RAPID: The Impact of Bans on Peremptory Challenges On Voir Dire, Jury Composition, and Case Outcomes

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Despite decades of effort aimed at reducing disparities in the American legal system, they persist. Certain demographic groups are overrepresented in prisons and among those falsely convicted, due, in part, to their continually being underrepresented on juries. Increased diversity on juries improves the quality of deliberation and reduces bias in jury decisions—but prosecutors’ use of peremptory challenges is a primary mechanism for creating disparities on juries. Prosecutors strike jurors from some groups at higher rates and successfully provide neutral reasons when challenged. Arizona is about to take a truly transformative step by banning peremptory challenges, a ground-breaking reform taking effect on January 1st, 2022. The stated goal of the ban is to combat bias in jury selection; the assumption being that this will increase jury diversity and reduce bias in verdicts. This project advances basic science on diversity, group decision-making, and combating bias in a real-world setting. It tests whether a structural change to the jury selection process alters how jury selection decisions are made and the downstream consequences for diversity and bias on juries. It tests whether racial discrimination in jury selection persists because attorneys shift their tendency to offer compelling neutral justifications for excluding jurors of some groups from peremptory challenges to challenges for cause. This project furthers NSF values of combating bias and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion by testing the impact of a large-scale ground-breaking intervention designed to do just that in the legal system. This project also creates important databases for future research and involve many members of underrepresented groups as research assistants in every stage of the research. This rule change presents an important and ephemeral opportunity to collect data on voir dire practices, composition of juries, and case outcomes before and after this change. This transdisciplinary, multi-method project is designed to achieve the following research aims: (1) test whether Superior Court juries are significantly more diverse and representative after the peremptory challenge ban, (2) test whether conviction or liability rates in cases with defendants of some groups will significantly decrease after the peremptory challenge ban, (3) test whether the percentage of persons of some groups excused for hardship/cause will significantly increase after the peremptory challenge ban is enacted, thereby mitigating the overall impact of the ban, (4) test whether the way challenges for cause are argued and decided in court changes after the peremptory challenge ban is enacted in ways that mitigate the overall impact of the ban, and (5) conduct interviews with judges and attorneys regarding how they might alter their jury selection strategies in ways that limit the impact of the ban on overall jury composition. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.