Could Juror B29 have stood her ground?
theGRIO REPORT - When she went public in an on-camera interview with ABC News, the juror in the George Zimmerman trial previously known only as B29 addressed a lot of questions including the most obvious one...
In fact, “juror’s remorse” may be more common than hung juries.
A 2009 study by Nicole L. Waters of the National Center for State Courts and Valerie P. Hans of Cornell Law School found that an average of only 6-7 percent of criminal trials result in hung juries (though there is tremendous regional variation, with the rate approaching 20 percent in some California counties and the District of Columbia. and just 1 percent in Oregon, which relies on 10-2, rather than unanimous verdicts.) However, more than one-third of the 3,500 jurors surveyed for the study stated that if the decision was up to them alone, as a “one-person jury,” they “would have voted against their jury’s decision.”
The researchers classified jurors as “majority” voters, “conforming dissenters,” who disagreed at first but ultimately voted with the majority, and “holdouts,” who hung their jury. The study found that, depending on whether a more conservative or liberal measure is used, between 38 percent to 54 percent of juries included at least one juror “who reported an individual verdict preference contrary to the jury’s verdict.”
Jurors holding a dissenting opinion going into deliberations “have a range of options,” the researchers wrote. “They could embark on an uphill battle to convince the majority faction to adopt their viewpoints; they could acquiesce to the majority faction; or they could hold out and hang the jury.”
The study found that the factors most predictive of whether a jury can find unanimity can include larger panels (it’s easier for a smaller group to reach consensus), juror perceptions of the quality of the evidence and witnesses, and whether an initial poll is taken in the deliberation room. It found that when a large majority favors either conviction or acquittal when deliberations start, final verdict matches the initial vote nearly 90 percent of the time. And the study found that the presence of a few dominant jurors, and the size of the dissenting minority, were key factors in whether the dissenters ultimately held out.
“When there was a disparity between jurors’ one-person verdict and the jury’s verdict, most often the minority faction consisted of one or two jurors,” the researchers wrote. “When the jury acquitted or convicted, typically the most common dissenting faction size was one. However, when the case resulted in a hung jury, the minority faction was often larger.”
The study found that “conforming dissenters” most often made their decision to acquiesce to the majority during jury deliberations, not during either the prosecution or the defense’s case in chief, as a result of the judge’s instructions, or during closing arguments. And it found that dissenters preferring an acquittal held out 35 percent of the time, while dissenters favoring a conviction did so just 12.5 percent of the time.
According to Juror B37, initial split in the Zimmerman trial was reportedly three for acquittal, two for manslaughter conviction, and one — juror B29 — for second degree murder.
As for race and ethnicity, the study found African-Americans and Hispanics more likely to hold out to acquit than white jurors, but suggested further study in the area of ethnicity and jury deliberations was needed.
The study concluded: “In terms of other factors that might persuade an individual to acquiesce to the majority verdict preference, we suggest that jurors’ role expectations are important. First, the dissenting juror may be adhering to the formal letter of the law, even though that is at odds with his or her common sense of justice. Judicial instructions provide jurors with a legal framework to apply the evidence they heard. Jurors may believe the legally correct outcome to be unfair, but choose to follow the instructions and thus acquiesce to the legally correct majority preference, even though they, personally, wish for the opposite result. Jurors are not voting in line with their personal preferences (or conscience) but they are following their interpretation of the law.”
Blame the juror, or blame the prosecutors?
MSNBC legal analyst Bloom is sympathetic to Maddy’s plight.
“I can see that she has a lot of compassion for Trayvon Martin’s family,” Bloom said. “I really blame the prosecutors and not the jurors. They’re taken out of their lives and into this situation, a high profile trial where they’re doing the best they can.”
Bloom, a former prosecutor herself, adds that, “When both sides are arguing reasonable doubt, there’s only one possible outcome, I don’t think we can expect jurors to piece it together. It was so interesting to me to hear her, because she clearly feels that Zimmerman did something wrong, but she wasn’t able to piece it together to make the law match what was in her gut.”
Though Juror B29 insists that the law gave her no choice but to acquit George Zimmerman on either second-degree murder or manslaughter, plenty of people online, and in social media expressed that they wished she had held out for ethical reasons. Among them, Silva, the former Liberty Seven juror, who says that in his opinion, Maddy simply gave in.
“Holding out means you don’t give in. She quit. She quit on Trayvon Martin, she quit on herself, and she quit on the system,” Silva says. “She had the ability to make the system work, but she took the easy way out.”
In her interview with Roberts, Maddy seemed to grapple with the question of Zimmerman’s moral accountability versus his accountability under Florida law. But despite her moral dilemma, she stands by the verdict.
“Did I go the right way? Did I go the wrong way?” she wondered out loud, in response to Roberts’ question about whether she feels she did the right thing. “I know I went the right way, because by the law and the way it was followed is the way I went. But if I would have used my heart, I probably would have [gone for] a hung jury.”
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.
