America’s Toxic Divide Reaches the Jury Room
This WSJ article explores the challenges occurring in jury rooms across the US as increasing societal polarization is pulled into deliberations.
> Trial lawyers and jury consultants say an erosion of trust in the justice system, more rigid viewpoints and starker political divides have made pitched juror battles more common
> “Whatever you see in society at large you see in the jury deliberation room,” said jury consultant Laurie Kuslansky. “The isolation of Covid and the political divide are making us more and more disabled as a society to disagree and then reach consensus and compromise.”
As someone who watches a fair amount of trial coverage I found this article interesting because it is something I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few years, especially when noticing more mistrials and wondering if a)there is an increase and b) if it is tied to this dynamics.
I particularly found this section of the article interesting around how jury consultants are beginning to categorize potential jurors:
>”We tend to think of jurors in a binary way: either they come in proprosecution or prodefense,” she said. “Each side tries to weed out the other. The distinction we were seeing more of was either general trust or general skepticism.”
The implication is that lawyers need to evaluate how either trusting or skeptical jurors might view the issues in their case, Brickman added.”
For anyone who has been on a recent jury trial, what was your experience? Was this a trend you noticed during deliberations? How did it impact your experience and trust in the justice system?