Judge‐Jury Agreement in Criminal Cases: The First Three Years of the Korean Jury System

Abstract

This study examined jury trials conducted during the first three years since the introduction of a new jury system in South Korea. Case information from all jury trials held during the time was collected and empirically analyzed with a focus on judge‐jury agreement. The statistical analyses were guided by previous studies (Eisenberg et al. ; Spencer ). Results indicated that judges and juries agreed on the verdict 91.4 percent of the time (70.3 percent for conviction and 21.1 percent for acquittal). When they disagreed, juries had a greater tendency to acquit than did judges (7.4 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively). Neither evidentiary strength nor complexity had any systematic impact on agreement rates. Judges were more likely than juries to convict across all levels of evidentiary strength. The accuracy and error rates of jury verdicts were assessed by estimates of conditional probability.

Trial by Jury: Story of a Legal Transplant

“…These data should reassure those who were concerned about overly punitive lay citizens. Indeed, the substantial agreement and leniency tendencies are quite consistent with the findings in the U.S. and in South Korea (Kim et al ; Vidmar and Hans ). Bergoglio () documented how Argentine perceptions of the judiciary became much more favorable among those who participated as lay judges; public opinion surveys in Córdoba also showed small but statistically significant increases in general confidence in the judiciary.…”

The Influence of Biomedical Information and Childhood History on Sentencing

“…Therefore, mock trial studies are limited in terms of external validity, but they provide a strength of entangling causality by manipulating conditions. Last, there is disagreement between judges' and jurors' verdicts (Kalven & Zeisel, ), and this disagreement can vary across cultures (Kim, Park, Park, & Eom, ). Further research with diverse groups using BI and CI is needed.…”

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“…It exceeds the pattern in the U.S., which could generate concerns about redundancy and raise the specter of juries "rubber stamping" a punitive state action. Nonetheless, the original article also reports that the overall conviction rate was similar to published rates from the U.S. at about 80%; thus, the 90% rate of agreement reflects more consensuses on both acquittals and convictions compared to the U.S. case (Kim et al 2013). Just as importantly, when disagreeing with judges, Korean juries-like their U.S. counterpart-were more likely to recommend acquittal than were judges.…”