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"War and Peace in the Jury Room: How Capital Juries Reach Unanimity"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new article on SSRN from Scott Sundby. Here is the abstract: Using data from the Capital Jury Project, this article takes a close look inside the jury room at the process by which capital juries reach a unanimous verdict at the penalty phase.  The process proves to be fascinating one.  The article first examines the relationship between first ballot voting patterns and the ultimate sentence, and then explores the dynamics of group interaction in achieving unanimity.  In particular, by using the jurors? own narratives, the piece delves into the psychological process and arguments through which the majority jurors persuade the holdouts to change their votes.   This process is especially intriguing because individual juries do not, of course, have any training in how to deliberate and reach unanimity, and yet they are strikingly similar from case-to-case in how they convert holdouts to the majority position (the striking differences are between the dynamics of juries that reach a verdict of death and those that return a sentence of life without parole)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 13, 2010 (boomark / email).