The Challenges of Adult Victim Sexual Assault Cases
Jury Selection and Decision Making in Adult Victim Sexual Assault Cases
National Judicial Education Program, Legal Momentum
© 2011 National Judicial Education Program
Jury Selection and Decision Making in
Adult Victim Sexual Assault Cases
Annotated Table of Contents
The materials listed below are provided in-full.
Each citation is hyperlinked to the full text of the resource.
Judge Andrias explores rape myths and stereotypes and the statutory changes enacted in response to public misconceptions concerning sexual assault. Though this article was published in 2992, the myths it describes are still distorting rape cases today.
Jury questionnaires are a sensitive and private way of eliciting critical information about a potential juror’s past experience with sexual crimes. In addition to inquiring about a potential juror’s personal experiences with sexual assault, this model of a jury questionnaire probes related issues that may surface in a sexual assault case, such as attitudes on punishment, credibility of minor victims, and the perceived value of psychiatric testimony.
This article discusses the author’s experience as an expert witness in a federal rape trial, and provides a list of several issues about which jurors need to be educated in rape cases.
Judges need to identify individuals in the jury pool whose personal history of sexual victimization or perpetration may disqualify them from serving as unbiased jurors. This jury questionnaire asks potential jurors about their past experience related to sexual assault, questioning them about prior victimization or perpetration.
5. James E. Kelley, Addressing Juror Stress: A Trial Judge’s Perspective, 43 Drake L. Rev. 97 (1994).
This study looks at the effects of participating in murder trial on juror stress. The participants were 350 jurors from Iowa murder cases. Although these jurors exhibited many signs of stress, in most cases the signs were not severe. The study also looked at how post-deliberation conferences with the trial judge affected juror stress levels. While there was no significant difference found in the stress levels of jurors who had these conferences and those who had not, there were also no negative effects to these conferences either.
6. Shannon Lambert, J.D., Pandora’s Project, Surviving Jury Duty: Tips for Rape and Sexual Abuse Survivors (2009), available at http://www.pandys.org/articles/juryduty.pdf.
This article discusses several concerns rape and sexual abuse survivors might have about participating in jury duty, whether for sexual assault cases or cases in general, and provides tips as to how they can survive the process.
Although this manual does not address sexual assault cases specifically, it provides a great deal of practical advice for judges seeking to minimize jurors’ stress. It gives practical suggestions for every stage of the process, from the jurors’ initial contact through post-trial proceedings.
8. Lynn Hecht Schafran, Importance of Voir Dire in Rape Trials, Trial, Aug. 1992 at 26.
Research demonstrates that rape case jurors often base their verdicts on extra-legal factors related to myths and stereotypes about victims, offenders, and the crime itself. This article explains why widely-held myths and misconceptions about rape make thorough voir dire essential in these cases.
This article, from the National Judicial Education Program’s two-day judicial education curriculum, summarizes research about how jurors decide sexual assault cases and describes public opinion polls on attitudes about sexual assault. The research with sexual assault juries and the opinion polls on public attitudes toward victim behavior and forced sex show that empanelling an unbiased jury in a sexual assault trial is a serious challenge. Thorough voir dire to address these biases as they relate to the case being tried is an essential element to achieve fairness in these trials.
A professor who was selected to be a jury member in a rape trial in 1999 wrote this article. The author details the jury selection process, the case, jury deliberations, and the outcome of the trial (and the re-trial, which took place seven month later). She then used the information she gathered to discuss the pervasiveness of rape myths in American society, the effect of jury selection on the outcome of trials, and the treatment of sexual assault victims by the courts.