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Odds against it being unanimous? | 319 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

Odds against it being unanimous?

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 18 2012 @ 06:00 PM EDT

I've been wondering about that. I guess that usually, with
a long trial like this, you lose 2-3 jurors anyways - and
end up with 9. Assuming that there's a clear answer, with
some small chance for someone to make an error and stick
with it, the odds of a hung jury only go up by 50%. If the
jurors were voting randomly, then larger juries would result
in many more hung juries - but that would probably be a good
thing.

Since a hung jury on a single issue is much preferred to
either a randomly decided verdict or a retrial - judges on
long trials are likely to keep plenty of jurors.

--Erwin

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Odds against it being unanimous?

Authored by: PolR on Saturday, May 19 2012 @ 05:17 AM EDT

It increases the odds but I don't think it is that bad. Jurors talk to each
other and can change their minds based on the points brought by others. This
process naturally converges toward agreement. I would expect the probability of
a holdout to grow at a rate slower than linear with the number of jurors.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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