Narrative rationality in jury decision-making

This research examines the communication processes of juries from a narrative perspective. It identifies, using a narrative perspective, the types of information jurors use in their decision-making, and it provides a first step toward understanding the communication processes of juries and developing a comprehensive theory of jury decision-making.; Fifteen, six-person mock juries, drawn from a pool of student volunteers at a Midwestern University, watched a videotaped two-hour stimulus trial. The subjects completed pre and post deliberation surveys identifying verdict preferences and information used in decision-making. The groups deliberated until reaching a unanimous decision on one of five verdict choices.; Deliberations were videotaped, transcribed, unitized, and then coded according to narrative based categories. All communication of jurors was broken into codable units, then coded as one of 30 possible categories of information impacting jurors' decisions. The coding scheme categories were developed from a narrative perspective and organized around the eight general topics of evidence completeness, evidence consistency, story construction, fidelity, instructions, process, evaluation, and response. Pre and post deliberation survey answers were also unitized and coded.; Frequencies and percentages were calculated for all categories of the coding scheme. The 15,757 coded transcript units, revealed that jurors communicated about story construction in 49 percent of their utterances, and legal instructions in 15 percent of their utterances. Qualitative analysis provided evidence of how jurors used competing stories to persuade one another and how they struggled to understand key legal concepts by creating narrative examples.; This research suggests that narrative is a useful perspective for analyzing jury decision-making. It builds on other research that shows jurors organize trial information into stories by showing that jurors also use story structures in their group communication as a mechanism for reaching decisions. They organize information into story structures which they judge using narrative tests of logic. The narrative perspective helps explain why jurors use particular information, and how it is used in the totality of the decision-making process. This research reveals that jurors communicate with a focus on narrative.