Almost every case has been won or lost, when the jury is sworn.
Clarence Darrow
Overview
Successful investors, gamblers, and coaches play the odds whenever they can. Whether that involves charting economic trends, knowing the odds when playing craps, or selecting plays and/or players based on their “stats”, it is understood that these methods are an improvement over intuition. Intuition currently guides most trial lawyers confronted with the task of selecting a jury. In 1990, Kleinmuntz wrote that intuitive judgment is subject to random fluctuation and, therefore, to decreased reliability and accuracy. RevisMedia has developed a set of algorithms that goes beyond intuition and provides an empirical ranking of jurors, allowing trial lawyers …show more content…
Some are very talented in the selection of jurors, and some are not” (Bermant, 1977). This performance variability across lawyers undermines the theory that when two well-matched parties eliminate unfavorable jurors, the result is a panel of conscientious and neutral citizens. It appears that this is an adversarial myth. The two sides of a dispute are rarely equally matched in their selection skills. As such, the resulting jury is more likely to have a pre-disposed bias in either direction than was the full panel that preceded the voir dire.
Scientific Jury Selection
Consider that:
A. The dangerous juror is the juror who is more likely to return an unfavorable decision, and
B. A favorable jury is “selected” by the elimination of dangerous jurors through peremptory challenges and challenges for cause
The problem is to recognize the dangerous juror to be challenged. This is a prediction issue where there is limited information about each potential juror. Successful prediction requires information about four distinct sets of information.
1. The first set is that the basis for meaningful selection must come from some identifiable characteristic of the individual juror. This list of characteristics is almost endless (age, gender, occupation, etc.) and comprises the first set, the selection variable …show more content…
Jay Schulman and Dr. Walter Abbott confirmed that juror characteristics can be used to predict juror attitudes, as long as validated correlations existed between the juror’s identifiable characteristics and their verdict related attitudes;
SV (ASSV) indicates PV which predicts CV
The Birth of Scientific Jury Selection
Scientific jury selection was first used in 1971. It has been further developed and updated over the years as additional survey data has become available. Scientific jury selection techniques are far from new; it was the application of the techniques to the challenges of jury selection that was new. The necessary mathematical techniques were developed in the 1800’s and the attitude-scaling techniques by the late 1920’s. Surprisingly, the collaboration of lawyers and social scientists in the scientific selection of juries did not take place until the case of the Harrisburg Seven.
In 1971, Father Philip Berrington and seven other antiwar protestors were arrested and charged by the federal government with conspiracy. The trial was to be held in a politically conservative town, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Dr. Jay Schulman, a
Clarence Darrow
Overview
Successful investors, gamblers, and coaches play the odds whenever they can. Whether that involves charting economic trends, knowing the odds when playing craps, or selecting plays and/or players based on their “stats”, it is understood that these methods are an improvement over intuition. Intuition currently guides most trial lawyers confronted with the task of selecting a jury. In 1990, Kleinmuntz wrote that intuitive judgment is subject to random fluctuation and, therefore, to decreased reliability and accuracy. RevisMedia has developed a set of algorithms that goes beyond intuition and provides an empirical ranking of jurors, allowing trial lawyers …show more content…
Some are very talented in the selection of jurors, and some are not” (Bermant, 1977). This performance variability across lawyers undermines the theory that when two well-matched parties eliminate unfavorable jurors, the result is a panel of conscientious and neutral citizens. It appears that this is an adversarial myth. The two sides of a dispute are rarely equally matched in their selection skills. As such, the resulting jury is more likely to have a pre-disposed bias in either direction than was the full panel that preceded the voir dire.
Scientific Jury Selection
Consider that:
A. The dangerous juror is the juror who is more likely to return an unfavorable decision, and
B. A favorable jury is “selected” by the elimination of dangerous jurors through peremptory challenges and challenges for cause
The problem is to recognize the dangerous juror to be challenged. This is a prediction issue where there is limited information about each potential juror. Successful prediction requires information about four distinct sets of information.
1. The first set is that the basis for meaningful selection must come from some identifiable characteristic of the individual juror. This list of characteristics is almost endless (age, gender, occupation, etc.) and comprises the first set, the selection variable …show more content…
Jay Schulman and Dr. Walter Abbott confirmed that juror characteristics can be used to predict juror attitudes, as long as validated correlations existed between the juror’s identifiable characteristics and their verdict related attitudes;
SV (ASSV) indicates PV which predicts CV
The Birth of Scientific Jury Selection
Scientific jury selection was first used in 1971. It has been further developed and updated over the years as additional survey data has become available. Scientific jury selection techniques are far from new; it was the application of the techniques to the challenges of jury selection that was new. The necessary mathematical techniques were developed in the 1800’s and the attitude-scaling techniques by the late 1920’s. Surprisingly, the collaboration of lawyers and social scientists in the scientific selection of juries did not take place until the case of the Harrisburg Seven.
In 1971, Father Philip Berrington and seven other antiwar protestors were arrested and charged by the federal government with conspiracy. The trial was to be held in a politically conservative town, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Dr. Jay Schulman, a