Jurors and the Future of Tort Reform

Jurors are not supposed to allow their personal attitudes about the law, including tort law, affect their decision. This Essay asserts, however, that jurors, acting as conscientious and impartial decision makers, in fact do have cognitive and emotional stakes in tort litigation, namely the trial process that they are subjected to, and in making fair and equitable decisions. Various tort reform proposals affect, for better or worse, jurors\u27 abilities to understand the evidence and the law, apply the law to the facts, and do justice. The author, a former trial judge, and a self-confessed jurorcentric supporter of jury trial reforms, rates scores of current reform proposals according to their potential to improve or detract from the jurors\u27 abilities to do their jobs. Special attention is paid to two specific proposals of high salience for juries. Policymakers are urged to take jurors\u27 needs into account when considering changes in tort law and trial practice

Recent Evaluative Research on Jury Trial Innovations

During the past decade, state jury reform commissions, many individual federal and state judges, and jury scholars have advocated the adoption of a variety of innovative trial procedures to assist jurors in trials. Many jury trial reforms reflect growing awareness of best practices in education and communication as well as research documenting that jurors take an active rather than a passive approach to their decision-making task. Traditional adversary jury trial procedures often appear to assume that jurors are blank slates, who will passively wait until the end of the trial and the start of jury deliberations to form opinions about the evidence. However, we now know that jurors quite actively engage in evidence evaluation, developing their opinions as the trial progresses. It makes sense to revise trial procedures so they take advantage of jurors’ decision-making tendencies and strengths. Although reform groups have endorsed many of these innovations, until recently there was only modest evidence about their impact in the courtroom. Now, substantial research on the effects of most of the reforms on juror comprehension and juror satisfaction with the trial has been completed and reported. Data are now available to judges and others seeking reliable empirical support for the changes to the traditional jury trial. This article will describe the methods used to study juries and jury trials and present recent data now available for each of the major proposed innovations. We also draw on new findings from our own recent research testing the comparative advantages of jury innovations for understanding complex scientific evidence

Can Jury Trial Innovations Improve Juror Understanding of DNA Evidence?

A single spot of blood on a pink windowsill will tell investigators who broke a windowpane, turned a lock, and kidnapped 2-year-old Molly Evans from her bedroom in the middle of the night. An expert witness will testify that the DNA profile of the blood evidence recovered from the windowsill was entered into CODIS, an electronic database of DNA profiles. That process yielded a “hit,” identifying the defendant as the most likely source of the blood inside Molly’s room. But will jurors be able to understand the expert’s intricate analysis and use it to reach a verdict? And what—if any—steps can be taken to increase jurors’ comprehension of complex DNA evidence? Questions such as these prompted an NIJ-funded study on the impact of jury trial innovations upon mock jurors’ understanding of contested mitochondrial DNA (mtNDA) evidence. By examining how jurors in different experimental conditions performed on a Juror Comprehension Scale both before and after deliberations, researchers were able to assess whether four specific innovations improved jurors’ understanding of this complex evidence and identify which innovations worked best

Innovations for Improving Courtroom Communications and Views from Appellate Courts

Symposium: Improving Communications In the Courtroo

Innovations for Improving Courtroom Communications and Views from Appellate Courts

Symposium: Improving Communications In the Courtroo

Science in the Jury Box: Jurors\u27 Views and Understanding of Mitochondrial DNA Evidence

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA evidence (with modest exclusion probabilities) should be excluded because jurors are prone to overvalue such evidence. The article also introduces a new method for inferring the perceived probability of guilt that satisfies the burden of persuasion for most jurors

Statistics in the Jury Box: How Jurors Respond to Mitochondrial DNA Match Probabilities

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA evidence (with modest exclusion probabilities) should be excluded because jurors are prone to overvalue such evidence. The article also introduces a new method for inferring the perceived probability of guilt that satisfies the burden of persuasion for most jurors

Testing Jury Reforms

DNA evidence has become a key law enforcement tool and is increasingly presented in criminal trials in Delaware and elsewhere. The integrity of the criminal trial process turns upon the jury\u27s ability to understand DNA evidence and to evaluate properly the testimony of experts. How well do they do? Can we assist them in the process