EVANSTON, Ill., June 20 A professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said his study suggests that juries can't always be counted on to render a correct verdict.
Statistician Bruce Spencer of Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research looked at 271 cases from four different areas and found that in at least one out of eight cases, juries came up with the wrong decision.
Writing in the July issue of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Spencer said he conducted his study by asking judges hearing cases to fill out a questionnaire that he used to compare to the jury's finding.
Some of the errors Spencer found were incorrect acquittals and others were incorrect convictions.
"As a society can we be satisfied if 10 percent of convictions are incorrect?" says Spencer. "Can we be satisfied knowing that innocent people to jail for many years for wrongful convictions?"
Copyright 2007 by UPI
