The Supreme Court, overturning its 1996 decision, ruled that a Louisiana prosecutor had used improper tactics to pick an all-white jury. Since it was a murder trial against a black defendant, this is certainly cause for controversy.
Jury selection draws on several social psychological principles. It is important to examine potential biases in jurors, which can unintentionally cause incorrect convictions. First, community members are called to form a venire, or jury pool. Attorneys, guided by their own hypotheses, ask several questions to determine whether anyone holds attitudes, preconceptions or biases that would prevent them from fairly hearing the case. This process is known as voir dire, meaning “to speak the truth.”
There are two ways in which a potential juror can be eliminated. A challenge for cause must be upheld by the judge. A peremptory challenge allows an attorney to excuse a venireperson for almost any reason, except race, gender or membership in a particular group.
What caused the Louisiana prosecutor to choose an all-white jury? Peremptory challenges may be based on implicit personality theories, or sets of beliefs, developed through experience, about how demographic characteristics and attitudes are interrelated. In this case, it seems likely that the prosecutor held a racist belief that a white jury, acting on race loyalty, would be eager to convict a black man.
In order to modify juries but do so in a scientific, ethical way, social scientists are entering the field with growing influence. They may work as consultants who collect survey data about community attitudes, enabling informed decisions.
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