Clara Son '27 Winter 2024

PDF available with citations and footnotes here

Introduction

Jury deliberation is a process within the American judicial system in which jurors gather in a jury room to discuss the testimonies and evidence of a criminal or civil case to reach a final, unanimous verdict on a defendant’s criminal guilt or level of civil liability. In this process, jurors are often influenced to conform to majority group decisions and ideology, completely disregarding valuable opposing arguments and their own viewpoints. In fact, Cornell law researchers Nicole L. Waters and Valerie P. Hans quantify that in jury deliberation, 1/3 out of 3,500 jurors went against their better judgment to conform to the group, causing their own decision to vary from the final verdict. As NYU research professional Yilin Lee articulates, this blind conformity is known as groupthink: a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides more nuanced alternatives and opposing perspectives, resulting in dysfunctional decision making. In the courtroom where the fate of convicted individuals is decided by jurors, groupthink is destructive. It drives out good problem solving, varying approaches to evaluating evidence, and the creation of well developed verdicts.

It is clear that since jury deliberation is an incredibly synchronous process, with juries coordinating together and discussing thoughts to reach a final group verdict, jurors fall to groupthink. In their scholarly article, psychology research experts Gelfand, Caluori, Jackson, and Taylor detail how synchronous processes reflect groupthink and conformity as the majority opinion prevails over personal preferences. It is stated that these processes “suppressed the desire to continue to argue for one’s own opinion, thereby reducing healthy group dissent,” which is all too evidently reflected in groupthink with jury deliberation.

The idea of destructive groupthink is paralleled as well in Norman Rockwell’s painting, The Holdout, depicting a crowd of jurors in the jury room trying to persuade a single female juror to abide by their decision by means of aggressive intimidation. They huddle around her, towering over her as she sits in her seat, beckoning for her to agree with the consensus they had come to. Evidently, groupthink can occur in the synchronous process of jury deliberation, suppressing healthy dissent and opposing perspectives. It corrodes justice and can devastate lives by distorting the outcome of cases, and it is ultimately a phenomena that thousands of jurors fall to. Thus, it’s imperative to ask: how can groupthink in the process of jury deliberation within the American judicial system be mitigated?

Groupthink Causes

One major factor behind groupthink in jury deliberation is uninformed jurors. In jury deliberation, the average lay juror is often uninformed and untrained, bombarded with complex legal nuances and directions, and ultimately left confused. Former Appellate Lawyers president and expert lawyer Sylvia Walbolt elaborates that this is because prior to jury deliberation, jurors are required to listen to a judge reading at least 30 pages of concepts unfamiliar to them in a singular setting. These jurors are largely new to the group work and jury service process, and receive barely any comprehensible training and instruction in effective group decision making. Due to their inability to retain key information and learn the correct trial procedure, these uninformed jurors are more susceptible to groupthink. As psychological expert Kendra Cherry writes, “When people lack personal knowledge of something or feel that other members of the group are more qualified, they are more likely to engage in groupthink”. Given that these jurors may not understand the nuances of a case or comprehend the complex instructions that they are given, they will be more likely to follow the lead of the group as they don’t have enough information to build up a verdict of their own. Unfortunately, the effects of ignorance-stimulated groupthink causes faulty decision making. As a result, jurors hold major overconfidence in wrong decisions, a resistance to new information and ideas, an inability to see other solutions– and important information is ignored. As Cornell law professor Valerie Hans explains, in various murder cases, uninformed jurors with a misunderstanding of trial processes and standards led them to make faulty decisions on cases. Without a clear comprehension of evidence, jurors blindly follow the lead of the group and are easily swayed by unjust verdict reasoning. Clearly, a lack of informational training, instruction, and guidance creates uninformed jurors who are incredibly vulnerable to groupthink. Flawed problem solving and unjust verdict decisions result. 

The other primary factor behind groupthink is the existence of a dominant juror who influences fellow jurors to conform to their lead. Other jurors' perspectives are ignored and only one viewpoint, possibly flawed and opposition-ignorant, is prioritized. This dominant juror, known as a “loud mouth juror,” takes over and changes the nature of the opinion of the group. Unfortunately, as a scholarly article from the American College of Trial Lawyers reports, dominant jurors are extremely common—in a typical six-person group, half of the people do 70% of the talking. This is where jury deliberations turn into jury argument, where “jurors come into the room knowing which side should win and their competitive drive reveals itself as they work to make sure their view prevails.”This leads those with less dominant voices and opinions, fearing isolation, to remain silent and vote with the majority, engaging in groupthink. As psychological experts Miller and Bornstein highlight, jurors thus conform based on normative influence, or social pressure, rather than informational influence, in which they are actually persuaded. Dissenting perspectives are silenced, and the verdict of the dominant juror will reign supreme based on their social dominance rather than the merit and validity of their opinion—groupthink prevails. 

Groupthink Solutions 

Jurors should receive training that leaves them less susceptible to ignorance and, therefore, groupthink. Specifically, instead of just giving jurors a short, canned set of verbal instructions, they should receive a comprehensive pretrial training program in which jurors sit through videotaped instructional videos that explain the process of jury deliberation and the case details and evidence given. As Northwestern law professor Jonathan Koehler elaborates, as the training proceeds, the jurors can “request reviews of particular topics,” with tapes that tackle common juror misconceptions. Such measures can greatly increase and steady juror knowledge, therefore decreasing uninformed groupthink. Additionally, jurors should take notes during the trial to increase their own understanding. Attorney litigation experts and law consultants Campbell and Adams quantify that 92% of mock jurors believed that notebooks assisted with their comprehension of the case. Taking notes and creating summaries of complex case information to ensure trial comprehension increases juror knowledge and strength, decreasing uninformed groupthink. Finally, jurors should be able to ask experts questions and engage in roundtable discussions with them to truly gain a solid understanding of their testimonies. They should be able to discuss evidence as the case proceeds to clarify confusion rather than waiting for the final deliberation process. By doing so, confusion or misinformation within jurors can be resolved, and their verdict reasoning in the jury deliberation process is strengthened and made more informed. Overall, given that reducing juror ignorance decreases groupthink, jurors should be permitted to take notes, raise questions, and openly discuss complex case information throughout the proceedings to cultivate more informed jurors. 

Next, to combat conformity pressures and dominant jurors, jury consultants should be instituted in jury deliberations, effectively decreasing groupthink. As professional senior trial consultant April Ferguson elaborates, jury consultants are trial strategy experts who are masters at understanding social dynamics, display compelling and comprehensible presentations of evidence to jurors, synthesize research data, and provide juror advice and information. Magnals Law founding partner Peter Hecht details that these consultants challenge jurors and ensure that they’ve considered all perspectives, doing work to monitor jurors and assess their case strategies. They can give accountability instructions in which they tell jurors that they will have to explain what evidence supports their decision and justify their verdict. This causes all jurors to engage in more thoughtful and careful thinking and prolong the decision-making process. As litigation expert Ken Broda-Bahm confirms, accountability instruction distributed by jury consultants works because jurors do not want to come off as ignorant or foolish in front of others and thus pay more attention to the facts that justify their beliefs. Having jury consultants oversee the trial process and give jurors accountability instruction to ensure they take a more nuanced look at evidence, dissipates groupthink. Jurors no longer blindly conform to the lead of a dominant juror, and instead are forced to consider their own perspectives and look at the trial information and evidence from their own viewpoint. 

Additionally, jury consultants should instruct jurors to play devil’s advocate, in which jurors consider evidence that would support a conclusion contrary to their own. Having jurors evaluate the opposing side is crucial to understanding all aspects of a case and coming to a fair, reasonable verdict that is comprehensible of counter arguments. Finally, they should instruct all jurors to participate, respectfully hear each other out, and write down their own individual arguments before discussion. Overall, juror consultants should be implemented to guide jurors by forcing them to evaluate evidence thoroughly and develop their own perspectives, consider opposing sides, and engage more actively in juror deliberation. As a result, jurors develop informed perspectives of their own instead of blindly following dominant jurors and falling to groupthink. 

Limitations to Groupthink Solutions 

Limitations against methods of increasing juror information wealth and retention are the existing legal barrier and the reasoning behind the widespread ban on juror note taking and questioning. 

In the status quo, jurors are allowed to ask questions in only 14% of criminal trials and 16% of civil trials in state courts; at least 10 states forbid jurors from taking notes. According to criminal law expert Charles Montaldo, this is because questioning is feared to carry too much weight in jury deliberations, be insignificant and irrelevant to the trial, or veer a trial out of control. However, if questioning is executed in a controlled manner, this limitation is overcome. To ensure that questions are relevant to the case and don’t sway a trial off track, jurors should submit questions to a judge; insignificant or biased, argumentative questions shall be discarded, and the jurors’ valid informational and clarifying questions should be posed by the judge. It’s evident that informational questioning can significantly increase juror knowledge and thus decrease groupthink; it simply must occur in a judge-controlled setting to succeed. 

In addition to limiting juror questions, the majority of states dissuade jurors from periodic evidence discussion and note taking. Note taking is advised against by some judges because from their standpoint, jurors “cannot make the distinction between important and trivial evidence,” resulting in vital evidence not being recorded and jurors coming to an informational gridlock. However, note taking is incredibly valuable to maintain jury knowledge and recollection of case information, thus decreasing groupthink; without note taking, important evidence may not be remembered at all. As professional law consultant Jessica Baer suggests, to strengthen the note taking process, judges should emphasize that jurors use their notes to aid their memory and not show their notes to each other until deliberation (Baer, 2015). In doing so, jurors are able to retain information in an organized and comprehensible manner, whereas without note taking, they may not be able to do so at all. 

Finally, in opposition to jury consultants, it is commonly argued that if given financial incentives, these consultants can manipulate jurors in the deliberation process to defend the wealthy despite possible guilt. As Drexel law professor Adam Benforado writes, white collar defendants like Martha Stewart, Robert Blake, and OJ Simpson have utilized consultants to their favor in criminal cases, who bend the legal process to explain evidence and guide the deliberation process more favorably to their side. These consultants, bound by weak ethical guidelines, are able to influence and distort juror perceptions for the reward of financial incentives. However, while the corruption of juror consultants is a valid counterargument to their effectiveness, it is one that can easily be mitigated by instituting stronger standards and training for jury consultants. For one, consultants should undergo state regulated training to base their analyses on “scientific data, rather than speculative stereotypes,” as law expert and attorney Stephanie Coughlan suggests. Their presentations of evidence should also be evaluated by a judge or legal expert to ensure objectivity, and suspected possible corruption should be investigated. Given that consultants are an incredibly valuable resource in civil and criminal cases, the benefits of their usefulness outweigh the cost of potential corruption which can easily be made nonexistent through instituting basic legal standards and training for consultants.