Decisiveness, Correctness and Accuracy in Criminal Adjudication

While the right to a trial by an impartial jury remains a cornerstone of the Anglo-American legal tradition, the modus operandi of a “trial by jury” in the United States has been in constant flux. During the last 125 years, twenty-eight states in the U.S. reduced the size of their juries, while three others allowed non-unanimous verdicts in felony and/or misdemeanor cases. Blackstonian ratios and burdens of proof exhibited similar variations across jurisdiction. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court cast a critical eye on non-unanimous juries and reintroduced the requirement of unanimity for all felony convictions. In 2023, jury size also received scrutiny from the U.S. Supreme Court, underscoring the enduring volatility of criminal jury practices in the United States. Currently, states retain autonomy to determine the composition of their juries and to determine the Blackstonian ratios that their respective jurisdictions are to follow. In this paper, we expose the critical interdependence between these elements to assess how these variations in jury structure affect the accuracy and decisiveness of the jury process. We further show how the tradeoff between different combinations of jury size and burdens of proof is affected by the prosecutorial selectivity and the frequency with which hung-jury mistrials are brought up for a retrial. JEL Code: K0, K4