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Beyond reasonable doubt: the impact of politically independent jurors on jury trials in the US

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  • Alessandra Foresta

Abstract

This article evaluates the impact of politically independent jurors on trial verdicts in the US state of North Carolina. To identify the effect of jurors' political affliations, I rely on the day-to-day random variation in the composition of jury pools. The results suggest that the presence of independent jurors decreases the percentage of guilty verdicts. I implement a set of robustness checks, dividing the proportion of independent jurors by gender and by ethnicgroup. The findings suggest that the effect is mainly driven by independent men, and remain negative and significant across different ethnicities. Moreover, I interact the proportion of independent jurors with the ethnicity of defendants, and I remove counties with a high/low number of trials. The results suggest that the effect is stronger for black defendants and that my findings are not driven by outlier counties. Finally, I evaluate the presence of possible political discrimination in the striking patterns. I find that there are no clear strike patterns for independent jurors, although some statistically significant strategic striking is present for Republicans and Democrats alike.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandra Foresta, 2022. "Beyond reasonable doubt: the impact of politically independent jurors on jury trials in the US," Discussion Papers 22/01, Department of Economics, University of York.
    • Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:22/01
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Jury; Peremptory challenges; Political Affiliation; Independent;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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