Cross-Sectional Challenges: Gender, Race, and Six-Person Juries

The subtle effects of implicit bias instructions

“…While there are both complementary and competing theories explaining how racial inequality is produced in the legal system, ranging from purely psychological explanations to socialstructural ones (Lynch, 2016), the literature on racially discriminatory jury decision making has primarily been framed by psychological theories, including but not limited to implicit bias theories (e.g., Elek & Hannaford-Agor, 2014;Hunt, 2015;Levinson et al, 2014;Lynch & Haney, 2011;Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001). The general basis for understanding why jurors, as individuals, and juries, as small groups, may exhibit racial bias comes from the field of social cognition.…”

“…These forms of racial bias—both implicit and subtle—appear to interact with situational factors such that their strength and influence on decision making is at least partly the product of the decision‐making context (P. G. Devine, 1989; Kawakami et al, 1998; Payne et al, 2017). To that end, jurors do not appear to be immune to the influence of racial bias in their consideration of evidence and in determining verdicts (Mitchell et al, 2005; Sommers & Ellsworth, 2001; West, 2011; for reviews, see Bell & Lynch, 2016; Hunt, 2015). Racial biases can influence jurors' perceptions of case evidence, shaping the way they construct a narrative of a trial (Levinson et al, 2014; West, 2011).…”

“…Moreover, while most implicit bias research has focused on how bias shapes judgment at the individual level, there is reason to expect that group decision making, such as the kind that juries make, may differ in the way in which bias is activated and how it influences judgment (Bell & Lynch, 2016; Lynch & Haney, 2015; Sommers, 2006). Thus, racial bias has the potential to become amplified through the group‐level process of deliberation (MacCoun, 1990).…”

Can Juries be Lost in Translation?

“…In the U.S., the jury's level of racial diversity has been a long‐standing fault line for trustworthiness of verdicts (e.g., Abramson ). Salient historical cases, such as an all‐white jury's acquittal of Emmet Till's murderers, as well as an unrepresentative, six‐person jury's more recent acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder (Bell and Lynch ) threaten the jury's legitimacy (see Ellis and Diamond ), particularly among minority populations. Survey evidence indicates that racial minorities are somewhat more tepid in their support for juries than are whites (Rose, Ellison and Diamond ).…”