Jury Selection and Psychology of the American Jury - Essay Example

2. Kressel, N. and Dorit F. Kressel (2004). "Stack and Sway: The New Science of Jury Consulting" by. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 4.2 (2004

            Written by Neil Kressel, a social psychologist at New Jersey's William Paterson University, and his wife Dorit, a practicing attorney, this book provides an even-handed accounting of the methods and ethical issues of the phenomenon called jury consultancy and its possible implications for American justice. It provides a discussion regarding the use of jury consultants in sensitive matters such as race and answers the question What do jury consultants do? Are their elaborate efforts to assist lawyers in the jury selection process by identifying attitudes, values, and would-be demographic predictors merely benign efforts to screen for biases that could jeopardize fair trials, as practitioners like to claim?

3. Golden, Charles (2007). “Can Scientific Jury Selection Produce Fair juries, or Just Juries With a Different Bias?” in PsycCritiques, Vol 52 (6), 2007. US American Psychological Association.

            Scientific Jury Selection is a well-written volume that reviews the research and issues surrounding scientific jury selection. The authors examine the many factors and methods involved in this process and provide a balanced and comprehensive review of the literature as well as raise important scientific and ethical questions. Chapters review such factors as methods of acquiring information and applying those methods to the actual process of jury selection. The volume raises substantial issues about the accuracy and efficacy of the selection process, as well as its ethical and legal implications. In addition, it provides the basis for the psychological methods used.

4. A. Austin (1984). Complex Litigation Confronts the Jury System, 103-104. Greenwood Press, US.

            Austin provides a case study in which one could gain valuable insight into the workings of jury consultancy and provides analysis and possible implications of the methods used thru the case study presented.

5. Leci, L., Snowden, J. and Morris, D (2004). "Using Social Science Research to Inform and Evaluate the Contributions of Trial Consultants in the Voir Dire." Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 4.2 (2004) 67-78

            The authors argue that the jury selection methods commonly employed by trial consultants and lawyers in the voir dire process are fraught with problems because they do not employ standardized assessments. This commentary provides and advocates the advantages of employing standardized, reliable, and validated measures of pretrial juror bias to conduct the voir dire, and we delineate some of the methods by which this can be accomplished.

6. Lieberman, Joel D., and Bruce D. Sales (2007). “Overall Effectiveness of Scientific Jury Selection” in PsycINFO. Washington DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2007.

            Lieberman and Sales provide discussion on matters of jury consultancy such as the Purpose and effectiveness of the Voir Dire, the influence of demographic factors, the influence of Personality and Attitudes, in-court questioning of prospective jurors, and ethical and professional issues in Scientific Jury Selection. 

7. Van Wallendael, Lori, and Brian Cutler (2004). "Limitations to Empirical Approaches to Jury Selection" in Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 4.2 (2004): 79-86.

            This composition questions the superiority of social scientific approaches to voir dire on two grounds. First, the advantage of social scientific methods over normative approaches has not been established. Thus, we have little empirical understanding of normative approaches to voir dire and therefore have little basis for comparison. Second, the variability in voir dire procedure from the courtroom to courtroom and the lack of empirical knowledge on how this variability in practice affects traditional or social scientific approaches to voir dire makes generalizations premature.

8. Suggs, David, U Nebraska, Lincoln Sales, Bruce D. (1978). "The art and science of conducting the voir dire." in Professional Psychology, Vol 9 (3) Aug 1978. pp. 367-388.          

            In this article, the techniques in voir dire are discussed and one can see the methods used and provide an evaluation of the ethical issues surrounding jury consultancy.
 

9. Jeffrey T. Frederick, Ph.D. (1984). “Social Science Involvement in the Voir Dire: Preliminary Data on the effectiveness of Scientific jury Selection"  in Behavioral Sciences & The Law Vol. 2 No. 4 1984

            Dr. Frederick argues on whether scientific or systematic jury selection is more effective and takes data from two actual cases one of which is the Joan Little trial and argues that where validity data were available for the survey approach and in-court rating of authoritarianism, these techniques measured what they purported to measure. Validation data were not available for a third technique - in-court rating of nonverbal communication. Data from the civil case indicated that the survey approach could successfully predict the verdicts of mock jurors.