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Judges and Juries: The Defense Case and Differences in Acquittal Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Daniel Givelber  and
Amy Farrell
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Abstract

Kalven and Zeisel's (1966) classic study, The American Jury, concluded that juries were “in revolt” from the law when they acquitted when judges would have convicted. Using data collected by the National Center for State Courts to examine jury decision making in four different communities, this article reexamines the question of the judge and jury's respective fidelity to the law and evidence by examining the influence on judge and jury of the defendant's evidence, his criminal record, and his reason for refusing to plead. No data can tell us definitively whether the judge is correct and the jury in error when they disagree, but the data analyzed in the present study can tell us whether the factors that move the jury and fail to move the judge are or are not consistent with the innocence of the accused.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Winter 2008 , pp. 31 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2008 

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