Hearings & Trials

Research: This research intended to learn whether a de-biasing jury instruction is effective at having jurors recognize their own implicit bias and overcome it during deliberation.

The majority of the literature points to the existence of juror bias, though there are certainly studies which either do not find effects or find that there is bias against white defendants. Mitchell et al. (2005), for example, conducted a meta-analysis and found a small but significant effect of racial bias on juror decisions. In another meta-analysis, Sweeney and Haney (1992) found that white mock-jurors give significantly longer sentences to white defendants than to black ones. Archival studies have also found that black defendants have higher conviction rates than white ones, that they tend to receive harsher sentences, and that they are more likely to be sentenced to death. Further, in a mock-juror study, Wuensch et al. (2002) found that jurors favored defendants of their in-group, particularly when victims were members of an outgroup. In his 2009 dissertation, Lytle also found that individuals display implicit bias against black defendants and that this bias reliably predicts conviction decisions.

However, some studies have found evidence contradicting these findings. In a review of past empirical research, Pfeifer (1990) came to the conclusion that there is little evidence supporting the existence of jurors’ racial bias and that many studies misinterpreted data leading to a false understanding of the state of bias. In another example, Elek and Agor (2014) failed to replicate past findings concerning racial bias and attributed this fact to jurors’ “spontaneous self-correction” in light of society’s recently egalitarian norms. Some have cited this kind of self-correction as a reason for these null effects, particularly in cases where race is salient. Shaw and Skolnick (1995) found in their study that there was an anti-White bias, which deliberation generally eliminated. Another theory suggests that studies which failed to find juror biases bear the mark of social dominance dynamics which obscure the racism at play.

There have been two empirical studies on the topic of jury instructions aimed at bias reduction, Ingriselli (2014) and Elek and Agor (2014).

What We Learned:

Research Team: Jim Greiner, Faculty Director, Access to Justice Lab; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Renee L. Danser, Associate Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships, Access to Justice Lab

Salt Lake City Justice Court (UT)

Resources:

Research: Despite the potential for pretrial incarceration, most states do not supply an attorney to advocate for a defendant’s release at this “first appearance.”[1] There is a presumption of innocence pretrial, and that presumption requires special circumstances for detention. Yet, without the assistance of counsel, defendants are ill-equipped to challenge the prospect of their own detention.[2] Thus, when considered alongside the idea that the first appearance amounts to a “trial-like confrontation,”[3] a growing chorus of legal scholarship contends that the first appearance is crucial to the integrity of an individual’s defense.[4] While the United States Supreme Court has not yet recognized a constitutional right to CAFA, specifically,[5] there is a growing sentiment that such counsel should be considered among Sixth Amendment guarantees. Following Gideon v. Wainwright[6] and its progeny indicating, inter alia, that the right to counsel extends to criminal proceedings in which a defendant faces a loss of freedom,[7] legal scholars argue that the potential for pre-trial detention is just such a loss of freedom. The theory runs that there is a risk of pre-trial detention, a loss of freedom, at the first appearance and thus this confrontation fits squarely within the directive of Gideon and Argersinger. Although systematic, rigorous analysis of the effects of CAFA is rare, some evidence regarding these programs exists.[8] While these extant studies are valuable, there is little causal evidence regarding the effects of CAFA.

What We Learned:

Research Team: The A2J Lab partnered with the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University to conduct the evaluation which occured in two jurisdictions in Texas.

Resources: