Both the size of the jury and the number of jurors who must be in agreement for a verdict to be concluded (the group’s “social decision rule”) have been the subject of litigation at the U.S. Supreme Court as well as a subject of research by psychologists and other social and behavioral scientists. The number of jurors and the minimum proportion of them who must be in agreement are set by formal legal rules (e.g., state statutes, federal rules of civil procedure), and those rules are in turn subject to constitutional requirements. The Supreme Court has framed its analysis of jury size and decision rule questions in terms of the effects of those variables on jury behavior. Thus, the findings of research on group decision making as a function of group size and social decision rule are of central relevance to the Court’s constitutional analysis. Yet a considerable tension exists between the Court’s conclusions and the empirical findings.
陪审团规模
For 600 years of common-law history and 200 years of American constitutional history, the jury was considered to have 12 members. But several states and federal districts in the United States began to use smaller juries, and in the 1970s, challenges to the use of juries with fewer than 12 members reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court analyzed the constitutionality of smaller juries by rejecting the guidance of history, tradition, and its own precedents. Instead, the Court reasoned that because the size of the jury was not specified in the Constitution and the framers’ intentions regarding jury size could not be divined, the answer would have to be found through a “functional” analysis of the jury’s purpose: If smaller juries did not behave differently from juries of 12, then they were their functional equivalent and therefore were constitutional.
在一系列案件中 - Williams诉佛罗里达案(1970年)(6个州审理案),Colgrove诉Battin诉Battin(1973年)(联邦民事陪审团少于12)和Ballew诉Georgia(1978年)(国家刑事陪审团(国家刑事陪审团)编号5) - 最高法院在宪法上允许较小的陪审团,因为它在其事实发现的可靠性,审议的质量或数量的可靠性,对他们的审议的质量或数量,他们的横断面表示,他们的陪审团之间没有重要的差异社区,少数民族在抵抗社会压力遵守社会压力或其判决的能力。这些发现是通过司法直觉的结合,将非实践误解为实证研究,误读实际经验研究的发现,并且未能在实际经验研究中看到基本缺陷的结合来达到这些发现。
What the empirical research findings actually indicate is that smaller groups foster behavior that is beneficial in some respects, but in view of the purposes for which juries are employed, most of the advantages appear to favor keeping juries at 12. On the positive side, in smaller juries, members share more equally in the discussion, find the deliberations more satisfying, and are more cohesive.
特别是对陪审团研究的荟萃分析(模拟和实际)发现,较大的陪审团比较小的陪审团更有可能包含少数群体的成员,故意更长的时间,更频繁地吊死并更准确地回忆起审判证词。一般而言,转向小组行为的研究,人们发现较大的群体倾向于更积极地讨论和辩论,共同回忆更多信息,并做出更一致和可预测的决策。后者的发现意味着,随着陪审团的发展,他们将倾向于在刑事案件中犯更多的错误,以无罪或定罪无辜者;在民事案件中,错误判决的速度不仅会提高,而且陪审团将倾向于提供更可变和不可预测的损害奖励。(因为这样的差异将很小,因此需要很大的样本量才能检测它们。)根据关于顺从性心理学的经典研究,因为在较大的群体中,有持不同政见者至少有一个盟友,一个盟友,一个盟友较大陪审团的持不同政见者通常会找到一个盟友,因此能够更好地抵抗服从大多数人的压力。
In short, the Williams Court had scant support for its conclusion that “there is no discernible difference between the results reached by the two different-sized juries”; the little research evidence that existed then and most of the evidence that developed later supported the opposite conclusion: that 6-person juries did behave differently from 12-person juries and most of those differences represented less-desirable decision-making processes.
在Ballew案中,最高法院划出了界限,裁定6人是宪法的最低限度。哈里·布莱克蒙(Harry Blackmun)法官宣布法院的判决,广泛审查了有关该主题的实证研究,其中大部分是由威廉姆斯(Williams)裁决提示的。奇怪的是,尽管该意见中的研究大多比较了6人和12人的陪审团,并表示前者的表现不如后者,但法院并没有扭转其早期的持股。取而代之的是,它重申了早期的决定在大型和小陪审团之间的同等性,但现在认为陪审团小于6是违宪的,因为在布莱克蒙(Blackmun)的看来,这些研究引起了人们对少数少于6名成员的陪审团表现的严重关切。
研究结果已在其他法律环境中得到认可。联邦民事规则常务委员会建议为联邦民事审判的12人陪审团(司法会议未通过的建议)。在里根总统管理期间,卫生与公共服务部为指定12人陪审团的州颁布了模型医疗事故法规(特别是为了更大的可预测性)。新罕布什尔州最高法院(以巴勒夫的事实调查结果,拒绝其法律持有),根据力认为,减少陪审团规模以下12岁以下将违反新罕布什尔州宪法(类似地指定陪审团规模)。
社会决策规则
从英格兰的14世纪到20世纪后期,陪审团被要求达成一致的判决。美国几个国家开始允许法定人数判决,并在1970年代对法定判决的合宪性提出的挑战是在美国最高法院提出的。
The principal motivation for eliminating the unanimity rule seems to have been a desire to reduce the incidence of hung juries. Without quorum verdicts, hung juries occur at a national rate of about 5% or 6%, and allowing quorum verdicts reduces that rate by a few percentage points.
在Apodaca诉俄勒冈案(1972)和Johnson诉路易斯安那州(1972)中,最高法院裁定判决与9:3的判决相当广泛,是宪法的,在Burch诉Louisiana(1979年)中,法院裁定,法院认为,6人的陪审团必须一致。The Court’s reasoning was much the same as in the jury-size cases: As to the social decision rule for a jury verdict, the Constitution does not say and the intentions of the framers are unknown, so the “inquiry must focus upon the function served by the jury in contemporary society.”
The main issues about group behavior that were debated in the Court’s functional analysis were whether juries required to reach only quorum decisions would pay less attention to the arguments of the unneeded minority, whether the jury’s verdicts would be less accurate, and whether the weight of evidence sufficient to produce a conviction would be reduced. The last of those questions is an especially interesting one. The standard or proof (preponderance, beyond a reasonable doubt) is directed at individual jurors, seemingly separate from the issue of the rules for combining individual views into a group decision. But the two together will surely have a bearing on the group’s collective confidence in their verdict and on the quantum of proof needed to lift the jury over those several individual-to-group decision thresholds to a verdict.
最高法院的意见断言,陪审员在制定不合同的决策规则时不会有不同的行为,至少在陪审团数字12时没有,或者没有足够的不同。对社会决策规则的研究要少于对群体规模的研究,但是进行的研究通常并不支持法院的多数席位。
与一致统治陪审团相比,在较短的时间内故意审议的陪审团审理,不要让持不同政见者有足够的意见,以便一旦达成共识,就可以改变最低共识(在一致统治的陪审团中,少数派的陪审员参与不成比例的陪审员在the deliberation), are more vote oriented and less evidence oriented, are less certain of the defendant’s guilt when convicting, and are less likely to end in a deadlock. In research on group decision making generally, groups required to reach unanimous decisions are found to be more likely to reach correct solutions (on problems with clear right/wrong answers) than groups working with less-demanding social decision rules.
尽管最高法院的裁决允许根据《联邦宪法》进行非安排判决,但绝大多数州仍需要在重罪审判中一致判决,并且在资本谋杀案审判中都需要。
References:
- Apodaca诉俄勒冈州,406 U.S. 404(1972)。
- Arnold, R. S. (1993). Trial by jury: The constitutional right to a jury of twelve in civil trials. Hofstra Law Review, 22, 1-35.
- Ballew诉Georgia,435 U.S. 223(1978)。
- Burch诉路易斯安那州,441 U.S. 130(1979)。
- Colgrove诉Battin,413 S. 149(1973)。
- Hastie,R.,Penrod,S。和Pennington,N。(1983)。在陪审团内。马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社。
- Johnson诉路易斯安那州,406 U.S. 356(1972)。
- Saks,M。J.(1977)。陪审团判决:团体规模和社会决策规则的作用。马萨诸塞州列克星敦:列克星敦书籍。
- Saks, M. J., & Marti, M. W. (1997). A meta-analysis of the effects of jury size. Law and Human Behavior, 21, 451—167.
- Williams诉佛罗里达案,399 U.S. 78(1970)。
- Zeisel,H。(1971)…。然后没有:联邦陪审团的减少。芝加哥大学法律评论,38,710-724。