Racially Mixed Juries Deliberate More

A study from Tufts University shows that racially mixed juries deliberate more thoroughly than all-White juries in racially charged cases. The mere presence of Blacks on the jury is enough to trigger the effect, regardless of their contributions.

The study, “On Racial Diversity and Group Decision-Making: Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on Jury Deliberations,” was conducted by Dr. Samuel R. Sommers, an assistant professor of psychology. The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Sommers says very few studies have been done on the legal context of racial diversity.

“Juries need a diversity of information from people … and the study found that the mere presence of [Black] jurors has a diverse effect,” Sommers says.

In the experiment, 29 six-person mock juries — 14 of them all-White and 15 consisting of four Whites and two Blacks — were given a video presentation of an imaginary trial. The crime, a sexual assault, featured a Black defendant, a White victim and ambiguous evidence. When jurors were asked to deliberate, 16 (55 percent) of the juries voted to acquit, one jury voted to convict and 12 juries (41 percent) had not come to a unanimous decision. The only jury that voted to convict was all-White. Apart from that, verdicts did not break down by the juries’ racial composition.

The racially mixed groups deliberated longer, raised more questions and considered more of the facts presented in the video, the study found.

Sommers plans to follow up on these findings and apply it to other contexts, such as the classroom and boardroom.

Black enrollment would decline in 25 years if affirmative action measures were dropped even though the income and test scores gap between Blacks and Whites will narrow.

This is the conclusion from “Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: Evaluating Justice O’Connor’s Conjecture” by University of Virginia education professor Sarah E. Turner and Princeton economics professors Alan B. Krueger and Jesse Rothstein.