Inside the Jury

• NCJ Number: 92159
• Author(s): R Hastie; S D Penrod; N Pennington
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 284 pages
• Sale Source: Harvard University Press
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The work provides a direct assessment of the quality of jury deliberation, the nature of the decision process, the biases of different types of jurors, and the level of agreement reached with different types of juries.

Abstract

On the basis of their observations, the authors show how well jurors remember crucial trial information, interpret the law and the judge's instructions, and handle internal problems of dissension as they move toward consensus. A chapter is devoted to explanations of individual differences, among jurors, including demographic characteristics, attitudes, and personality factors. The authors also test the possibility that the quality of jury performance changes with modifications in the jury's size or the decision rule used (unanimous versus majority rule). Tables, figures, name and subject indexes, court cases, an appended discussion of statistical analysis, and about 480 references are provided. (Publisher summary modified)