Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnographic Study of Lay Participation in the United States Criminal Justice System

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project undertakes an anthropological study of the United States federal jury system, focusing on how prosecutors pick jurors. The process by which citizens are selected or excused from jury service has not been studied ethnographically, leaving lawyers and social scientists with an incomplete understanding of the relationship between attorneys' practices of social evaluation and their formulations of justice as dimensions of their professionalism. Significant contributions to sociolegal research and the legal profession flow from this project. It will shed light on how prosecutors evaluate individuals who report for jury service in relation to the case at hand. A key finding in this research to date is that prosecutors draw on multiple interpretive resources as they seek to compose a jury based on the attributes of jurors. These resources include their professional training in the law, their collegial consultation as they prepare cases for trial, and their personal experience, among other sources of social knowledge. Since jurors are by definition strangers to prosecutors, prosecutors often use iconic "types" as shorthand for the ways social characteristics align (in their own understandings) with different analytical abilities and/or orientations to crime and punishment. This research will also illuminate how prosecutors translate their felt obligation to do justice into action, as they work with juries. The insights of this study contribute to the anthropology of law and sociolegal studies, and can be returned as well to the legal profession through Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses that focus on the theory and practice of jury selection. Drawing on ethnographic methods, this research will include participant observation in multiple U.S. Attorney's Offices and courtrooms in a federal judicial district. The researcher will conduct semi-structured and unstructured interviews that explore how prosecutors' ideas about lay decision-makers shift from one juror(and trial)to the next. It will also involve the analysis of trial transcripts.