Study: Juries Deliver Wrong Verdict 1/6; Err Towards Wrong "Guilty"

[John Kilduff]

This article caught my eye, and wow! It seems to me to confirm my suspicions of our criminal justice system, and even bolsters my personal view that criminal justice should generally be administered with a heavy slant towards leniency.

On to the salient points, excerpted from the article:

"So much for US justice: juries get the verdict wrong in one out of six criminal cases and judges don't do much better, a new study has found. And when they make those mistakes, both judges and juries are far more likely to send an innocent person to jail than to let a guilty person go free, according to an upcoming study out of Northwestern University."

and

"The study, which looked at 290 non-capital criminal cases in four major cities from 2000 to 2001, is the first to examine the accuracy of modern juries and judges in the United States. It found that judges were mistaken in their verdicts in 12 percent of the cases while juries were wrong 17 percent of the time. More troubling was that juries sent 25 percent of innocent people to jail while the innocent had a 37 percent chance of being wrongfully convicted by a judge."


Full article: Breitbart

I have no idea how a problem like this should be corrected.

I find it disturbing, and to me it's just one more reason why most "crimes" shouldn't be on the books as criminal offenses at all. I'm talking about victimless crimes, and the sort of baloney Martha Stewart was convicted for (lying to federal investigators about what was a non-crime in the first place: the lying was the crime), and numerous other things that IMO don't severely hurt anyone yet are legally considered criminal offenses which can carry considerable punishments.

All insights and further information welcome. Thanks for reading.

[adios]

I guess this needs to be addressed, from the article that you posted a link to:

Finding a solution will be much harder to do than quantifying the problem, Heinz warned.

"The sources of the errors are quite resilient to correction," he said.

"They have to do with all sorts of biases and the strong presumption of guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial."

Don't know if this has been the status quo for a long time or not.

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess this needs to be addressed, from the article that you posted a link to:

Finding a solution will be much harder to do than quantifying the problem, Heinz warned.

"The sources of the errors are quite resilient to correction," he said.

"They have to do with all sorts of biases and the strong presumption of guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial."

Don't know if this has been the status quo for a long time or not.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it appears very problematic. I would also like to see a study showing the wrongful rate of conviction as correlated with the defendant's ability to pay for quality legal defense. We can surmise that the wrongful rates of conviction cited in the article would be even higher for poor defendants and therefore lower for rich defendants.

[pokerbobo]

Move some of these people to California...they cant convict anyone. OJ, Blake,...at least they got Peterson right, but he wasn't famous prior to snuffing out the wife.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I guess this needs to be addressed, from the article that you posted a link to:

Finding a solution will be much harder to do than quantifying the problem, Heinz warned.

"The sources of the errors are quite resilient to correction," he said.

"They have to do with all sorts of biases and the strong presumption of guilt when someone is arrested and brought to trial."

Don't know if this has been the status quo for a long time or not.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it appears very problematic. I would also like to see a study showing the wrongful rate of conviction as correlated with the defendant's ability to pay for quality legal defense. We can surmise that the wrongful rates of conviction cited in the article would be even higher for poor defendants and therefore lower for rich defendants.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a clear standard FWIW. From my perspective, FWIW there seem to be convictions that are made upon not that much hard evidence. The defendents character seems to be a big factor with juries.

I didn't follow the Scott Peterson trial that closely but it seemed to me like the evidence against him was actually not that much. Logically he seemed like the likely murderer but if my recollection is correct the evidence against him wasn't all that strong. Could be wrong about the evidence in the case though.

Knowing what some of the retainers are for criminal lawyers it's fairly clear that it costs alot of money to defend yourself in Court if you hire one. Not sure what the charges are for a Court appointed lawyer to the defendent if any. Money plays a role. I can understand it in civil cases readily and can understand the arguments why that shouldn't change. Criminal cases, which I'm admittedly less familiar with, I don't know.

[bobman0330]

This is interesting, but a couple things to bear in mind. That article seems to choose statistics that sound really bad to draw attention. I worked with the numbers a bit and concluded that a guilty verdict in that study implies an 89% chance of being guilty. Too low, but not as scary sounding as "ONE IN SIX VERDICTS WRONG."

Second, keep in mind that trial is just one stage in a process. Prosecutors exercise a lot of discretion in what cases to bring and especially in what cases to settle. My understanding is that a career-conscious prosecutor is incentivized above all to win cases. (Unless it's politically sensible to pull a Nifong or a Martha Stewart, but I think those are probably a very small subset of cases.) So we shouldn't be surprised that prosecutors win most of the time. Marginal cases get settled, and if an innocent person ends up at trial, it's because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and they look really guilty.

All that said, this is still an unsettling result which should of course be investigated further.

[AngusThermopyle]

[ QUOTE ]

Spencer's study does not examine why the mistakes were made or which cases ought to be overturned.
Instead, he determined the probability that a mistake was made by looking at how often judges disagreed with the jury's verdict.

[/ QUOTE ]

So if the judge thinks that the proper verdict was "not guilty", but the jury said "guilty", he concludes that they convicted an innocent man?

Can you say "worthless study"?

And I do believe there are serious problems with the criminal justice system, but this 'study' of ~290 cases in 4 cities only shows that the judge and jury have different opinions a quarter of the time. Does that mean that when they agree, the 'correct verdict' was reached?

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
I have no idea how a problem like this should be corrected.

[/ QUOTE ]

A big part of the problem is that more intelligent people tend to be more interested (or able) in dodging jury duty. Not only that, but displaying intelligence in their jury selection questioning is a good way to get booted. By removing most of the intelligent people from juries, you remove a lot of the benefit of it being an all or nothing deal.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Spencer's study does not examine why the mistakes were made or which cases ought to be overturned.
Instead, he determined the probability that a mistake was made by looking at how often judges disagreed with the jury's verdict.

[/ QUOTE ]

So if the judge thinks that the proper verdict was "not guilty", but the jury said "guilty", he concludes that they convicted an innocent man?

Can you say "worthless study"?

And I do believe there are serious problems with the criminal justice system, but this 'study' of ~290 cases in 4 cities only shows that the judge and jury have different opinions a quarter of the time. Does that mean that when they agree, the 'correct verdict' was reached?

[/ QUOTE ]

I would say the judge is much more likely to know the "correct verdict" based on the system. This doesn't mean the juries are convicting innocents though, just that they're convicting when there's reasonable doubt. The system as intended places a high burden of proof on the state. Mind you, juries shouldn't be doing this, but saying that they're convicting tons of innocents doesn't follow from this.

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Spencer's study does not examine why the mistakes were made or which cases ought to be overturned.
Instead, he determined the probability that a mistake was made by looking at how often judges disagreed with the jury's verdict.

[/ QUOTE ]

So if the judge thinks that the proper verdict was "not guilty", but the jury said "guilty", he concludes that they convicted an innocent man?

Can you say "worthless study"?

And I do believe there are serious problems with the criminal justice system, but this 'study' of ~290 cases in 4 cities only shows that the judge and jury have different opinions a quarter of the time. Does that mean that when they agree, the 'correct verdict' was reached?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree that the methodology used in the study should be examined more closely.