The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials

Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer and Randi Hjalmarsson

No 16366, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of jury racial composition on trial outcomes using a unique data set of felony trials in Florida between 2000 and 2010. We utilize a research design that exploits day-to-day variation in the composition of the jury pool to isolate quasi-random variation in the composition of the seated jury, finding evidence that: (i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member. The impact of jury race is much greater than what a simple correlation of the race of the seated jury and conviction rates would suggest. These findings imply that the application of justice is highly uneven and raise obvious concerns about the fairness of trials in jurisdictions with a small proportion of blacks in the jury pool.

JEL-codes: H1 J71 K0 K14 K40 K41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-09
Note: LE PE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2012. "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(2), pages 1017-1055.

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Journal Article: The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials (2012)
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