Race, Gender, and Juries: Evidence from North Carolina

Abstract

This paper uses data from felony jury trials in North Carolina to show that (i) the race and gender composition of the randomly selected jury pool has a significant effect on the probability of conviction, (ii) attorneys adjust peremptory challenge strategies in accordance, and (iii) State peremptory challenges have a significant positive impact on the conviction rate when the defendant is a black male. Jury pools with higher proportions white men are more likely to convict black male defendants relative to white male defendants. Jury pools with a higher proportion of black men are more likely to acquit all defendants, especially black men. Attorneys use peremptory challenges strategically in accordance with these results, which are robust to a wide set of controls, including county and judge fixed effects. Each State peremptory challenge is correlated with a 2.4%-2.8% increase in the conviction rate when the defendant is black.

It’s Still about Race: Peremptory Challenge Use on Black Prospective Jurors

“…To be sure, some evidence has supported a finding of no racial differences (or even slight differences in favor of Black individuals serving on juries) in jury strikes based on race (Anwar et al 2012), but even the authors warn that generalization of that finding may not be possible given the low prevalence (3.9 percent) of Black venire members in the sample. Indeed, a replication of the Anwar et al's (2012) design using a larger sample did find racial differences consistent with other studies (Flanagan 2018).…”

“…Although it is difficult to study the decision-making process of a jury to determine which jurors influenced the final decision, empirical research has been conducted examining the racial composition of juries and their verdicts. Indeed, research indicates, for example, that all-White juries are more likely to convict a Black defendant than are mixed-race juries (Anwar, Bayer, and Hjalmarsson 2012) and that the presence of more Black jury members increases the likelihood of acquittal in general (Flanagan 2018). These effects, therefore, may guide some prosecutors toward racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges.…”

“…Regardless of whether that is a motivating factor, evidence suggests that it is not effective at fully reversing the racial discrimination from the prosecution, with White individuals still more likely to serve on a jury even after the defense's peremptory strikes are used (Eisenberg 2017). Likewise, Flanagan (2018) found that despite the defense and prosecution having "opposing strategies" in applying peremptory challenges, the end result is an underrepresentation of Black men on juries (p. 191).…”

Gender differences in the prosecution of police assault: Evidence from a natural experiment in Sweden

“…The literature on equality under the law largely focuses on whether ascriptive attributes of judges are associated with their decisions, focusing on the sex or racial characteristics of judges in the Unites States. The standard methodological approach is to regress the judge’s vote on the ascriptive attribute of interest and a fairly uniform set of covariates relating to other attributes of the judge and/or case, although researchers are increasingly moving beyond this standard analysis of observational data by using matching and other techniques designed to improve inference [ 2 , 4 – 8 ].…”

“…A handful of jury studies have found some evidence of gender effects. One historical pre-post design shows that the inclusion of women on juries impacted on conviction rates in female-salient cases [ 23 ], while another found gender effects conditional on race in North Carolina [ 4 ]. Using data from several counties in Florida, Hoekstra and Street [ 5 ] find that own-gender juries result in lower conviction rates for drug charges, but not other charges.…”