Female jurors are tougher on defendants at the start of jury deliberations than male jurors but more open to persuasion to change their vote during deliberations. That was one of the findings of the University College London team, led by Professor Cheryl Thomas, which recently published its report “Are Juries Fair?” for the Ministry of Justice.

All jurors who took part in the case simulation carried out by the team also completed personal profile forms providing information on gender, age, employment status, profession, income, religion and language. According to the team, case simulation is designed specifically to examine causal links between case factors and jury decisions. In a case simulation, a trial is filmed and edited so that only a specific factor (such as the race of the defendant) is altered in different versions of the case. Each version of the case is then shown to a large number of juries to decide. The claim is that this  creates a systematic and controlled study of jury decision-making. By combining the votes of all 797 jurors (both White and BME) who took part in the case simulations at the three courts studied – Winchester, Nottingham and Blackfriars Crown Courts – it was possible to see if any other personal characteristics of jurors (beyond ethnicity) were related to their decision-making in the case. Gender emerged as the only juror characteristic where there were significant differences.

Female jurors appeared tougher on defendants than male jurors before jury deliberations started but more open to persuasion to acquit in deliberations. Female jurors were significantly more likely than male jurors to vote to convict at the start of deliberations (41% guilty votes compared to 35%). But deliberation had the greatest impact on female jurors. After deliberations this gender difference in conviction rates disappears. On final votes after deliberations, female jurors actually had a lower conviction rate than male jurors (33% compared to 34%). Male jurors rarely changed their view; 64% of all jurors that changed their votes during deliberations were women. This pattern of decision-making occurred for all defendants, regardless of race, and at all courts.

The full text of the report ‘Are Juries Fair?’ can be found at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/docs/are-juries-fair-research.pdf