Abstract
Trial by jury is an integral part of our criminal justice system and one that is well respected by citizens. However, in some parts of the nation less than half of the people summoned to jury duty respond to the summons. In response to this problem, the Judicial Council of California created a Blue Ribbon Commission tasked with creating recommendations for jury system improvements. Since the Blue Ribbon Commissions final report in 1996 and the creation of a Task Force on Jury System Improvements, several jury innovations have been implemented throughout California. While many of these innovations have been qualitatively analyzed, there has been little to no effort to perform a quantitative analysis to determine whether any of these innovations have had an effect on juror response rates. This study used an OLS regression model to quantify the effects of jury innovations on juror response rates in Yolo County using 110 observations between October of 2001 and November of 2010. Several innovations had statistically significant effects on the juror response rates, including the use of plain English jury instructions for both civil and criminal jury trials, the use of a standardized jury summons form, allowing juror note taking, allowing jurors to ask questions at trial, giving jury instructions prior to trial, changing the method of jury payment, changes to the juror orientation, changes to the way jurors were managed, and playing a pre-recorded greeting from the presiding judge to prospective jurors. Some of the innovations, specifically the plain English instructions for civil jury trials, modifications to the management of jurors, and the pre-recorded introduction by the presiding judge appear to have a inverse relation to juror response rates. Given the limited number of data points as well as the limited geographic scope of the study, these results should be interpreted cautiously. However, this study is a proof of concept in that the effectiveness of jury innovations can be analyzed in a quantitative manner; a similar study with a wider scope and larger dataset, could yield more conclusive results.