Virtual Courtroom Juries
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What traditional views exist about courtroom juries?
We work hard to strike the right amount of intelligence and ignorance. The Last Show with David Cooper. We picture justice, criminal justice, happening in a serious courtroom filled with wooden benches, juries, judges, all in person, all in a courtroom. But what if it works just as well on your laptop at home? Well, a new study suggests virtual juries might be as fair as in-person ones. But are there still problems with this setup? That's what we're going to dig into with someone who's researched virtual juries. Her name is Christia Reed. She's a psychology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Christia, welcome to the show.
Hi, David. Thank you for having me today.
When I hear this question, can justice, fair justice, happen on a laptop with a webcam with someone maybe not wearing pants at home, my first gut instinct is, no, that wouldn't work. We need the formality of the courtroom to make justice function.
How do virtual juries compare to in-person juries?
But my assumption might not be 100% correct, is it?
No, actually, so we did a study. We were in the middle of collecting data when the pandemic shut us down. So we were about six juries short for a study that we were doing. And we decided, hey, let's switch this up and compare in-person to virtual juries. And so we made some comparisons, like we ended up collecting 30 juries virtually and made some comparisons and found very few differences between our in-person and virtual juries. So initially, the response is, hey, maybe there isn't a concern or major concerns, at least for some instances in which juries deliberate virtually instead of in-person.
The concerns that I would have, and maybe I'm wrong, I'm probably wrong, is that people would have emails open. On one screen, they'd have the trial. On the other, they'd have a video game. They'd be secretly texting on their phone, doing all the kind of distracting things you can't get away with in a courtroom. What did people actually do, though? Were they heavily distracted or were they paying attention to these trials?
So we had about five to six people in each jury and there were 30 juries virtually. And it really seemed like they were engaged and involved in the trial. It was a short trial and it was a civil trial, not a criminal case. So that might change the way that you interpret this. And they were getting paid, and they were getting paid pretty well. But for the most part, there were not really major differences between our in-person juries and our virtual juries in terms of how engaged they were. So it didn't seem like people were playing video games. It didn't seem like people were... were distracted in that way, which was excellent. And that made it so that we feel like, okay, so at least this is maybe a place that we can start, although more research is necessary to see if it happens in longer trials.
What were the findings of the study on virtual juries?
So this was only like an hour. And like I said, we were paying them. So that might be a difference, right? It ended up taking like four hours, but the deliberation part was only an hour.
And I've never actually sat on a jury because I'm not American and I live in the US, so I'm not eligible. I get to tick off that box. What happens in a jury normally? Like what happens in the deliberation room and then what happened in the virtual deliberation room?
So for the most part, we don't know. So researchers can guess, but the courts aren't really involved in what's happening in the deliberation room. So it's not like I can videotape an actual deliberation. So this is kind of the closest that we can get in terms of viewing that. where we can compare the people that were participating in our study in person versus those that are participating virtually. And the dynamics seemed essentially the same. There were fewer interruptions and other things on Zoom, which is what you might expect based on running this podcast and talking to other people in that way. And so I thought that that was really interesting, that it seemed like there were less people talking over one another and more people had the opportunity to participate on Zoom.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What traditional views exist about courtroom juries?
0:05–1:01
2
How do virtual juries compare to in-person juries?
1:01–2:49
3
What were the findings of the study on virtual juries?
2:49–4:20
4
What concerns exist about distractions in virtual jury settings?
4:20–9:01
5
How engaged were participants in virtual jury trials?
9:01–9:44
Speakers
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