving accidents. The juror sample did not properly apply negligence rules, as their errors were particularly great for low-probability, large-loss cases. They also penalized corporations for undertaking corporate risk analyses that seek to trade off cost versus risk reduction benefits. Jurors' damages assessments were also more prone to error than were responses by a sample of state judges. Judges were less prone to erroneous risk beliefs and less subject to the zero-risk mentality.

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 …

Reasonable Certainty And Reasonable Doubt, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

Ultimately, this article is about how well different definitions of reasonable doubt fit society's goals for the criminal justice system. To be clear, this article is not about which definition is best. That question is far broader than the one I seek to explore. Determining what definition of reasonable doubt is best for the system is a question for another time. Rather, this article describes a few different ways that reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence can be interpreted and considers the implications of applying those differing interpretations. Part II of this article examines how the criminal justice system …

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 …

Playing The "Culture Card": Trials In A Mutli-Cultural Democracy, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

As I write, the racial divide in America is said to be greater than at any time in the past 25 years.' Two events are blamed: the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and the Louis Farrakan led "Million Man March." That these events should exacerbate racial division is extraordinary. The Farrakan led march brought together between 400,000 and 800,000 black males to pledge that they would take the kind of responsibility for their actions and their families that white Americans have long argued they should take. The O.J. Simpson trial was more a "who done it" than a racial morality play. …

That's My Story And I'M Stickin' To It: The Jury As Fifth Business In The Trial Of O.J. Simpson And Other Matters, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Juror Delinquency In Criminal Trials In America, 1796-1996, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article examines two aspects of the jury system that have attracted far less attention from scholars than from the popular press: avoidance of jury duty by some citizens, and misconduct while serving by others. Contemporary reports of juror shortages and jury dodging portray a system in crisis.' Coverage of recent high-profile cases suggests that misconduct by jurors who do serve is common. In the trial of Damian Williams and Henry Watson for the beating of Reginald Denny, a juror was kicked off for failing to deliberate; Exxon, Charles Keating, and the man accused of murdering Michael Jordan's father all …

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.

Asymmetrical Peremptories Defended: A Reply, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Three years ago, with the publication of his article ''An Asymmetrical Approach to the Problem of Peremptories" in this journal, Professor Friedman initiated a debate on the subject that was taken up in 1994 by three prosecutors who offered a rebuttal that was also printed in these pages. Professor Friedman continues the debate.

Are Juries Competent To Decide Liability In Tort Cases Involving Scientific/Medical Issues? Some Data From Medical Malpractice, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Experts, Stories, And Information, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In the infancy of the jury trial, there were no witnesses. The jury was self-informing. Members of the jury were drawn from the community. It was expected that they would know, either firsthand or on the basis of what they had heard, the true facts of any disputed incident, and they were gathered together to say what those facts were. Ronald Allen and Joseph Miller, in their insightful paper, see the ideal of the self-informing jury as very much alive today. Allen and Miller tell us that jurors ideally should experience firsthand the factual information needed to arrive at rational …

Postconviction Review Of Jury Discrimination: Measuring The Effects Of Juror Race On Jury Decisions, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As the Court has expanded its definition of jury selection techniques that violate constitutional standards, it has narrowed the circumstances that entitle defendants to postconviction relief. These two developments are now colliding; the emerging law is uncertain. One trend, however, is plain: divisions over the utility and propriety of applying harmless error, prejudice, and innocence standards to jury discrimination claims are deepening. By carefully evaluating the validity of some these disputes, I hope to have made remedial choices more informed and more attainable.

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, …

An Asymmetrical Approach To The Problem Of Peremptories?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The Supreme Court's decision in Batson v. Kentucky, and the extension of Batson to parties other than prosecutors, may be expected to put pressure on the institution of peremptory challenges. After a brief review of the history of peremptories, this article contends that peremptories for criminal defendants serve important values of our criminal justice system. It then argues that peremptories for prosecutors are not as important, and that it may no longer be worthwhile to maintain them in light of the administrative complexities inevitable in a system of peremptories consistent with Batson. The article concludes that the asymmetry of allowing …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Hong Kong Jury: A Microcosm Of Society?, Peter Duff, Mark Findlay, Carla Howarth

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The claim that the jury is a randomly chosen and representative sample of community is an important part of the ideology which currently underpins the institution. Supporters of the jury argue that both its impartiality and its independence from the State are bolstered by the fact that it represents a randomly selected cross-section of the populace. In most common law jurisdictions where the jury operates, various steps have been taken over recent years in order preserve and strengthen the perception of the jury as a "microcosm of democratic society". For example, in England the property qualification for jurors was removed …

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 …

The Allen Instruction In Criminal Cases: Is The Dynamite Charge About To Be Permanently Defused?, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.