Research on jury decision making

The social science research on jury decision-making is voluminous and cannot be reviewed on this website.  Since it is rare for researchers to have the opportunity to observe real juries deliberating due to the private nature of deliberations, most of the research relates to mock juries.  For a complete review of the social science literature through 2001, see Dennis J. Devine, et al, "Jury Decision-Making: 45 Years of Empirical Research on Deliberating Groups," 7 Psychology, Pub. Pol. & L. 622 (2001). This article identifies four emerging themes from the research:

• Jurors rarely make decisions exactly in the manner contemplated by the jury instructions.

• Personal characteristics are not a very powerful predictor of decision making.

• Jurors are most susceptible to influence from  nonevidence factors when the evidence does not clearly favor one side.

• Deliberation processes do sometimes affect jury decision making.

The legal literature on jury decision-making is likewise voluminous.  For most of the articles on jury decision-making in legal periodicals since 2000, click here to go to the “Decision making by juries” portion of the bibliography elsewhere on this Web site.