admired, their level of trust in government and the
establishment, and many demographic features such as
age, sex, education, occupation, media preference, and
residence. Demographic variables were then statisti-
cally correlated with attitudes suggesting support for
the government and the Vietnam War. Schulman
reported that respondent sex, education, religion, and
media preference distinguished “good” from “bad”
jurors. In principle, jurors at the trial who had features
that were bad (male, better educated, Protestant,
attended to local media) would be excused perempto-
rily. Despite the apparently scientific approach, it is
clear from Schulman’s article that the Harrisburg Seven
jury was chosen by a mishmash of survey findings and
old-fashioned practice (including informant informa-
tion on certain venirepersons; speculation about how a
given juror was likely to relate to other jurors; specula-
tion on racism; and deliberation among the multiple
lawyers, social scientists, and defendants about the
desirability of prospective jurors).
If it is unclear how SJS was employed in the
Harrisburg Seven trial, it was abundantly clear to the
litigation profession that a promising new tool was
available to assist in jury selection. While Schulman’s
academic colleagues continued pro bono work on
political trials, some of his followers formed the
National Jury Project in 1975. In 1979, in the wake of
success in the MCI/ATT antitrust case, Donald Vinson
founded Litigation Sciences. In 1987, he founded
Decision Quest, which was employed by prosecutor
Marcia Clark in the 1995 trial of O. J. Simpson. Today,
trial consultation is a billion-dollar enterprise, with
practitioners in all metropolitan areas.An SJS Survey
The following survey was conducted in 2003 in prepa-
ration for a trial with charges of vehicular homicide
while driving under the influence of alcohol, a felony
punishable by as much as 50 years in a Florida state
prison. The sample in this SJS survey consisted of 211
Miami-Dade county residents whose sex, age, family
income, marital status, education, and race/ethnicity
closely paralleled those of registered voters, from
among whom state court venirepersons are subpoe-
naed. These people’s responses should be similar to
those of people who show up for duty at this trial.
The survey begins with the case summary, a one-
page description of the most essential features of the
case, to wit, that an elderly lady was hit and killed by a
speeding BMW. The driver failed to stop. A witnesswith a cell phone described the driver as a black or dark-
skinned male. A police BOLO (be on the outlook for)
broadcast this description. The police found the aban-
doned, damaged car within 20 minutes at a distance of
1.5 miles from the accident. About 1 hour after the acci-
dent, the police went to the apartment of the registered
owner of the car, who lived 8 miles away. He was a
light-skinned White man who was wearing his bathrobe.
He had been in bed and in the shower and appeared
intoxicated. There were glass shards in his robe and in
the shower. He admitted having been out drinking all
night at two gay bars. He claimed his car was parked
below in the garage. When it was not found there, he
agreed with the police that it must have been stolen. He
was interrogated at the police station and continued to
deny guilt. He claimed to have blacked out in a bar and
to be unable to remember anything thereafter. His blood
alcohol level 4 hours after the accident was 0.17, far
above the legal limit. At that point he was arrested. The
summary concludes with a statement of a defendant’s
right to be presumed innocent and stresses that the entire
burden of proving guilt rests with the prosecution.
The summary is followed by a 9-point verdict scale
asking the respondent to indicate the likelihood of
guilt based on what he or she knows. This verdict
scale is repeated after each separate additional fact
introduced in the second section. A final verdict scale
comes after the respondent has heard the case sum-
mary and all eight additional facts. This is the most
important measure of the verdict.
The second section of the survey records the
respondent’s verdict after hearing specific critical
facts. These verdicts determine trial themes and are
the most important information in an SJS survey. They
tell the attorney which facts fly and which crash, what
to leave in the argument at a trial, and what to leave
out. It is no simple matter to know which evidence and
which themes to emphasize in a trial.
Recall that respondents indicated verdicts after hear-
ing eight specific bits of evidence or argument. In terms
of the prosecution’s case, respondents did not increase
their guilt ratings on the basis of evidence stressing that
the defendant’s car was involved or that he was out
drinking all night without an alibi. However, evidence
that the glass spray pattern in the damaged auto proved
that no one other than a driver was in the car at the time
of the accident resulted in a sharp increase in guilt rat-
ings. These findings identify the critical defense prob-
lem that must be successfully addressed.
Two defense themes proved most helpful. First, the
police BOLO identified the driver as a dark-skinned706 ———Scientific Jury SelectionS-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:44 PM Page 706