Nullification at Work? A Glimpse from the National Center for State Courts Study of Hung Juries

In recent years, the criminal justice community has become increasingly concerned about the possibility that jury nullification is the underlying motivation for increasing numbers of acquittals and mistrials due to jury deadlock in felony jury trials. In this Article, the authors discuss the inherent difficulty in defining jury nullification and identifying its occurrence in actual trials. They review the evolution in public and legal opinion about the legitimacy of jury nullification and contemporary judicial responses to perceived instances of jury nullification. Finally, the authors examine the possible presence of jury nullification through empirical analysis of data collected from 372 felony jury trials in four state courts. Jurors\u27 opinions about the fairness of the law proved to be related to trial outcomes. However, case characteristics, particularly the strength and credibility of trial evidence, were the strongest predictors of verdicts. The authors conclude that jury nullification is an unlikely factor in the vast majority of felony trials. When juror attitudes about legal fairness do play a role, they most likely do so by affecting how jurors perceive and interpret trial evidence, rather than by leading jurors to intentionally disregard the governing law

The Timing of Opinion Formation by Jurors in Civil Cases: An Empirical Examination

The question of when and how jurors form opinions about evidence presented at trial has been the focus of seemingly endless speculation. For lawyers, the question is how to capture the attention and approval of the jury at the earliest possible point in the trial. Their goal is to maximize the persuasiveness of their arguments--or at least to minimize the persuasiveness of those of the opposing side. Judges, in contrast, are more concerned about prejudgment. They regularly admonish jurors to suspend judgment until after all the evidence has been presented and after the jurors have been instructed on the law. Yet in the vast majority of jury trials, lawyers and judges have little opportunity to discern how jurors are reacting to trial evidence or whether they are abiding by judicial admonitions. Although researchers have thoroughly examined juror decision making in laboratory experiments, the point at which jurors form opinions in actual jury trials remains cloaked in mystery. Recently, however, that cloak was lifted enough to provide a glimpse at the timing of juror opinion formation. The opportunity to do so came in conjunction with an evaluation of a jury reform procedure implemented in Arizona civil trials in 1995. Data collected for the evaluation included the responses of 1,385 jurors from 172 civil trials concerning when they began to form opinions about the case, whether and when they changed their minds about those opinions, and when they made up their minds about the final outcome. This Article presents three competing models of juror decision making as they pertain to the timing of opinion formation. Using these models as an analytical guide, this Article examines the data from the Arizona study to assess convergence with these models and to identify factors that affect the timing of juror opinion formation in civil trials

Juror First Votes in Criminal Trials

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror\u27s race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury\u27s first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury\u27s final verdict

Juror First Votes in Criminal Trials

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror\u27s race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury\u27s first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury\u27s final verdict

Juror First Votes in Criminal Trials

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror\u27s race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury\u27s first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury\u27s final verdict

Juror First Votes in Criminal Trials

Our analysis of the voting behavior of over 3,000 jurors in felony cases tried in Los Angeles, Maricopa County, the District of Columbia, and the Bronx reveals that only in D.C. does a juror\u27s race appear to relate to how he or she votes. African-American jurors in D.C. appear more apt to vote not guilty on the jury\u27s first ballot in cases involving minority defendants charged with drug offenses. We find no evidence, however, that this effect survives into the jury\u27s final verdict

Judge-Jury Agreement in Criminal Cases: A Partial Replication of Kalven and Zeisel\u27s The American Jury

This study uses a new criminal case data set to partially replicate Kalven and Zeisel\u27s classic study of judge-jury agreement. The data show essentially the same rate of judge-jury agreement as did Kalven and Zeisel for cases tried almost 50 years ago. This study also explores judge-jury agreement as a function of evidentiary strength (as reported by both judges and juries), evidentiary complexity (as reported by both judges and juries), legal complexity (as reported by judges), and locale. Regardless of which adjudicator\u27s view of evidentiary strength is used, judges tend to convict more than juries in cases of middle evidentiary strength. Judges tend to acquit more than juries in cases in which judges regard the evidence favoring the prosecution as weak. Judges tend to convict more than juries in cases in which judges regard the evidence favoring the prosecution as strong. Rates of adjudicator agreement are thus partly a function of which adjudicator\u27s view of evidentiary strength is used, a result not available to Kalven and Zeisel, who were limited to judges\u27 views of the evidence. We find little evidence that evidentiary complexity or legal complexity help explain rates of judge-jury disagreement. Rather, the data support the view that judges have a lower conviction threshold than juries. Local variation exists among the sites studied. The influences of juror race, sex, and education are also considered

The Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence

A lightly edited transcript of the Symposium held at the William & Mary School of Law on October 28, 2011

The Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence

A lightly edited transcript of the Symposium held at the William & Mary School of Law on October 28, 2011