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LochFarquar t1_j2a0z9l wrote

Peer pressure. We have pretty good anecdotal evidence that when there's one or two holdouts that they will give in and go with the majority. Part of that is also that prosecutors are pretty good at identifying and excluding potential jurors who are likely to hold out for ideological reasons.

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nstickels t1_j2a3wh7 wrote

This right here. Imagine you are on jury duty with 11 other people and you are sequestered, meaning you are not allowed contact to the outside world, you are not allowed to go to work, you aren’t allowed to see your family or friends. And for all of this, you are making a whole $20 per day. These 11 other people all agree the person is guilty, but you don’t agree. They all want to leave. You want to leave. You are the only reason they can’t leave.

So first they are probably going to ask you why you don’t agree. Then you will need to layout why. The others will all go over your reasons and for each reason, try to explain why they disagree. This process will repeat all day every day until you agree with them. Yes, you could hold out for several days to weeks and eventually have it declared a hung jury. In most cases though, instead of having your every thought picked apart and analyzed over and over all day for days on end, you will end up agreeing just to make it stop.

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GovernorSan t1_j2axwr3 wrote

Sounds like 12 Angry Men was a lot closer to reality than one might think, except the one guy who thought he was innocent managed to convince the other 11 who voted guilty.

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Frix t1_j2fdskt wrote

It's a nice movie, but not at all realistic with how a jury actually works.

Juror number 12 broke the law on multiple occasions.

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jpalumbos t1_j2c9hxp wrote

Peer pressure, yes, but also gullibility.

I was on a jury for a DWI case. Our initial vote was a 50/50 split. Evidence leaned toward a guilty verdict, but b/c the defendant refused a breath-test, not conclusive. Other tests were administered (like follow-the-finger and walk-a-straight-line), and their techniques were explained.

One juror, a teacher named Terry, was very loquacious and also convincing. He seemed to get stuck on a technical aspect of one of the tests, but also seemed to be overly enthusiastic about this. He said, "I just don't think the prosecutor proved his case." By the end of the 1st day, he had (singularly) convinced all but one of us to vote 'Not-Guilty'.

I'm nowhere near as vocal as Terry, but to me, the evidence we had indicated 'Guilty', and Terry's logic wasn't making sense. I'm not eloquent enough to have changed others' minds, but I wasn't buying Terry's arguments, either, and he knew this. We adjourned for the day.

When we resumed the next morning, Terry started off by saying, "I was thinking about it overnight, and I think the prosecutor proved his case, after all." Within just a few minutes, we had a unanimous 'Guilty' verdict.

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Taira_Mai t1_j2c4c7x wrote

>Part of that is also that prosecutors are pretty good at identifying and excluding potential jurors who are likely to hold out for ideological reasons.

Defense attorneys as well - those who argue a lot of cases know how to spot the person who could be a thorn in their side.

As the old law school joke goes "If you have the law on your side, hammer the judge, if the facts are on your side, hammer the jury, if you have neither, hammer on the table!"

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LochFarquar t1_j2dz56o wrote

Yeah, no argument on that, although I think there are more "law and order" types than criminal justice skeptics in a typical jury pool.

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