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Jury Competence

Many observers praise the abilities of juries in making decisions in both criminal and civil cases. Others, however, criticize the competence of juries, arguing that juries are not effective legal decision makers. Psychologists have conducted a variety of studies to evaluate how juries make decisions, using simulation and field experiments, archival data, and interviews of jurors and judges. Overall, juries show a relatively high degree of competence—jurors take their decision-making tasks seriously, understand the nature of the adversary process, attempt to make decisions that achieve many (sometimes conflicting) goals simultaneously, and perform at a level that is similar to that of judges. However, there are clear areas in which jury performance could be improved, and a variety of procedural mechanisms have been developed to assist juries in their decision-making tasks.

Models of Juror Decision Making

Research has shown that jurors attend to the trial evidence presented and show relatively high levels of comprehension and recall of the facts at issue. Mathematical models of juror decision making—i.e., Bayesian models, algebraic models, and stochastic process models—posit that jurors begin with a preliminary judgment and update that judgment as evidence is introduced throughout the trial. In contrast, the “story model” of juror decision making is an explanation-based model of juror decision making that contends that jurors construct a narrative story that best accounts for the (often conflicting) trial evidence and then select the verdict option that best fits that narrative.

Jurors' Use of Evidence

In reaching their verdicts, jurors endeavor to make decisions that account for the evidence and that follow the law. Research has shown that in doing so, jurors do tend to make use of the evidence that the law defines to be relevant to their decisions. For example, jurors use evidence about offenders' conduct in determining criminal guilt and civil liability and evidence about the severity of plaintiffs' injuries in setting compensation. Indeed, the substantive trial evidence turns out to be the best predictor of verdicts.

Extralegal Evidence

In some instances, however, jurors may use information that has been held to be legally irrelevant. First, research has demonstrated that jurors sometimes use information that is related to the case but that is not part of the legally admissible evidence. For instance, jurors have difficulty ignoring evidence to which they are exposed but that is ruled to be inadmissible by a judge—even when they are explicitly told to disregard such evidence. In addition, jurors are influenced by information about a case that that they obtain through the media—pretrial publicity—but that is not part of the evidence admitted in the court.

Second, jurors sometimes use evidence that is appropriately offered for one purpose to inform another decision for which that evidence is legally irrelevant. For example, evidence about a criminal defendant's prior record is not admissible to establish guilt, but it may be admitted to discredit the defendant's testimony. However, jurors have difficulty in limiting their use of such information. In the same way, jurors have been shown to conflate their liability and damages decisions, using evidence that is relevant to one in making decisions about the other. Similarly, there is evidence that jurors take into account their assessment of a plaintiff's own fault in determining the level of damage that plaintiff has suffered. Because these decisions are supposed to be made separately and then combined by the judge, this can result in a “double discounting” of the plaintiff's damages.

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