PSYC 2400: Jury Decision-Making

Contents

1. 1. The Right to a Jury in Canada
2. 2. Three Functions of a Jury
3. 3. Characteristics of a Jury
4. 4. Four Sources of Jury Bias (SING)

1. The Right to a Jury in Canada

• Summary Offences: (aka misdemeanour) small crimes that result in fines and community services. You do not have the right to a jury.
• Indictable Offences: (aka felonies) serious crimes such as murder and rape. You do have a right to a juror.
• Hybrid Offences: a combination of the above.

2. Three Functions of a Jury

1. Decide facts from trial evidence – to determine what happened; they’re not supposed to use facts from publicity or other biases.
2. Educate the citizens (jurors) about our legal system.
3. Community consciousness – to reflect the ideas and beliefs of the community.
   Jury Nullification: where the jury decides to ignore the law when making their decisions (Morgan Taller)
4. Do not sentence

3. Characteristics of a Jury

We’re supposed to have the follow characteristics in a jury:

1. Representativeness: we’re ideally trying to represent the demographics of the population (where the crime occurred) by picking their names from the phone book or voter’s list.
• Random selection from community
• Representative of community
• Why this is an ideal: certain segments will be excluded (ex. no phone or not a voter); politicians, lawyers, judges, police officers, doctors, law students and emergency personnel cannot be on a jury. We’re also limited in how representative we can be by only having 12 people.
2. Impartiality:
• Prejudice (attitudinal) – Canadian Justice System assumes that everyone has this bias.
• Discrimination (behavioural) – CJS assumes that we can put safeguards in place to prevent our prejudices from turning into discrimination. Research says those safeguards don’t work.

Presumption of impartiality in Canada: below are some safeguards we have in place to reduce bias

• Limits on pre-trial publicity: though we can still access news from the rest of the world.
• Limits on discussions by jurors: they cannot talk about their deliberations with anyone before or after the case.
• 12 person juries: this helps to reduce bias.
• Reminders about sworn oaths

Research: two issues are present… (Kramer et al.)
Three groups were provided different information about the trial beforehand (control group – just information; emotionally-biased – offender has a hit-and-run on a young girl; factually-biased – offender has a previous charge) Half of each group received the biasing information immediately or 12 days before they watch the video. Half of the 6 different groups were told to ignore the information they received before the video.

• Biased Information Pre-Trial: receiving biased information before the trial can increase guilty verdicts (especially emotionally-biased information).
• Instructions to Ignore Publicity: instructions given to jurors to ignore pre-trial publicity do not significantly affect the verdicts.

Three Solutions to Overcoming Partiality:

1. Adjournment: used if there is evidence that negative attitudes are present among juries. Trial will be postponed until a later date, which we assume reduces the bias. The delay in time may also cause people to forget information.
2. Change of Venue: trial can be moved to a different location in order to decrease the likelihood of biases.
3. Challenge for Cause: where you determine if potential jury members have a bias by having them fill out standard questionnaires. In Canada, you’re only allowed to ask relevant questions about the case.
   

4. Four Sources of Jury Bias (SING)

Below are 4 attitudinal biases identified by the Supreme Court:

• Specific Prejudice: where you have a specific attitude about the specific case in question.
  Example: a prejudice against the victim or defendant (can be because of media).
• Interest Prejudice: where you have a direct interest in the case.
  Example: jury is related to victim or defendant; business interests.
• Normative Prejudice: where you have a community sentiment that affects their opinion of the case.
  Example: Liverpool football player raped a girl – when the case was coming to a close, people sent death threats to the jury (they ruled Not Guilty).
• Generic Prejudice: where you have beliefs about groups of people or classes of crime.
  Example: jury is biased against abortion or against race.

This is unfinished ATM.