Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T13:01:10.781Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Effect of Deliberation on Jurors’ Attitudes toward Jury Service in Criminal Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2020

Liana Pennington  and
Matthew J. Dolliver
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Jury service is one important way that citizens actively involve themselves in the criminal justice system. At a time when criminal justice and legal institutions are suffering from declining levels of public trust, it is crucial to understand the effects of jury service on individuals’ views of the jury system and whether these views vary across different racial groups. This article uses survey data from 248 deliberating and prospective jurors on criminal cases with matched data before and after jury service to examine jurors’ views of jury service. Unlike most research in this area, actual jurors were surveyed both at the beginning and at the end of the jury process to measure changes in attitudes concerning jury participation. Deliberating jurors’ changes in views were compared with a group of prospective jurors not selected for a trial. We found a significant difference between deliberating jurors and prospective jurors concerning their belief that the jury system is the fairest way to decide criminal cases, suggesting that jury service positively affects jurors’ views of the jury system. Racial group membership did not significantly influence change from pretrial to posttrial views, with views of jury service becoming more positive for both white and nonwhite jurors.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 391 - 406
Copyright
© 2020 American Bar Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama and by Saint Anselm College. We would like to thank the many jurors who participated in this research as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers at Law & Social Inquiry for their helpful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Administrative Office of the US Courts. 2010. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online: Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics. https://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t5222010.pdf.Google Scholar
Allen, J. L. 1977. “Attitude Change Following Jury Duty.” Justice System Journal 2, no. 3: 246–57.Google Scholar
Altman, I. 2018. “Palmer Home Sexual Battery Case Continued Because of Juror Shortage.” The Dispatch: Columbus and Starkville, Mississippi, August 23.Google Scholar
Bell, M. C. 2017. “Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement.” Yale Law Journal 126: 2054–2150.Google Scholar
Benesh, S. C. 2006. “Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts.” Journal of Politics 68, no. 3: 697–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berris, K. A. 2011. “Appearance Rates of Potential Jurors who Confirm, Postpone, or Fail to Respond to the Jury Summons: Are Postponed Jurors Saying ‘No’ or ‘Not Now’?” Duke Law Review 59: 649–67.Google Scholar
Bloeser, A. J., McCurley, C., and Mondak, J. J.. 2012. “Jury Service as Civic Engagement: Determinants of Jury Summons Compliance.” American Politics Research 40, no. 2: 179–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, B. H., and Greene, E.. 2017. The Jury under Fire: Myth, Controversy, and Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, B. H., Miller, M. K., Nemeth, R. J., Page, G. L., and Musil, S.. 2005. “Juror Reactions to Jury Duty: Perceptions of the System and Potential Stressors.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23: 321–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooks, R. W., and Jeon-Slaughter, H.. 2001. “Race, Income, and Perceptions of the U.S. Court System.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 19: 249–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burns, R. P. 2009. The Death of the American Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Consolini, P. M. 1992. Learning by Doing Justice: Jury Service and Political Attitudes. PhD diss. Berkeley, CA: University of California.Google Scholar
Cutler, B. L., and Hughes, D. M.. 2001. “Judging Jury Service: Results of the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts Juror Survey.” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 19: 305–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diamond, S. S. 1993. “What Jurors Think: Expectations and Reactions of Citizens Who Serve as Jurors.” In Verdict: Assessing the Civil Jury System, edited by Litan, R. E., 282–305. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Dilorio, C., Soet, J. E., Van Marter, D. F., and Woodring, T. M.. 2000. “An Evaluation of a Self-Generated Identification Code.” Research in Nursing and Health 23: 167–74.3.0.CO;2-K>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dzur, A. W. 2010. “Democracy’s ‘Free School’: Tocqueville and Lieber on the Value of the Jury.” Political Theory 38, no. 5: 603–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrell, A., Pennington, L., and Cronin, S.. 2013. “Juror Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Legal Authorities and Decision Making in Criminal Cases.” Law & Social Inquiry 38, no. 4: 773–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukurai, H., Butler, E. W., and Krooth, R.. 1993. Race and the Jury: Racial Disenfranchisement and the Search for Justice. 3rd ed. London: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukurai, H., and Krooth, R.. 2010. “What Brings People to the Courtroom? Comparative Analysis of People’s Willingness to Serve As Jurors in Japan and the U.S.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 38: 198–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, M. 2004. “The Vanishing Trial: An Examination of Trials and Related Matters in Federal and State Courts.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 1, no. 3: 459–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., Weiser, P. J., and Meade, J.. 2008. “Jury Service and Electoral Participation: A Test of the Participation Hypothesis.” Journal of Politics 70, no. 2: 351–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., Weiser, P. J., and Simmons, C.. 2010. The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gau, J. M. 2016. “A Jury of Whose Peers? The Impact of Selection Procedures on Racial Composition and the Prevalence of Majority White Juries.” Journal of Crime and Justice 39, no. 1: 75–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grube, J. W., Morgan, M., and Kearney, K. A.. 1989. “Using Self-generated Identification Codes to Match Questionnaires in Panel Studies of Adolescent Substance Use.” Addictive Behaviors 14, no. 2: 159–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hannaford-Agor, P., Hans, V. P., Mott, N., and Munsterman, G. T.. 2002. Evaluation of Hung Juries in Bronx County, New York, Los Angeles County, California, Maricopa County, Arizona, and Washington, DC, 2000–2001, Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research Study no. 3689.Google Scholar
Hans, V. P., Gastil, J., and Feller, T.. 2014. “Deliberative Democracy and the American Civil Jury.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 11, no. 4: 697–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Hough, M., Mythill, A., Quinton, P., and Tyler, T. R.. 2012. “Why Do People Comply with the Law?” British Journal of Criminology 52: 1051–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalven, H., and Zeisel, H.. 1966. The American Jury. Boston, MA: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Kearney, K. A., Hopkins, R. H., Mauss, A. L., and Weisheit, R. A.. 1984. “Self-generated Identification Codes for Anonymous Collection of Longitudinal Questionnaire Data.” Public Opinion Quarterly 48, no. 1B: 370–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacCoun, R. J. 2005. “Voice, Control, and Belonging: The Double-Edged Sword of Procedural Fairness.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1: 171–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacCoun, R. J., and Tyler, T. R.. 1988. “The Basis of Citizens’ Perceptions of the Criminal Jury.” Law and Human Behavior 12: 333–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGloin, J., Holcomb, S., and Main, D. S.. 1996. “Matching Anonymous Pre-post Tests Using Subject-generated Information.” Evaluation Review 20, no. 6: 724–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, L. S. 1985. “Jury Reform: An Analysis of Juror Perceptions of the Criminal Court System.” Criminal Justice Review 10: 11–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morin, R., and Stepler, R.. 2016. The Racial Confidence Gap in Police Performance. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Munsterman, G. T., Hannaford-Agor, P. L., and Whitehead, G. M.. 2006. Jury Trial Innovations. 2nd ed. Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts.Google Scholar
Musick, M. A., Rose, M. R., Dury, S., and Rose, R. P.. 2015. “Much Obliged: Volunteering, Normative Activities, and Willingness to Serve on Juries.” Law & Social Inquiry 40, no. 2: 433–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Center for State Courts. 1999. “How the Public Views the State Courts: A 1999 National Survey.” https://cdm16501.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ctcomm/id/17.Google Scholar
Newport, F. 2016. “Public Opinion Context: Americans, Race and Police.” Gallup. http://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/193586/public-opinion-context-americans-race-police.aspx.Google Scholar
Polletta, F. 2008. “Just Talk: Public Deliberation after 9/11.” Journal of Public Deliberation 4, no. 1: 1–22.Google Scholar
Pyo, J. 2018. “The Impact of Jury Experience on Perception of the Criminal Prosecution System.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 42: 176–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, M. R. 2005. “A Dutiful Voice: Justice in the Distribution of Jury Service. Law & Society Review.” 39, no. 3: 601–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, M. R., and Abramson, J. B.. 2011. “Data, Race, and the Courts: Some Lessons on Empiricism from Jury Representation Cases.” Michigan State Law Review 2011: 911–63.Google Scholar
Rose, M. R., Diamond, S. S., Ellison, C. G. and Krebs, A. V.. 2018. “Juries and Viewpoint Representation.” Justice Quarterly 35, no. 1: 114–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, M. R., Ellison, C. G., and Diamond, S. S.. 2008. “Preferences for Juries over Judges across Racial and Ethnic Groups.” Social Science Quarterly 89, no. 2: 372–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rottman, D. B., and Tomkins, A.. 1999. “Public Trust and Confidence in the Courts: What Public Opinion Surveys Mean to Judges.” Court Review 36, no. 3: 24–31.Google Scholar
Schnell, R., Bachteler, T., and Reiher, J.. 2010. “Improving the Use of Self-generated Identification Codes.” Evaluation Review 34, no. 5: 391–418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schultz, J. 2017. “Court Grappling with Jury Duty No-shows.” USA Today, August 3.Google Scholar
Shuman, D. W., and Hamilton, J. A.. 1992. “Jury Service—It May Change Your Mind: Perceptions of Fairness of Jurors and Nonjurors.” Southern Methodist University Law Review 46: 449–79.Google Scholar
Sicafuse, L. L., Chomos, J. C., and Miller, M. K.. 2013. “Promoting Positive Perceptions of Jury Service: An Analysis of Juror Experiences, Opinions, and Recommendations for Courts.” Justice System Journal 34: 85–106.Google Scholar
Tabachnick, B. G., and Fidell, L. S.. 1996. Using Multivariate Statistics. Northridge, CA: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Tyler, T. R., and Fagan, J.. 2008. “Legitimacy and Cooperation: Why Do People Help the Police Fight Crime in Their Communities?” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 6: 231–75.Google Scholar
Tyler, T. R., and Huo, Y. J.. 2002. Trust in the Law: Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts. New York: Russell-Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Tyler, T. R., and Jackson, J.. 2014. “Popular Legitimacy and the Exercise of Legal Authority: Motivating Compliance, Cooperation, and Engagement.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 20: 78–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
US Census Bureau. 2018. Quick Facts, V2018. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Vidmar, N., and Hans, V. P.. 2007. American Juries: The Verdict. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Winter, A. S., and Clair, M.. 2017. “Jurors’ Subjective Experiences of Deliberations in Criminal Cases.” Law & Social Inquiry 43, no. 4: 1458–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Phil. 2019. “Short on Jurors, Court ‘Recruits’ from County Meeting.” East Oregonian, February 21.Google Scholar