Jury Decision Making The State of the Science [Hardcover]

While jury decision making has received considerable attention from social scientists, there have been few efforts to systematically pull together all the pieces of this research. In Jury Decision Making, Dennis J. Devine examines over 50 years of research on juries and offers a big picture overview of the field.

The volume summarizes existing theories of jury decision making and identifies what we have learned about jury behavior, including the effects of specific courtroom practices, the nature of the trial, the characteristics of the participants, and the evidence itself. Making use of those foundations, Devine offers a new integrated theory of jury decision making that addresses both individual jurors and juries as a whole and discusses its ramifications for the courts.

Providing a unique combination of broad scope, extensive coverage of the empirical research conducted over the last half century, and theory advancement, this accessible and engaging volume offers one-stop shopping for scholars, students, legal professionals, and those who simply wish to better understand how well the jury system works.

Devines book is most useful for those conducting research on juries. Any social scientist considering conducting studies on juries would benefit from the book. The book provides a rich and elegant explanation of what we observe in our own jury research and hear jurors describe in post-trial interviews. Those who want a better grasp of jury decision-making will find what they are looking for in this book. A lucid, sure-footed tour of the unwieldy research literature on jurors and juries. In addition to offering fresh insights into past research, Devine proposes an ambitious agenda for future research. His integrative theory of jury decision making has the potential to generate much-needed new research and to reveal unnoticed connections between seemingly unrelated findings. Essential reading for both scholarslã(