Race, Gender, and Juries: Evidence from North Carolina
Francis X. Flanagan
Journal of Law and Economics, 2018, vol. 61, issue 2, 189 - 214
Abstract:
This paper uses data from felony jury trials in North Carolina to show that the race and gender composition of the randomly selected jury pool has a significant effect on the probability of conviction, attorneys adjust peremptory-challenge strategies in accordance, and state peremptory challenges have a positive impact on the conviction rate when the defendant is a black male. Jury pools with higher proportions of white men are more likely to convict black male defendants relative to white male defendants. Jury pools with a higher proportion of black men are more likely to acquit all defendants, especially black men. Attorneys use peremptory challenges strategically in accordance with these results, which are robust to a wide set of controls, including county and judge fixed effects. Each state peremptory challenge is correlated with a 2.4-2.9-percentage-point increase in the conviction rate when the defendant is black.
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)
Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698193 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/698193 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/698193
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().