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Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1985

Jurors' Interpretations and Jury

Decision Making*

James A. Holsteint

In arrivingat theirverdicts,jurorsmustdetermine"whatreallyhappened"in the case at hand.Their interpretationsthen guide their decision makingand become influentialin the group deliberation process. This article uses conversationaldata from simulatedjury deliberationsto describejurors' practiceof articulatingschematicinterpretationsas accountsfor theirverdictchoices, and as means for persuadingotherjurors. As jurors contributeadditionalinterpretationsduringdeliberations,the group decision-makingtask becomes more complex, deliberationslast longer, and they are more difficult to resolve. A significant negative relation is established between the number of interpretations articulated and the jury's likelihood of reaching a unanimous verdict. Articulating multiple interpre- tationsin supportof a candidateverdictappearsto militateagainstits unanimousadoption.

INTRODUCTION

Whenjurors decide a courtcase, they must frequentlytransformfragmented informationconcerningan ambiguousor problematicsituationinto ajudgmentof guiltor innocence. To do so, they must presumablydetermineboth "what really happened"and the consequent legal implications.And not only must individual jurors make sense of the case to their own satisfaction,but the entirejury must agree upon the final verdict. So, in additionto being a complex cognitive task, jurors' work is also social; jurors must somehow forge a unanimous verdict throughthejury deliberationprocess. Central,then, to accomplishingthese goals are issues relatingto jurors' interpretationsof evidence andtestimony,as well as jurors' use of these interpretationsto influence groupdecisions.

In theircognitiveprocessinganalysisofjurors'decisiontask, Penningtonand Hastie (1981) suggest thatjurors must process and ordertrialinformationinto a plausiblesequence of events in orderto determinewhat happenedat the time of the alleged crime. Bennett and Feldman (1981) contend that in the trialjustice

*I am endebted to Andre Modigliani and Joseph Sanders for their invaluable assistance on this project.

t Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53233.

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0147-7307/85/0300-0083$04.50/0? 1985PlenumPublishingCorporation

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process, people transformevidence into stories concerningthe activities in ques-

tion. Throughthe verbaltechniqueof tellingand interpretingstories, they argue, the actors in a trialpresent, organize, and analyze the evidence that bears on the case at hand. Implicitin these descriptionsof jurors' tasks is a conceptionof how the meaning of social experience is derived: one's meaningfulsocial reality is actively organized and constructed by the perceiver out of the vast array of

of theory and empiricalresearchon humancognitiongeneratedin both phenomenological sociology and cognitive psychology.

SociologistAlfredSchutz (1970)has writtenthat "schemes of interpretation" groundedin one's stock of knowledgeprovideus with frameworksfor structuring and interpretingour experience. Goffman(1974)similarlysuggeststhat situations are defined "in accordancewith principlesof organizationthat govern events"; these organizingstructureshe calls "frames." These formulationscomportwell with theories of schematic processing from the psychological literature concerningcognition, perception, and memorythat arguethat incominginformation mustbe relatedto psychologicalframesof referenceto be meaningfullyorganized (Bruner, 1973).Makingsense of the stimulus world requiresscanningthe environment,selecting features to attend to, and takinginformationabout those features and either storing it for future retrieval or using it as a basis for action (Taylor& Crocker,1981).A cognitive schema, then, serves as a processingmechanism, structuringand giving meaning to this incoming information (Neisser, 1976;Mandler,1979).

Althoughthe term "schema" has no fixed usage (Taylor& Crocker, 1981), it may be generallycharacterizedas a "nonspecificbut organizedrepresentation of prior experiences" (Neisser, 1967)-knowledge about a domain that establishes relationsbetween specific events or entities withinthat domain.A schema

provides hypotheses about incomingstimuliwhich includeplans for interpreting andgatheringschema-relatedinformation.Oneof the chief functionsof a schema, accordingto Taylorand Crocker(1981),is "to providean answerto the question: 'what is it?' " Individualshave schemata about types of persons, settings, and events so that when they encounter a stimulus person or situation, they draw upon their representationof that kind of person or event and use it to both coalesce the features of the stimulus configurationand make inferences about

other attributesand subsequent events (Taylor& Crocker, 1981).Interpretative schematathus guide our structuringof environmentalstimuliso thatdiverse sorts of informationcan be broughttogether in a sensible, recognizablefashion. The schemata are themselves modifiableby experience so as to become somehow

specific to what is being perceived; as products of prior experience they are continuallychangedby the informationthey process (Neisser, 1976).

Jurorsenter the jury room having been confrontedwith an imposingarray of information.It might be arguedthat they make sense of the case at hand by

referringthe myriadinformationalitems thatcompriseit to interpretiveschemata that structurethese data so that the case is perceived in some coherent, mean-

ingfulformthatpermitsa legaljudgment.Interpretiveschemata,then, may serve

as jurors' recipes for selecting, storing, recovering, combining, and outputting informationas they transformdiverse and disparatedatainto a cognitive scenario of "what is going on here."

Giveneachjuror'suniquestock of knowledge,it is alwayslikelythatdifferent jurorswill schematicallyprocess the same stimulusinformationin entirelyincompatibleways. The informationmay be referredto differentiallystructuredschemata that will, in turn, order the elements of the stimulus configurationinto

contrastingversions of what took place. Conflictingopinions regardingthe resolution of the case may consequently result. When this happens, jurors must utilize the group deliberation to alter rival jurors' opinions. While jurors use interpretiveschemata to cognitively process information,the jury deliberation may requirethat jurors make public their interpretationsof the case-conver- sational analogs of these cognitive schemata-to support or justify their positions. Because the grounds for a decision may, in part, be found in the way a juror has conceptualized the case at hand-his or her version of "what really

happened"-a verbal descriptionschematicallyportrayinga scenario of the situation in question may serve as a persuasive account or justification for the preferredverdict choice. Just as Bennett and Feldman(1981)saw attorneysand witnesses schematizingthe particularsof a case via stories, jurors may engage in the same conversationalpractice as they explain and account for their own decisions and try to persuadetheir colleagues as they deliberatea case.

To better understandjury decision making, then, one might consider both jurors' cognitive structuresthat produce their interpretationsof a case-jurors' interpretiveschemata-and jurors' verbalportrayalsof how they have structured this trialinformation-their articulatedschematic interpretations.These conversationallyformulatedscenarios are attempts to fit case informationinto understandable sequences of events that may incorporate such features as setting, participants,actions, motivations, relations, and outcomes; they are jurors' articulated notions of what transpiredthat are produced as accounts for verdict choices. While we might infer somethingaboutjurors' psychologicalprocessing of trial materialsfrom their talk about the case, the extent to which verbalized schematic interpretationscan informus about, or be considered representative of, cognitive schemata remains problematic;cognitive processes cannot be ob- served. But jurors' articulatedinterpretationsare public and the implicationsof this social, conversationalpracticeforjury decision makingare topics of interest in their own right.

Thus far, little researchattentionhas been directedto describingjurors' talk as they deliberate.Studies done as partof the Universityof ChicagoJuryProject have gone further than any others in opening up the jury room to systematic descriptionand analysis. James (1959), for example, has noted that as they deliberate,mockjurors discussedjudges' instructions,trialtestimony,personalexperiences, opinions on the trial, and other proceduralmatters. Still, it remainsto be demonstratedhow talk about these various topics is actuallyused to promote candidateverdicts. Todo so one must gain access to jurors' deliberations,access that is denied by law. Simulation,almost by default, seems to be the next best

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alternative.'This article analyzes simulateddeliberationsof a criminaltrial, and

focuses on features of the jurors' conversationalpractices as they try to reach unanimousgroup verdicts. In particular,it examinesjurors' articulationof schematic interpretationsto designate and organizeinformationto supportcandidate verdicts.Jurors'practices of articulatingschematicinterpretations-scenarios of "what really happened"-as accounts forjurors' decisions are documentedand some effects of these practiceson the deliberations'finaloutcomes are discussed.

Schematizingthe diverse informationpresentedin a trialto determinewhat happenedin the situation in question takes jurors only part way to their final judgmentof guilt or innocence. Indeed, it is only one of seven major subtasks identifiedin PenningtonandHastie's (1981)modelofjurordecisionmaking.While this study focuses mainly on this componentof the jurors' task-presenting ac-

countsof "whatreallyhappened'-and the implicationsof this processforjuries' decisions, it is a topic that has been neglected in other majortheoreticalformulationsof thejuror's task. For example, "informationintegration"(Kaplan,1975; Kaplanet al., 1978;Ostrom et al., 1978)and "Bayesian" (Schum, 1975, 1977; Schum & Martin, 1982) models of juror decision making have been primarily

concerned with the specification of processes describingor prescribingthe psychological evaluation and algebraiccombinationof information.But in the pro- cess, they fail to provide accounts for how trial informationis assembled into a coherentunitto be assessed and combinedinto ajudgment(Pennington& Hastie, 1981)and do not deal explicitly with the dynamics of the deliberationprocess. In examiningjurors' interpretations,this study discusses constructs seemingly implicitin these other formulations,and, indeed, it may well complementthese alternativecharacterizations.2

SIMULATION METHODS

To examinejurors' decision-makingpractices, it was necessary to simulate the trial informationpresented to jurors, and give the jurors the opportunityto discuss the materialand to deliberateas a group until they reach a unanimous

decision. To that end, a mock trial was shown to 48 groupsof subjects who had recently served two months on the jury panels of the WashtenawCounty,Michigan District or SuperiorCourts. These subjects were shown a 24-minutevideo- taped simulationof a criminaltrial that was loosely based on the facts and legal

1Jurysimulationsof one sort or anotherare currentlythe most popularformof researchbeingdone on jury decision making.For reviews of the literaturedealingwith mockjury studies see Gerbasi et al. (1977),Davis et al. (1977),or Weitenand Diamond(1979).

2 For example, Schumand Martin(1982),in their Bayesiananalysisof cascadedinferencechainsin

personalstrategiesbased upon a unique matrixof priorexperience." Implicit,then, in their discussion of the internalconsistency of probabilityassessments is a model of actualjuror behavior (to be contrastedwith ideal or possiblebehavior)that tacitlyincorporatesprocesses reminiscentof those that are the topic of this study.

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matic interpretations articulated over the course of the group discussion.8 Designating these conversational features is not a simple task and requires a reliance

upon coders' language-use competence and interpretive procedures (Cicourel, 1974).9 Coders were instructed to note each different interpretation that was articulated during a deliberation. The instructions defined a schematic interpretation as any juror's attempt to specify what he or she thought was happening in the situation in question, i.e., any coherent sequencing of events, or "facts" of the case, that were verbally assembled to provide a response to the question-spoken

the situation in question in terms of these various elements; they were told to note jurors' depictions of the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the case being discussed. Any utterance or series of utterances by a juror that was recognizable as an attempt to characterize the situation was coded as a schematic interpretation.10 These scenarios did not have to be completely specified (i.e., include reference to all elements) in order to be coded, so they could be more or less complete, or more or less elaborate, and still be coded.

Two coders read each transcript, noted all different schematic interpreta- tions, then rated each deliberation for the number of different scenarios articulated. The two raters agreed upon their ratings for all but one of the 48 deliberations. In this deliberation, one coder noted four different interpretations while the second coder identified five. They resolved this discrepancy in a brief dis- cussion during which the first coder acknowledged overlooking an interpretation identified by the other rater.

For analytic purposes, then, jurors' verbal depictions of "what really happened" might tell us something about how jurors processed trial information using cognitive schemata to organize material pertaining to the case at hand. One could argue that if a juror talks about a case in a certain way, he or she is likely to have

8 Forthe presentanalysis,transcriptswere coded only forthe articulationof differentinterpretations,

and not for the numberof times a particularinterpretationwas presented.This articlefocuses only on the numberof differentscenariosjurors deal with, and not with the variousfeaturesof how, or

how often, these interpretationsmightbe used.

9 In assigningjurors' discourse to predeterminedcoding categoriesI makeimplicituse of speaker- hearers'conversationalpracticesand competencesas unexplicatedresources.These coding prac-

tices are unavoidablyembeddedin the settingwhich they attemptto codify anddescribe(Cicourel, 1974).The researchers'practicewherebyinterpretationsare recognizedand made meaningfulare

assumedto be identicalwithjurors'interpretiveprocedures,andtherebyconstitutea potentialtopic for furtherresearch.This analysisacknowledgesthe ramificationsof glossingthese proceduresand

recognizesthe advisabilityof a morefine-grainedexamination discourse to better ofjurors' practices

describethe groupdecision-makingpracticeswhich are quantifiedhere.

10More than one jurormightpresentan interpretationthroughcollaborativedescriptionin adjacent utterances.Interpretationsdid not necessarilyhave to be articulatedby singlejurorsto be coded.

a Meannumberof interpretationsper deliberation= 2.3.

thought about the case in a particular way as his or her decision was being made. Since these cognitive operations are never directly accessible, however, it remains problematic the extent to which jurors' conversation about the case represents the way they think about it. Perhaps more profitably, we may view articulated

that have been drawn. As accounts, jurors' verbalized interpretations may be used to justify and promote candidate verdicts, or, they may be posed as alternatives to the formulations presented to support the opposition's verdict. Whether or not we view articulated schematic interpretations as indicators of cognitive frameworks, their presence in jury deliberations requires that all jurors in some way confront particular scenarios that portray alternative versions of what hap- pened in the case at hand. The analysis that follows examines the effect of this verbal schematizing on the jury decision-making process.

SCHEMATIC INTERPRETATION: AN INVARIANT FEATURE OF JURY DELIBERATION

In every one of the 48 mock deliberations of trial of State v. Harris, a schematic interpretation depicting the central action of the case was articulated. A scenario describing "what really happened" was presented at least once in every group discussion. Table 1 displays a frequency distribution of the number of different interpretations articulated in the mock deliberations. Articulating these interpretations appears to be an invariant feature of jury deliberations whereby jurors describe what they thought was going on, as the following illustrates:

Juror(4):Harrisknewwhathe was doingwhenhe went on the propertyanddroveaway with those bricks... He knew he was takingthose bricksfromsomeone. He

knew they weren't his bricks,that he didn'town those bricks,so he intended to take them.

Here, juror (4) assembled the trial information into a scenario in which the de-

fendant knowingly took property that belonged to someone else.

Other jurors may not have seen this case in the same way, as is clear from comments excerpted from a different deliberation:

Juror(3): Harrisdidn't, he didn't take things that were worth something.. I, I got the very strongimpressionthathe was a, a reasonablyhonestpersonandthat he thoughtthis really was propertyof no value. That it was old discarded burneddown stuff. And he needed it for something,so he removedit.

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Clearly,in these two instances, differentjurorsdidnot structurethe trialmaterials in the same fashion. These two interpretationsdeal with basically the same information, yet they frame it in differentways. While both highlightthe act of takingthe bricks, they interpretthat act in light of differentsets of "facts" with which it is juxtaposed. In the first instance, attention is focused on the "fact" that Harristook bricks that belonged to someone else; the bricks he took were owned by anotherperson. In the second example, the defendantis portrayedas innocentlytaking some worthless bricks-"property of no value." So, while in the second instance, the worthof the bricksis a centralissue, in the first scenario

worth is irrelevant;ownershipis the importantfactor.

Fromthese examples, we can see how trialinformationtakes on its meaning as "facts" of the case only throughthe frames of referenceto which it is assimilated. As Bruner(1973)notes, "whateveris perceived is placed in and achieves its meaningfrom a class of percepts with which it is grouped." One mightinfer, then, that disparate schematic interpretationsof the case derive from different interpretiveschematathroughwhichjurors are processingtrialinformation.The uniquecognitive structuresand stock of knowledgethat eachjurorbringsto bear on the materialsbeingconsideredcan structurethe same stimulusfieldinto widely

variedinterpretations.Indeed,jurorsstudiedhere construedthe situationin question in 15 differentways (i.e., coders identified 15 distinct interpretationsarticulatedinjury deliberations).Some saw it as the unlawfultheft of someone else's valuedproperty,while others thoughtit was the mistakeof a well-intentionedbut ignorantman who had no sense that he was stealing. And, less commonly,some jurors saw the situationas the act of a "good samaritan"cleaningup the neighborhood, or even the perpetrationof the perfect, plotted crime, carriedout in "broaddaylight" to make the act appear innocent. Jurors,then, are capable of constructingdiscrepant versions of "what really happened" from the same informationandthe "facts" of the case can only emergewithinthe varyingcontexts of jurors' interpretations.Still,jurors arguewith one anotheras if there were but one possible scenario-and one set of "facts"-- andthey articulatetheirversions of "what really happened"as compellinggroundsfor their verdict choices.

Whilejurors' formulationsof "what really happened" may derive fromju-

rors' uniquecognitive structures,jurors may also importorganizingframeworks to make sense of case materials. For example, both attorneys and witnesses attemptto structurethe materialsthey present in a fashionthat appearscoherent to thejury. Indeed, it is the contendingattorneys' task to depict the "evidence" in such a way as to portraythe situationin question in the most favorablelight for their clients. In the mock deliberationsstudied here, the majorityof jurors' portrayalsof the case at handareorganizedsimilarlyto those thatcan be observed in the simulatedtrial. There is also evidence thatjurors influence each others' framingsof the case; deliberationtranscriptsoccasionallyrevealajurorreframing the case at hand to describe it more like a colleague's version.

The legal setting and the judges' instructionsregardingthe law in this case also influence how jurors structure the case. Due, apparently,to the judges' instructionsregardingthe necessity of establishingcriminalintent, jurors regularly incorporatedconsiderationsof the defendant'smotives or mind-set as pa-

rametersof their interpretations.This is apparentin many of the excerpts from deliberationsquoted here. So, while particularizedversions of what transpired mayfrequentlyemerge,jurors often sharesimilarframeworksfor interpretingthe case that help minimizethe numberof alternativeportrayals.

MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS AND THE COMPLEXITY OF JURY DELIBERATIONS

In additionto demonstratingthatthe articulationof schematicinterpretations is an invariantfeature of jury deliberations, Table 1 also indicates that jurors presentedmore than one interpretationin 75%of the mock deliberationsstudied here. This might indicate the extent to which opinion about what happenedin this case was divided. In all 36 deliberationsin which morethanone interpretation was articulated,at least one scenario was mentioned in supportof each of the opposing candidate verdicts. When different pictures of the case emerge, we might expect the group decision-makingprocess to become more difficult than in deliberationswhere there is no consequentialdisagreementabout what hap- pened. Multipleinterpretationsmean multiplepossible explanationsto consider. Thisimpliesmultiplesets of "facts" to weigh. Thereare simplymorepossibilities for jurors to consider as the numberof differentversions of "what really hap- pened" increases. The groupdecision-makingtaskwould seeminglybecome more

complex.

One simple gauge of a deliberation's complexity is its length. A lengthy deliberation-one that demandsan extended amountof time and conversational

workto producea verdict--should be morelikely when the numberof alternative interpretationsincreases. Thus, length of deliberationshould be associated with the number of different schematic interpretationsarticulatedin a deliberation. This hypothesis is confirmedby data from the mock deliberationsstudied here. The correlationbetween numberof interpretationsarticulatedand length of deliberation,measuredin words spoken over the course of a deliberation,is .67 (p < .01).1 A one-way analysis of varianceindicates significantdifferencesin mean lengthbetween deliberationsthatvaryin the numberof interpretationsarticulated within them, from one to five (F = 9.83, p < .01). While mean length steadily increases as the numberof interpretationsmentionedincreases, the differences in meanlengthbetween threeand four-scenariodeliberationsandfour-and fivescenario deliberations do not attain statistical significance, apparentlydue to small sample size. However, when deliberationscontainingthree or more dif-

ferentinterpretationsaregrouped,there are significantdifferencesin meanlength between the single-scenario,two-scenario, and three-plus-scenariodeliberations (see Table2).

While it has been suggested that increasingthe numberof schematic interpretations articulated in a deliberation increases the complexity and, conse-

lThis analysis was also performedusing numberof utterancesas the indicatorof length. Results were identical.