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Quick question: for jury selection, do trial lawyers used a statistically tested line of inquiry for prospective jurors, or is it just seat-of-the-pants, intuit

Quick question: for jury selection, do trial lawyers used a statistically tested line of inquiry for prospective jurors, or is it just seat-of-the-pants, intuition based selection?

rayiner 9y ago
They hire jury consultants, who do those things.
- gargarplex 9y ago
  And the jury consultants, in turn, consult statistical tables. For example, one dimension they look at is authoritarianism. A person is deemed "authoritarian" if they are likely to side with the State in a criminal trial. I helped my buddy, who is an owner of a jury consulting firm, port one of the statistical tables to a ruby model. Here's the code, if you're curious. https://gist.github.com/zackster/ac3bca42c441f16cbf2b4895fdbb2abb https://gist.github.com/zackster/ac3bca42c441f16cbf2b4895fdb... We wanted to build software to democratize the jury selection process (and bring justice to all, not just those who could afford expensive jury consultants) but the marketing process was kind of challenging and the lawyers we reached out to were unresponsive. Also, jury consultants want to keep this knowledge a trade secret in order to justify their expensive fees despite these statistical tables being available for purchase by anyone who knows where to look.
Digory 9y ago
Somewhere in between. In many federal cases, there is little "picking" allowed. And where picking is allowed, it's mostly intuition. In large cases, jury consultants have typically been hired to use their intuition, with a scientific-sounding gloss, so the lawyers and corporate managers have someone to blame if something goes wrong. They were famous for proposing questions that were supposed to tip you off to something important, like "Does anyone here regularly fill out a crossword puzzle?" Given the tiny samples, it was difficult to have scientific questions, or to prove that the questions were bunk. (I am less jaded about trial consultants, who deal with argumentation, compared to the 'jury consultant' industry -- which famously gave us Dr. Phil). In today's mega-cases, the money is spent on rapid profiling of the potential jurors' actual opinions, using their public-facing social media. There's still lots of armchair psychology, but not as much based on bullcrap questions.
- posterboy 9y ago
  The crossword puzzle question as quoted could be a logical/grammatical trick-question, because most people who know they don't don't know though if any one of all of them does.

Quick question: for jury selection, do trial lawyers used a statistically tested line of inquiry for prospective jurors, or is it just seat-of-the-pants, intuition based selection?

rayiner 9y ago

They hire jury consultants, who do those things.

gargarplex 9y ago
And the jury consultants, in turn, consult statistical tables. For example, one dimension they look at is authoritarianism. A person is deemed "authoritarian" if they are likely to side with the State in a criminal trial. I helped my buddy, who is an owner of a jury consulting firm, port one of the statistical tables to a ruby model. Here's the code, if you're curious. https://gist.github.com/zackster/ac3bca42c441f16cbf2b4895fdbb2abb https://gist.github.com/zackster/ac3bca42c441f16cbf2b4895fdb... We wanted to build software to democratize the jury selection process (and bring justice to all, not just those who could afford expensive jury consultants) but the marketing process was kind of challenging and the lawyers we reached out to were unresponsive. Also, jury consultants want to keep this knowledge a trade secret in order to justify their expensive fees despite these statistical tables being available for purchase by anyone who knows where to look.

Digory 9y ago

Somewhere in between. In many federal cases, there is little "picking" allowed. And where picking is allowed, it's mostly intuition. In large cases, jury consultants have typically been hired to use their intuition, with a scientific-sounding gloss, so the lawyers and corporate managers have someone to blame if something goes wrong. They were famous for proposing questions that were supposed to tip you off to something important, like "Does anyone here regularly fill out a crossword puzzle?" Given the tiny samples, it was difficult to have scientific questions, or to prove that the questions were bunk. (I am less jaded about trial consultants, who deal with argumentation, compared to the 'jury consultant' industry -- which famously gave us Dr. Phil). In today's mega-cases, the money is spent on rapid profiling of the potential jurors' actual opinions, using their public-facing social media. There's still lots of armchair psychology, but not as much based on bullcrap questions.

posterboy 9y ago
The crossword puzzle question as quoted could be a logical/grammatical trick-question, because most people who know they don't don't know though if any one of all of them does.