been learned about legal systems in general and the
jury in particular in Western Europe. An effort was
also made to collect and examine jury trial statistics
from several major metropolitan areas in the United
States in order to estimate the frequencies associated
with defendants’ waiving their right to jury trial, the
occurrence of hung juries, and the number of annual
jury trials in the United States. Existing data were also
gathered on the extent to which judges agreed with the
verdicts of their juries as well as the nature of cases
heard by judges and juries. In the end, this archival
research set the stage for a number of later project
activities and produced the following conclusions:
(a) there did not exist much data on juries outside the
United States; (b) defendant waiver rates varied con-
siderably across jurisdictions within the United
States; (c) criminal “hung jury” rates varied across
jurisdictions but on average occurred about 5% of the
time; (d) judges and juries agreed on the appropriate
verdict in about 75% to 85% of cases; (e) when trial
complexity was taken into account, juries were about
on par with judges in terms of the time needed to
resolve cases; and (f) about 55,670 jury trials occurred
in the United States in 1955 (which is considerably
higher than current estimates).IInntteerrvviieeww RReesseeaarrcchh
Researchers associated with the Chicago Jury
Project made extensive use of interview methodology
in the course of their work. One notable study involved
having one of the project researchers (Dale Broeder, a
law professor) accompany a federal district court judge
on his circuit for the better part of a year. During this
time, he conducted intensive interviews with 225 jurors
and many of the attorneys involved in 20 jury trials.
Attorneys were asked about their strategies during voir
dire and their reasons for challenging particular jurors;
jurors were questioned about their attitudes toward the
jury system in general, their service, and their prefer-
ences for particular kinds of trials. One finding from
this line of work was that many jurors were not looking
to serve, but those that did tended to be positively influ-
enced by their experience and more supportive of the
jury system afterward. This labor-intensive endeavor
resulted eventually in a number of essays highlighting
commonalities in deliberation across cases, most of
which were published in law journals.
One of the most well-known findings associated
with the Chicago Jury Project arose from a massivefield study featuring interviews with more than 1,500
jurors from 225 criminal jury trials in Chicago and
Brooklyn. Among the goals of this study was recon-
struction of the distribution of juror votes on the first
ballot taken during deliberation. The result—surprising
at the time but often replicated since—was that the ver-
dict preferred by the majority of the jury on the first
ballot ended up being the jury’s final verdict approxi-
mately 90% of the time regardless of the demographic
composition of the majority and minority factions.
Furthermore, the minority factions that did manage to
prevail were typically fairly large (i.e., three or
more jurors), not lone “hold-out” individuals. Project
researchers concluded from this that most criminal
cases were decided during the trial as opposed to delib-
eration, and they likened deliberation to the role of the
dark room in photography—the image (verdict) was
set at the moment of exposure (i.e., the conclusion of
the trial), but deliberation served as the developmental
process that brought the image to light. This line of
work also produced some interesting generalizations
about juror voting preferences as a function of
ethnic/national background, as well as some of the first
empirical evidence that jurors do not always fully
understand their instructions.SSuurrvveeyy RReesseeaarrcchh
Perhaps the most famous research associated with
the Chicago Jury Project, however, concerned the
extent to which it makes a tangible difference to the
outcome whether bench trials or jury trials are used.
To examine this question, project researchers assem-
bled a comprehensive listing of judges who presided
over jury trials and then invited all the 3,500 or so
individuals on the list. In the end, 555 trial judges
from every state (except Rhode Island) as well as the
federal courts participated. Essentially, the participat-
ing judges were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire
for each jury trial they presided over during the study
and return it by mail. Sample I was collected during
1954 to 1955 using the first version of the question-
naire (k=2,385 trials); Sample II was collected dur-
ing 1958 using a revised and elaborated form (k=
1,191 trials). Although additional information was
collected (especially on the second form),the focus
was on three things: (1) the jury’s actual verdict, (2) the
judge’s indication of what he or she thought was the
appropriate verdict, and (3) the judge’s perceived rea-
sons for any discrepancy between the first two.66 ———Chicago Jury ProjectC-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 66