Scientific Jury Selection
Jury Consultants
Scientific jury selection, (SJS), is the
use of social science techniques and expertise to choose favorable
juries.
Scientific jury selection typically
entails an expert's assistance in the attorney's use of peremptory
challenges to choose a favorable jury. Such experts could include
psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and even astrologers and
psychics. |
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Scientific jury selection is a
subfield of trial consulting, which contains a myriad of other
practices designed to assist attorneys/parties to win a lawsuit. These
include shadow juries, mock trials, focus groups, community
attitude surveys, and expert assistance with trial presentation.
Jury Consultants help lawyers with jury selection.
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Scientific jury selection has been
controversial because of its potential to make trials unequal and
potentially unfair. Although a number of public policy remedies have been
proposed to prohibit or neutralize SJS, none has been implemented and no
consensus exists about which remedy, if any, would be effective.
The theory behind SJS is that juror demographics predict juror
attitudes, which in turn predict verdicts. By discovering what relationships
exist between certain demographic categories and certain attitudes, and
Kassin and Wrightsman (1988) indicate that the model employed is
demographics predicts attitudes predicts verdicts. However, that attitudes
predict verdicts is taken for granted and rarely studied.
Source: Wikipedia |