The dynamics of jury decision-making: A case study

The legal profession is replete with assertions about the relationships of social, economic, and psychological characteristics to jury verdicts. The purpose of this research was to identify and test some of these concepts. A survey of jurors serving on criminal cases was conducted which incorporated pertinent socio-economic, demographic, psychological and experiential factors. An intercorrelation matrix and a linear step-wise regression model were employed to identify those variables which showed a statistically significant relationship to a trial vote of guilty. None of the notions of attorneys regarding socio-economic characteristics had a significant relationship to jury verdicts; however, items concerning authoritarianism, religious ideology, and prior experience with courts did correlate with jury behavior.