The Contemporary American Jury

Abstract

The contemporary American jury is more inclusive than ever before, although multiple obstacles continue to make racial and ethnic representation a work in progress. Drastic contraction has also occurred: The rate of jury trials is at an all-time low, dampening the signal that jury verdicts provide to the justice system, reducing the opportunity for jury service, and potentially threatening the legitimacy of judgments. At the same time, new areas of jury research have been producing important explanations for how the jury goes about reaching its verdict in response to challenging questions, like how to assess damages. Yet the persistent focus on individual juror judgments as opposed to decision making by the jury as a group leaves unanswered important questions about how jury performance is influenced by a primary distinctive feature of the jury: the deliberation process.

Trial by Jury: Psychological Research Contributions to an Enduring Legal Institution

“…In addition, research has shown that the inclusion of jurors from diverse racial backgrounds in the jury box has implications for the amount of time spent deliberating, the quality of deliberation, the verdict reached, and the overall salience of race for their fellow White jurors (Sommers, 2006), yet these groups are continuously underrepresented in the jury box. Although juries today are more heterogeneous than they have ever been (Guzy, 2012), they are not fully representative along racial and ethnic lines (Diamond & Rose, 2018;Flanagan, 2015). Reliance on a single list of citizens' names (for example, voter registration lists) and limited follow-up in sending out jury summons both tend to create nonrepresentative jury pools.…”

The collateral consequences of criminal legal association during jury selection

“…A jury's decision to acquit or convict a defendant is authoritative, forbidding or allowing state punishment (Culver, 2017). Although very few cases reach a jury trial (Diamond & Rose, 2018), the jury has been central to United States legal thought and culture; as Constable (1994, p. 1) writes, “the jury constitutes a practice in which matters of community membership, truth, and law are inextricably intertwined.” Moreover, the possibility of adjudication by a jury influences the decision‐making of prosecutors (Albonetti, 1986), defense attorneys (Kramer et al, 2007), and defendants (Clair, 2020) throughout the court process. Court officials' racialized and gendered efforts to exclude people with criminal legal association from jury service likely function to reproduce inequality in the structure of the law by removing the voices of perceived offenders (see Smith & Sarma, 2012, p. 406; Wheelock, 2011, p. 354 on felon‐juror exclusion) and victims of crime.…”

“…A jury's decision to acquit or convict a defendant is authoritative, forbidding or allowing state punishment (Culver, 2017). Although very few cases reach a jury trial (Diamond & Rose, 2018), the jury has been central to United States legal thought and culture; as Constable (1994, p. 1) writes, "the jury constitutes a practice in which matters of community membership, truth, and law are inextricably intertwined." Moreover, the possibility of adjudication by a jury influences the decision-making of prosecutors (Albonetti, 1986), defense attorneys (Kramer et al, 2007), and defendants (Clair, 2020) throughout the court process.…”

Storytelling Rituals in Jury Deliberations

“…In an exhaustive review, Devine and colleagues (2001) note that while much research has been conducted on jury deliberation, most studies "focus on quantitative summaries yet fail to capture rare and potentially decisive phenomena." They suggest that this literature would benefit from in-depth studies that look at "key events or exchanges" in juror interactions (Devine et al 2001, p. 711; see also Diamond and Rose [2018], who make much the same point seventeen years later).…”