Scientific Jury Selection - Efficacy

Efficacy

Although advocates and practitioners of scientific jury selection claim the practice is overwhelmingly effective at choosing juries that will render the desired verdict, its true effect is often more difficult to discern. Part of this difficulty is in duplicating the conditions of a real trial. In one experiment, two kinds of shadow juries watched a trial and rendered a verdict. The results indicated that the juries were substantially different, but that this difference was likely due to the two experimental juries’ knowledge that they were not deciding an actual verdict, prompting a lower burden of proof.

Another simplified experiment indicated that lawyers trained in a systematic selection method made better predictions of juror verdicts in two of four cases – the sale of illegal drugs and a military court-martial (the other two cases were murder and drunk driving). The systematic method was more effective in those two cases where the predictive relationships between demographic variables and attitudes/verdicts were strongest, and least effective where such predictive relationships were weak or nonexistent.

Some academic researchers argue that the actual efficacy of SJS is obscured by poor research methodology. Specifically, demographic characteristics used to predict juror attitudes and juror verdicts may not hold true across all kinds of cases. For example, men convict more frequently than women in some types of criminal trials but less frequently in others. Besides this, demographic characteristics are often less predictive than the attitudes jurors hold; for example attitudes towards rape are better verdict-predictors than gender in rape trials.

The actual efficacy of jury consultants may not be very important because the demographic composition of the jury has little effect on the verdict it renders, usually causing only a 5%–15% variance in verdicts. The evidence presented at trial has far more impact on what the verdict will be. As Kressel and Kressel indicate, "when the evidence is strong, nothing else matters much" and even when the evidence is ambiguous, demographic characteristics of jurors are a relatively minor influence. Some researchers argue that a significant improvement in jury selection, however small, may be worthwhile when the stakes are high, like for a defendant accused of a capital crime or a corporation that stands to lose millions of dollars in a civil suit.

A popular "proof is in the pudding" argument is often made, especially by consultants themselves; the argument goes that since attorneys and clients pay such high fees (sometimes as much as $500,000) for consultants, their services must be effective. Others argue that most attorneys are unaware of the social science research on the topic.

The effectiveness of scientific jury selection has also been comparison tested against other methods, such as attorney folklore and intuition. For trial attorneys, justifying the expense of SJS is contingent upon an improvement of their own jury selection abilities. Several empirical studies of traditional jury selection (by attorneys acting alone) have indicated that it and SJS are about equally effective.