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

RAPID：禁令对强制性挑战对预案、陪审团组成和案件结果的影响

• 批准号: 2202144
• 负责人: Jessica Salerno
• 金额: $ 19.98万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2202144&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Impact; Bans; Peremptory; Challenges

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.

尽管美国法律的体系几十年来一直在努力减少差异，但这些差异仍然存在。某些人口群体在监狱和被错误定罪的人中所占比例过高，部分原因是他们在陪审团中的代表性一直不足。增加陪审团的多样性可以提高审议的质量，减少陪审团决定中的偏见，但检察官使用强制性质疑是造成陪审团差异的主要机制。检察官对某些群体的陪审员进行了更高的打击，并在受到质疑时成功地提供了中立的理由。亚利桑那州即将采取真正的变革性步骤，禁止强制性挑战，这是一项突破性的改革，将于2022年1月1日生效。该禁令的既定目标是打击陪审团选择中的偏见;假设这将增加陪审团的多样性并减少判决中的偏见。该项目推进了关于多样性，群体决策和在现实世界中打击偏见的基础科学。它测试了陪审团选择过程的结构性变化是否会改变陪审团选择决定的方式以及陪审团多样性和偏见的下游后果。它测试了陪审团选择中的种族歧视是否持续存在，因为律师改变了他们的倾向，提供令人信服的中立理由，将某些群体的陪审员排除在强制性挑战之外，以理由挑战。该项目进一步打击偏见和促进公平，多样性和包容性的NSF价值观，通过测试旨在做到这一点的大规模突破性干预的影响，在法律的系统。该项目还为未来的研究创建了重要的数据库，并让代表性不足的群体的许多成员在研究的每个阶段担任研究助理。这一规则的变化提供了一个重要的和短暂的机会，收集数据的预先审查的做法，陪审团的组成，和案件的结果之前和之后，这一变化。这个跨学科、多方法的项目旨在实现以下研究目标：（1）测试上级法院陪审团在强制性质疑禁令之后是否更加多样化和具有代表性，（2）测试某些群体被告的案件中的定罪率或责任率在强制性质疑禁令之后是否会显著下降，（3）测试在强制性质疑禁令颁布后，某些群体因困难/原因而获得豁免的人的百分比是否会大幅增加，从而减轻禁令的总体影响，（4）检验在颁布强制性质疑禁令后，法院对有因质疑进行辩论和裁决的方式是否发生了变化，从而减轻了禁令的总体影响，以及（5）与法官和律师进行访谈，了解他们如何改变陪审团选择策略，以限制禁令对陪审团整体组成的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。