Scientific jury selection
use of social science to choose favorable juries
Scientific jury selection, often abbreviated SJS, is the use of social science techniques and expertise to choose favorable juries during a criminal or civil trial. Scientific jury selection is used during the jury selection phase of the trial, during which lawyers have the opportunity to question jurors. It almost always entails an expert's assistance in the attorney's use of peremptory challenges—the right to reject a certain number of potential jurors without stating a reason—during jury selection. The practice is currently unique to the American legal system.
Scientific jury selection is based on the work of Fred Strodtbeck, the research director on the American Juries Project headed by Harry Kalvin, Jr and Hans Zeisel. He taped mock juries in Chicago and St. Louis and actual juries in Wichita, Kansas with the permission of the attorneys and judge but not the jurors. The study revealed that the characteristics of individual jurors influenced jury deliberations.
SJS has roots in criminal trials during the Vietnam War era, but in modern times is usually employed in high-stakes civil litigation (where only money is usually at issue, in contrast to criminal trials, where the defendant can go to prison). SJS practitioners determine what background characteristics and attitudes predict favorable results, and then coordinate with attorneys in choosing the jury.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scientific jury selection” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.