CONVICTION PRONENESS AS A PREDICTOR OF SWORN JUROR DECISIONS (JURY SELECTION, SCIENTIFIC).
Item
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Title
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CONVICTION PRONENESS AS A PREDICTOR OF SWORN JUROR DECISIONS (JURY SELECTION, SCIENTIFIC).
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Identifier
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AAI8423052
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identifier
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8423052
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Creator
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BAKER, ELI.
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Contributor
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Robert Buckhout
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Date
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1984
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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Scientific jury selection is the application of social science knowledge and technology to the courtroom trial. Seemingly successful, but never empirically tested, there are questions concerning the efficacy of this technique. The substantive content of jury research has been developed primarily through the use of the jury paradigm under experimental conditions. Poor replicas of actual trial conditions have generated conflicting and questionable conclusions. Moreover, sworn jurors are not randomly selected from the general population, and research conducted with samples of the general population produce results not applicable to actual sworn jurors who have been chosen through ordinary courtroom routines.;This study analyzed data from questionnaires returned by 365 sworn jurors who had actually sat on criminal trials immediately prior to their responses at the Federal Court, Eastern District of New York. These jurors were randomly split into exploratory and validation samples. A conviction score was generated as a function of the respondent jurors' reported pre-deliberation vote and the vote breakdown of the juries of which they were members. A conviction proneness proxy was created from the attitude questions. Stepwise regressions and other exploratory procedures were used to derive a prediction equation of conviction proneness.;This study demonstrated that although a stable conviction proneness proxy can be derived from demographic data and attitude data not related to a specific case, it cannot reliably predict the conviction behavior of real jurors across samples, r = .09, one-taled p > .10. Furthermore, the conviction behavior of the real jurors in the validation sample could not be predicted from the equation developed in the exploratory sample despite the inclusion of actual trial related variables, r = .09, one-tailed p > .10. Finally, a fundamental assumption of scientific jury selection that there is a predictable relationship between juror conviction proneness and juror conviction behavior remains uncorroborated by a non-significant correlation for the two measures used in this study, r = .06, p > .10.;The failure to predict the behavior of sworn jurors using scientific jury selection techniques suggests that these techniques do not help attorneys predict juror verdicts in ordinary criminal trials.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
