Liberation Reconsidered: Understanding Why Judges and Juries Disagree about Guilt

Abstract

Data collected in four jurisdictions by the National Center for State Courts allows us to examine the question of judge and jury disagreement about guilt through a consideration of the views of jurors as well as judges. Using this data, we test in a modern context the hypothesis that the jury's embrace of values -- as opposed to its different assessment of the evidence -- explains why juries acquit when judges would convict. We find that legal and extralegal factors affect both judge and jury decisions about guilt, that both sets of factors predict disagreement in different contexts, and the pattern of agreement versus disagreement is more complex than suggested by the liberation hypothesis.