Juror's Arguement Analysis
Introduction
This Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights protects the rights of the accused in criminal prosecutions. Not only does this amendment provide the right to a speedy trial, the right to confront witnesses against him, the right to counsel, this amendment provides the right to be tried by an impartial jury of his peers. While the trial takes place, it is the responsibility of the jury to listen and retain facts and evidence presented by the prosecution and the defense. It is their duty to determine guilt or innocence based solely on the facts and evidence presented during trial. If a guilty verdict is unanimously concluded amongst the 12 or more jurors, this must be concluded beyond a reasonable doubt. It only takes one juror to dissent …show more content…
When mutual conformity exists, feelings of respect, pride and fellow feelings leads to positive feeling and on the contrary, when disagreement exists, rejection, criticism, insult, and defeat create negative feelings of anger and shame between individuals (Scheff, 1988). To elude these negative feelings of shame, individuals will conform to the majority. This conclusion can be applied towards jurors whose responsibility is to come to a unanimous decision. To circumvent feelings of shame or criticism, a dissenting juror may go against their beliefs to maintain a positive relationship with their fellow jurors by agreeing with the majority.
When discussing a single dissenting juror, an iconic film Twelve Angry Men, is a well-known portrayal of analyzing the decision-making process in groups. This film showed that persuasion in groups can take place in various methods (Proctor, 1991). Though this film shows how the minority can influence the majority, the effects of conformity were still the similar. Ultimately, a vote of 11-1 to punish the boy on trial for murdering his dad, changed to a unanimous 12 man vote to pardon him. While this dissenting juror maintained independence and ultimately influenced the majority, this is not typically the …show more content…
To measure this, surveys were given to jurors who served on a jury that had come to a conclusion, whether it was to convict, acquit, or resulted in a hung jury. One particular question in the survey required participants to respond whether or not their individual verdict mirrored the final verdict of the group. Waters and Hans (2009) measured these one-person verdicts based on combining all counts, the first more severe count, and lesser included counts. They found, depending on the approach and severity of counts used to measure the dissent, that approximately 38 percent to 54 percent of the jurors who participated in the survey had disagreeing individual verdicts in comparison to the final verdict given by the group (Waters et al., 2009, p. 523). According to Waters and Hans (2009), approximately 6 percent of jury trials result in a hung jury; with the staggering percent of jurors holding dissenting individual verdicts provided in the results of their study, it can be concluded that the percentage of hung juries should be significantly
This Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights protects the rights of the accused in criminal prosecutions. Not only does this amendment provide the right to a speedy trial, the right to confront witnesses against him, the right to counsel, this amendment provides the right to be tried by an impartial jury of his peers. While the trial takes place, it is the responsibility of the jury to listen and retain facts and evidence presented by the prosecution and the defense. It is their duty to determine guilt or innocence based solely on the facts and evidence presented during trial. If a guilty verdict is unanimously concluded amongst the 12 or more jurors, this must be concluded beyond a reasonable doubt. It only takes one juror to dissent …show more content…
When mutual conformity exists, feelings of respect, pride and fellow feelings leads to positive feeling and on the contrary, when disagreement exists, rejection, criticism, insult, and defeat create negative feelings of anger and shame between individuals (Scheff, 1988). To elude these negative feelings of shame, individuals will conform to the majority. This conclusion can be applied towards jurors whose responsibility is to come to a unanimous decision. To circumvent feelings of shame or criticism, a dissenting juror may go against their beliefs to maintain a positive relationship with their fellow jurors by agreeing with the majority.
When discussing a single dissenting juror, an iconic film Twelve Angry Men, is a well-known portrayal of analyzing the decision-making process in groups. This film showed that persuasion in groups can take place in various methods (Proctor, 1991). Though this film shows how the minority can influence the majority, the effects of conformity were still the similar. Ultimately, a vote of 11-1 to punish the boy on trial for murdering his dad, changed to a unanimous 12 man vote to pardon him. While this dissenting juror maintained independence and ultimately influenced the majority, this is not typically the …show more content…
To measure this, surveys were given to jurors who served on a jury that had come to a conclusion, whether it was to convict, acquit, or resulted in a hung jury. One particular question in the survey required participants to respond whether or not their individual verdict mirrored the final verdict of the group. Waters and Hans (2009) measured these one-person verdicts based on combining all counts, the first more severe count, and lesser included counts. They found, depending on the approach and severity of counts used to measure the dissent, that approximately 38 percent to 54 percent of the jurors who participated in the survey had disagreeing individual verdicts in comparison to the final verdict given by the group (Waters et al., 2009, p. 523). According to Waters and Hans (2009), approximately 6 percent of jury trials result in a hung jury; with the staggering percent of jurors holding dissenting individual verdicts provided in the results of their study, it can be concluded that the percentage of hung juries should be significantly