THE SIXTH Amendment declares that criminal defendants will “enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”. The guarantee is uncontroversial in theory, but recent research in cognitive science casts doubt on whether it can be plausibly provided. Thanks to Daniel Kahneman and others we have never known so much about how biased we are. Jurors, being human, are subject to “anchoring” (latching onto the first piece of information they hear and not letting go); to “priming” (being unconsciously wooed by lawyers’ manipulations); to the “halo effect” (falling for whatever the most winning witness says); and to the “availability heuristic” (gazing upon the facts of the case through prior experience and knowledge).
Courts cannot scrub these and other flaws from jurors’ minds, but they can try to keep xenophobia and overt bias out of the jury box. When a juror hears one of his peers say something racist in the jury room, a note to the judge may be enough to bring on a mistrial. But in order to cultivate open and free discussion in the jury room, both state and federal courts have protected the secrecy of deliberations and have not...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2eB2Yeb
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