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The Partial Juror: Correlates and Causes of Prejudgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Edmond Costantini  and
Joel King
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Abstract

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Data from two 1979 potential juror surveys concerning three criminal cases in Yolo County, California, form the basis for an analysis of opinions indicative of prejudgment in those cases. Strong bivariate relationships are demonstrated between knowledge about a specific case, general attitudes on crime, gender, and education level, on the one hand, and two measures of propensity to prejudge a defendant's guilt, on the other. Further, multivariate discriminant function analysis is used to show that these four independent variables taken together are able to produce significant increases in the ability to make predictions of prejudging opinions on the part of the respondents and that knowledge about a specific case is by far the most important variable in determining such predictions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , 1981 , pp. 9 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

The authors wish to acknowledge the advice and assistance of Richard L. Gilbert, District Attorney of Yolo County, California, and Professors Floyd Feeney, School of Law, and Clyde Jacobs, Department of Political Science, University of California at Davis. We also appreciate the support of The Yolo County Board of Supervisors.

References

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