NCJ Number
130673
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 15 Issue: 2 Dated: special issue (April 1991) Pages: 165-182
Date Published
1991
Length
18 pages
Annotation
The concept of jury nullification, in which a jury can return a verdict based on common conscience and emotion rather than evidence and the law, is used as a filter to examine legal and behavioral assumptions about jury power and performance. The legal, historical, and behavioral contexts discussed here reflect a spectrum of American opinion, one extreme of which believes that juries lack predictability and rationality in their decisions while the other extreme holds that juries reflect an historical competence in applying common sense to conflicted and ambiguous cases.
Abstract
The article traces the concept of criminal and civil law nullification into the 20th-century and the power of contemporary juries in both types of trials and describes empirical research into jury behavior. The issues of trial complexity and jury competence are also discussed. The authors suggest that an increase in solicitude for the criminal jury should relieve concern about jury competence. Measures include increasing jury diversity, improving written instructions, and treating the jury with candor and trust. Because the place of the civil jury in constitutional law is more tentative, more research is needed into ways of improving civil jury performance. 65 references (Author abstract modified)