The Sixth Amendment of the U.S Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial, which will be heard by an impartial jury. There are many forms of bias that can, and do, affect a jury member’s decision of guilt or innocence. An impartial jury cannot exist if a jury member is subjected to outside influences that would sway their vote. A jury member can also be biased due to their own values and morals. Prejudice is a form of bias that has flooded the news. These are just a few of the many types of bias that can affect a jury’s decision in a trial. With so many types of bias, is it possible to have an impartial jury?
The legal system has a responsibility to do everything possible to prevent jury bias. The first step is during jury selection, voir dire. Jurors are asked questions that might directly or indirectly disclose information that would indicate bias. A potential juror whose father was a police officer would not be a good juror for a murder trial if the victim was also a police officer. The defense has a responsibility to weed out this type of individual in order to provide their client with the best defense possible. However, it is possible for biased individuals to slip through, which jeopardizes the fairness of the trial. Prospective jurors might conceal information for reasons including the fear of being frowned upon.
Once the jury has been selected, bias may still be a factor. Although a verdict must be based on evidence, outside information can influence a juror’s opinion. In the trial of Charles Manson, who ordered the slaughter of seven innocent people in 1969, Manson held up a newspaper with the headline “Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares.” This outside information, based on the former president’s statement to reporters, had the potential to influence the jurors. The implication was, if the president said Manson was guilty, he must be. Judge Older denied the motion for a mistrial after questioning each juror to determine if they had been influenced (Smith, 2002).
The media can be a huge source of outside information which can result in jury bias. This is especially true in cases involving celebrities and high profile cases. It would be extremely difficult to find twelve jurors that could serve without bias. One such case was the trial of George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was accused of shooting a seventeen year old, Trayvon Martin, at point-blank range in 2012. The jury of six found Zimmerman not guilty and questions of racial bias were raised. The media frenzy and public opinion made finding an unbiased jury difficult. Another example is the infamous case of O.J. Simpson. Simpson was accused of murdering his former wife and her friend in 1994. Simpson was a famous NFL star and had appeared in commercials and movies. Fans of Simpson, football fans, and fans of the movies in which he appeared could be biased. Attorneys would also have to locate jurors who had not seen the famous footage of Simpson being chased by the police for an hour along I-405. The media coverage affected the trial in many ways, including turning the trial into a race issue. If jurors watched the news or read a newspaper, this could have had an effect on their decision.
Generic prejudice is described as possessing general attitudes that interfere with an individual’s ability to evaluate evidence without bias (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Detecting such bias is the responsibility of the criminal justice system during the jury selection process. However, individuals must also be aware of their own biases. Without this awareness, an individual may not realize that their decisions, such as a jury vote, are influenced. When a person’s life hangs in the balance, one person on a jury of twelve can make the difference between impartial and unjust.
References:
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Smith, Thomas. “Charles Manson Trial: 1970-71.” Great American Trials. 2002. Retrieved March 07, 2014 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3498200242.html
I think it’s interesting to focus on whether impartial juries really do exist. I would like you to take into consideration not only whether they’re prejudiced or not, but also what they’re doing there. Many jury members don’t want to be serving in the juries, and yet they still do. This is of course, because jury duty I mandatory, and the jury members don’t get to leave until a verdict is reached, and if even one person refuses to go with the ruling, they have to stay until everyone agrees. Many people wouldn’t want to stay in jury duty too much longer than they normally have to, and so taking that into consideration, do you think that it’s a common occurrence for member of a jury to jut “go with the flow” and vote for what others are voting for?
Groupthink is a very common occurrence in many situations, and when one is in a large group, there’s a big chance that they won’t be paying as much attention to what they themselves feel as what other group members are feeling (Beebee & Masteron, 1986). Perhaps the jury members would go as far as trusting the rest of the group members more than their own instincts and beliefs.
Reference
Beebe, S. A., & Masterson, J. T. (1986).Communicating in small groups: principles and practices (2nd ed.). Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman.
You describe the inner working of the legal system in the United States. You discuss jury bias and the responsibility the legal system has on preventing bias (during jury selection). Additionally, you note the different factors that can affect jury bias such as the media and generic prejudice.
Schneider et al. (2012) states that the strength of a jury is its impartiality. The varying perspective of 6 to 12 citizens instead of reliance of a single judge is better (Schneider et al., 2012, pp.267). Similar to a jury, the Supreme Court is made up of more than one individual to “judge” a case. The Supreme has 9 judges. The hope is that both a jury and the Supreme Court judges will be impartial and free of bias. I would like to add to the conversation by discussing how technicalities can also be a factor in a legal case.
A technicality can change the outcome a case. Take the case of Goodyear versus Liddie Leadbetter. Mrs. Leadbetter was an employee at Goodyear for twenty years. Mrs. Leadbetter retired and shortly filed a suit against Goodyear. Mrs. Leadbetter filed a claim of discrimination of pay. Mrs. Leadbetter claimed that her pay when compared to her male peers was less than it should have been for the 20 years she was with Goodyear. Mrs. Leadbetter added that her pay was lower because of her gender. Mrs. Leadbetter filed a sex discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII has a federal statute that bars discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, and religion (Barkacs and Barkacs 2009).. Mrs. Leadbetter proved to a Federal District jury that Goodyear had discriminated and won punitive damages, back pay of about two hundred thousand dollars, punitive damages of over three million dollars but was reduced to three hundred thousand because Title VII (the statue that governs these types of law suits) caps damages at three hundred thousand dollars. Then, the case went through the appeals process (U.S. Appeals court) where the case was thrown out because she had not filed her claim within the 180 days that the law requires (Barkacs 2009). To bring a suit under Title VII a person must file a “charge” with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) within the 180 day time frame. Then, the case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decided on the pay discrimination (5 to 4) in favor of Goodyear versus Ms. Leadbetter (Barkacs 2009).
When the case went through the appeals process (at the U.S. Appeals court) where the case was thrown out because she had not filed her claim within the 180 days that the law requires seems like an unfair technicality. Good year used it as a defense and won the Supreme Court’s favor because of the 180 day rule. I think that at the very minimum Ms Leadbetter should have retained back pay of about two hundred thousand dollars and punitive damages of three hundred thousand because she did prove to a Federal District jury that Goodyear had discriminated. I think after twenty years of discrimination it is fair. The Court made it much more difficult for employees to sue for pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
References:
Barkacs, L. L., & Barkacs, C. B. (2009). THE TIME IS RIGHT – OR IS IT? THE SUPREME COURT SPEAKS IN LEDBETTER V. GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO. Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 12(1), 121-127. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216247196?accountid=13158
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.).
Finding a jury that is completely impartial I can imagine is a difficult task. As people, we would like to think and believe every juror selected is impartial and representation of the community as a whole. Sadly, I believe this is not true. Although the jurors are interviewed during jury selection to prevent bias, I feel interviewing is not sufficient enough. Ultimately, these individuals have the fate of one’s life in their hands. Jury selection should go further than interviewing. Bias and prejudices can be further factor. People have these preconceived notions that simply cannot be controlled.
In the post, many highly publicized cases were mentioned. For example, the Zimmerman case was highly publicized. Many people many argue that the jurors were racially biased; same situation with the Casey Anthony case. I’ve heard a numerous occasions “If that was a poor, black girl…” Many people say there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her and some may say there was racial bias. Then, there’s the famous O.J. Simpson trial. Simpson was a famous NFL player, rich, and had an amazing defense team. As the post addresses, media coverage had severe impact on this case. People directly involved in this case could be biased in many ways.
Overall, bias and prejudice will always be a great concern in criminal systems. It’s up to the legal and justice systems to develop methods to reduce these errors as much and often as possible.
The process of finding jurors has always been interesting to me. Although there are steps to take to eliminate bias like you mentioned, it seems like it can be difficult to find jurors that don’t have some sort of bias. Even though in the court of law an individual is to be honest and not lie, but that fact is that people tend to lie. Who is to say that someone who may be racist or prejudice claims that they are not and continue with the case? Or perhaps maybe they don’t realize their own generic bias which could ultimately have an effect on the verdict.
I guess it is because I watch the news more, but I’ve noticed that the media seems to be very involved in popular court cases, such as the Zimmerman case you mentioned. Personally I was interested in the Jodi Arias trial that got a great deal of media attention. She was convicted of murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander, however the jury could not agree on her punishment and got postponed several times. From what I understand, a new group of jurors will be presented with information and witnesses to determine her punishment. However, the amount of time between the conviction and punishment allows for media to play a role. A great deal of people become more familiar with the case which can make it difficult to find a jurors without bias.
It is important for the court system to find ways to reduce and minimize bias to the best of their ability. With that being said, do you have any other suggestions to how jury bias could potentially be reduced?
Generic prejudice, media influences and personal experience all have the capability to cause bias in a jury decision. This poses a large problem in the judicial system as the system is based on impartiality and fairness. In addition to these influences, Takada and Murata (2014) analyzed the effects of group decision making and the order of evidence. The order of evidence presented can facilitate a guilty story if it presented to jurors in a manner that brings evidence out of context (Takada & Murata, 2014). If the jury is presented with the depiction of a guilty story, the jury will be more likely to find the suspect guilty (Takada & Murata, 2014). Wolfe and Pennington (2000) set up two situations in which evidence was presented in either in story-like order or a witness-based order. The witness condition broke up the evidence of the criminal trial and allowed jurors the opportunity to put together a story line themselves. Wolfe and Pennington (2000) found order of evidence does in fact bias the jury, particularly within evidence presented in order as a story.
In addition to order of evidence, Takada and Murata (2014) evaluated the influence of group decision-making in a court ruling. In chapter 10, Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts (2012) explained the major influence that the group environment has on individuals and decision making processes (pp. 237 – 242). When individuals engage in group deliberation, their verdict is often more riskier than individual verdicts prior to discussion (Schneider et al., 2012). Group-decision making emphasizes a majority vote rather than accounting for each perspective individually which has its benefits and flaws. Although controversial, group decision making is believed to reduce bias within the jury due to the influence of deliberation and processing multiple aspects of information (Kaplan & Miller, 1978). However, Kerr, MacCount and Kramer (1996) believed differently- when evidence appears strongly in favor of either a guilty or innocent ruling, group decision making is unfairly biased based on majority. Takada and Murata (2014) carried out an experiment testing the effects of group decision making and bias. After exposing participants to evidence for the “case,” individual verdicts were recorded prior to the deliberation process in a group. Following the group deliberation, the verdict was recorded and researchers discovered that the deliberation phase in the group environment caused a significant change from individual verdicts (Takada & Murata, 2014). Additionally, Takada and Murata (2014) found that the order of evidence had a strong interaction with group deliberation ultimately polarizing group verdicts based on the order in which evidence was presented. Schneider et al. (2012) refer to this phenomena as “group polarization” (p. 239).
The study by Wolfe and Pennington (2000) and Takada and Murata (2014) confirm the belief that the jury is susceptible to bias. Within applied social psychology, the group deliberation environment is one that strikes great interest on jury impartiality on a court case. Schneider et al. (2012) discuss that the group environment can expose individuals to errors from the groupthink phenomena where pressures of the group cause individuals to conform to reach agreement to the concept of group polarization. Furthermore, Schneider et al. (2012) believe group environments such as that of a jury deliberation exacerbate the potential for bias in the decision making process based on, for example, heuristics (cognitive shortcuts) and confirmation bias.
Therefore, just as the media and personal influences can affect the jury so too, can the group environment cause bias within the jury and on the verdict. Perhaps, allowing jurors more time to individually evaluate the evidence and asking jurors to anonymously choose their verdict would reduce bias caused by the environment during the group deliberation. What do you think are ways to overcome this potential for group environment bias in group deliberation in order to preserve the impartiality of the jury system?
References
Kaplan, M. & Miller, L. (1978). Reducing the effects of juror bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1443-1455. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.36.12.1443.
Kerr, N., MacCoun, R., & Kramer, G. (1996). Bias in judgement: Comparing individuals and groups. Psychological Review, 103, 697-719. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.103.4.687.
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Takada, M. & Murata, K. (2014). Accentuation of bias in jury decision-making. Group Processes Intergroup Relations, 17(1), 110-1124. doi: 10.1177/1368430213490210
Wolfe, M. & Pennington, N. (2000). Memory and judgment: Availability versus explanation-based accounts. Memory and Cognition, 28, 624-634. doi:10.3758/BF03201252.