The Imagined Juror
The Imagined Juror

Author: Anna Offit

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2022-08-02

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 147980858X

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Examines the outsized influence of jurors on prosecutorial discretion Thanks to television and popular media, the jury is deeply embedded in the American public’s imagination of the legal system. For the country’s federal prosecutors, however, jurors have become an increasingly rare sight. Today, in fact, less than 2% of their cases will proceed to an actual jury trial. And yet, when federal prosecutors describe their jobs and what the profession means to them, the jury is a central theme. Anna Offit’s The Imagined Juror examines the counterintuitive importance of jurors in federal prosecutors’ work at a moment when jury trials are statistically in decline. Drawing on extensive field research among federal prosecutors, the book represents “the first ethnographic study of US attorneys,” according to legal scholar Annelise Riles. It describes a world of legal practice in which jurors are frequently summoned—as make-believe audiences for proposed arguments, hypothetical evaluators of evidence, and invented decision-makers who would work together to reach a verdict. Even the question of moving forward with a prosecution often hinges on how federal prosecutors assume a jury will react to elements of the case—an exercise where the perspectives of the public are imagined and incorporated into every stage of trial preparation. Based on these findings, Offit argues that the decreasing number of jury trials at the federal level has not eliminated the influence of the jury but altered it. As imaginary figures, jurors continue to play an important and understudied role in shaping the work and professional identities of federal prosecutors. At the same time, imaginary jurors are not real jurors, and prosecutors at times caricature the public by leaning on stereotypes or preconceived and simplistic ideas about how laypeople think. Imagined jurors, it turns out, are a critical, if flawed, resource for introducing lay perspective into the legal process. As Offit shows, recentering laypeople and achieving the democratic promise of our legal system will require renewed commitment to the jury trial and juries that reflect the diversity of the American public.

We, the Jury
We, the Jury

Author: Greg Beratlis

Publisher: Phoenix Books

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 161467163X

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We, the Jury is the dramatic story of seven jurors, who convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner, despite a series of internal battles that brought the first major murder trial of the 21st century to the brink of a mistrial. The Peterson jurors argued and disagreed but eventually bonded to seal the fate of the icy killer who dumped his victims into the bullet-gray waters of San Francisco Bay. The seven jurors of We, the Jury were seven average Americans who never imagined the horrors they would face or the phantoms that would haunt them after they convicted the enigmatic murderer and recommended that he be put to death. This is the story of how the American jury system worked after being battered by critics for the way it functioned in the trials of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson. Unlike the jurors in those trials, who second-guessed themselves, the Peterson jurors do not question their decisions. It wasn’t one thing that condemned Scott Peterson, it was everything.

We the Jury--
We the Jury--

Author: Godfrey D. Lehman

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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In We the Jury ... veteran jury watcher and historian Godfrey D. Lehman demonstrates the validity of the American constitutional republic, in which the people hold sovereign power and express their will more effectively by delivering verdicts of conscience than by voting. The jury, when it is independent, nullifies unjust laws, topples kings and, as a representative of the governed, holds the governors in thrall to its consent. The jury is Abraham Lincoln's "government of, by, and for the people" in operation.

American Juries
American Juries

Author: Neil Vidmar

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2009-09-25

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1615929878

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This monumental and comprehensive volume reviews more than 50 years of empirical research on civil and criminal juries and returns a verdict that strongly supports the jury system.

Inside Jurors' Minds
Inside Jurors' Minds

Author: Carol B. Anderson

Publisher: Aspen Publishing

Published: 2012-03-02

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1601563094

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This book discusses the conscious and unconscious psychological factors that influence juror decision-making. Jurors inevitably rely on the same "thinking tools" at trial that they use to solve problems and make decisions in their everyday lives, which makes it almost impossible for them to divorce instinct and emotion from decision-making. Their fight-or-flight reflexes are stimulated not only by predators but by information that makes them fear for their personal safety—even if the threatening information is something they merely imagine. Because self-preservation is a primal instinct, jurors tend to unconsciously respond by disregarding or altering the "threatening" evidence. Information that conflicts with their personal beliefs and biases often elicits a similar response. Therefore, what jurors hear and remember about a case will inevitably be a reflection of who they are, what they value, and what their life experiences have been. Because jurors unconsciously weigh information in a hierarchical fashion, the "hierarchy of juror decision-making" can serve as a blueprint for creating strategies to counteract the most common thinking errors that can skew jurors' perceptions of the case. This is a valuable weapon that should be in every trial lawyer's arsenal.

Criminal Juries in the 21st Century
Criminal Juries in the 21st Century

Author: Cynthia Najdowski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-20

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0190658126

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The jury is often hailed as one of the most important symbols of American democracy. Yet much has changed since the Sixth Amendment in 1791 first guaranteed all citizens the right to a jury trial in criminal prosecutions. Experts now have a much more nuanced understanding of the psychological implications of being a juror, and advances in technology and neuroscience make the work of rendering a decision in a criminal trial more complicated than ever before. Criminal Juries in the 21st Century explores the increasingly wide gulf between criminal trial law, procedures, and policy, and what scientific findings have revealed about the human experience of serving as a juror. Readers will contemplate myriad legal issues that arise when jurors decide criminal cases as well as cutting-edge psychological research that can be used to not only understand the performance and experience of the contemporary criminal jury, but also to improve it. Chapter authors grapple with a number of key issues at the intersection of psychology and law, guiding readers to consider everything from the factors that influence the initial selection of the jury to how jurors cope with and reflect on their service after the trial ends. Together the chapters provide a unique view of criminal juries with the goal of increasing awareness of a broad range of current issues in great need of theoretical, empirical, and legal attention. Criminal Juries in the 21st Century will identify how social science research can inform law and policy relevant to improving justice within the jury system, and is an essential resource for those who directly study jury decision making as well as social scientists generally, attorneys, judges, students, and even future jurors.

The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory
The Rhetoric of Seeing in Attic Forensic Oratory

Author: Peter A. O'Connell

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 147731170X

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In ancient Athenian courts of law, litigants presented their cases before juries of several hundred citizens. Their speeches effectively constituted performances that used the speakers’ appearances, gestures, tones of voice, and emotional appeals as much as their words to persuade the jury. Today, all that remains of Attic forensic speeches from the fifth and fourth centuries BCE are written texts, but, as Peter A. O’Connell convincingly demonstrates in this innovative book, a careful study of the speeches’ rhetoric of seeing can bring their performative aspect to life. Offering new interpretations of a wide range of Athenian forensic speeches, including detailed discussions of Demosthenes’ On the False Embassy, Aeschines’ Against Ktesiphon, and Lysias’ Against Andocides, O’Connell shows how litigants turned the jurors’ scrutiny to their advantage by manipulating their sense of sight. He analyzes how the litigants’ words work together with their movements and physical appearance, how they exploit the Athenian preference for visual evidence through the language of seeing and showing, and how they plant images in their jurors’ minds. These findings, which draw on ancient rhetorical theories about performance, seeing, and knowledge as well as modern legal discourse analysis, deepen our understanding of Athenian notions of visuality. They also uncover parallels among forensic, medical, sophistic, and historiographic discourses that reflect a shared concern with how listeners come to know what they have not seen.

Expert Evidence and Scientific Proof in Criminal Trials
Expert Evidence and Scientific Proof in Criminal Trials

Author: Paul Roberts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 1351567403

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Forensic science evidence and expert witness testimony play an increasingly prominent role in modern criminal proceedings. Science produces powerful evidence of criminal offending, but has also courted controversy and sometimes contributed towards miscarriages of justice. The twenty-six articles and essays reproduced in this volume explore the theoretical foundations of modern scientific proof and critically consider the practical issues to which expert evidence gives rise in contemporary criminal trials. The essays are prefaced by a substantial new introduction which provides an overview and incisive commentary contextualising the key debates. The volume begins by placingforensic science in interdisciplinary focus, with contributions from historical, sociological, Science and Technology Studies (STS), philosophical and jurisprudential perspectives. This is followed by closer examination of the role of forensic science and other expert evidence in criminal proceedings, exposing enduring tensions and addressing recent controversies in the relationship between science and criminal law. A third set of contributions considers the practical challenges of interpreting and communicating forensic science evidence. This perennial battle continues to be fought at the intersection between the logic of scientific inference and the psychology of the fact-finder‘scommon sense reasoning. Finally, the volume‘s fourth group of essays evaluates the (limited) success of existing procedural reforms aimed at improving the reception of expert testimony in criminal adjudication, and considers future prospects for institutional renewal - with a keen eye to comparative law models and experiences, success stories and cautionary tales.