Questions About the Jury: What Trial Consultants Should Know About Jury Decision Making

Abstract

Although this chapter cannot possibly delve into all of the research devoted to the jury, we would like to highlight some of the useful knowledge gathered during the course of psycholegal research that has a direct bearing on trial consulting. Part One probes the broader areas of jury research, briefly describing some of the research methodologies often used to study the decision-making capabilities of jurors. Part Two focuses exclusively on focus groups and mock jury simulations, two of the most prominent tools psycholegal scholars use to study jury decision making. Here we highlight some of the ways that mock jury research is relevant to trial consulting work, such as how research can help the consultant to plea-bargain or settle a case, or how research can help attorneys with presentation strategies. Part Three focuses on presenting evidence to the jury panel, highlighting the benefits and drawbacks of using paper and pencil vignettes as opposed to video vignettes or live attorney presentations. In this section, we also focus on factors such as realism and consequentiality in jury research. In Part Four, we present information to help consultants decide the kinds of participants to use in the course of their research. We focus on how to find these mock jurors, how to recruit them, and how to cope with the gaps that exist between mock-juror and actual-juror decision making. Part Five focuses on dependent variables, providing information on the kinds of questionnaires that are available to researchers and assessing the involvement of both juror and researcher characteristics. Part five also analyzes the tools available for interpreting the data. Finally, Part six focuses on the ethical issues surrounding jury research.