Jury Decision Making

While jury decision making has received considerable attention from social scientists, there have been few efforts to systematically pull together all the pieces of this research. In Jury Decision Making, Dennis J. Devine examines over 50 years of research on juries and offers a "big picture" overview of the field.





The volume summarizes existing theories of jury decision making and identifies what we have learned about jury behavior, including the effects of specific courtroom practices, the nature of the trial, the characteristics of the participants, and the evidence itself. Making use of those foundations, Devine offers a new integrated theory of jury decision making that addresses both individual jurors and juries as a whole and discusses its ramifications for the courts.





Providing a unique combination of broad scope, extensive coverage of the empirical research conducted over the last half century, and theory advancement, this accessible and engaging volume offers "one-stop shopping" for scholars, students, legal professionals, and those who simply wish to better understand how well the jury system works.

Dennis J. Devine is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. His work has been published in numerous professional journals, including Law and Human Behavior; Psychology, Public Policy, and Law; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; and Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

The book can be a good classroom introduction to this body of research and to rigorous research generally.

Edie Greene,University of Colorado at Colorado Springs:
Add this book to the list of milestones in the study of jury decision making. Not only has Dennis Devine provided an impressively comprehensive review of scholarly research on the question of how jurors and juries make decisions, he also offers a theory that ties the findings together, and does it all in an eminently readable way.

Mark Costanzo,Professor of Psychology, Claremont McKenna College:
A lucid, sure-footed tour of the unwieldy research literature on jurors and juries. In addition to offering fresh insights into past research, Devine proposes an ambitious agenda for future research. His integrative theory of jury decision making has the potential to generate much-needed new research and to reveal unnoticed connections between seemingly unrelated findings. Essential reading for both scholars and students.

Susan Macpherson,Vice President of the Minneapolis office of NJP Litigation Consulting:
The book provides a rich and elegant explanation of what we observe in our own jury research and hear jurors describe in post-trial interviews. Those who want a better grasp of jury decision-making will find what they are looking for in this book.