How does a jury trial work in the United States?

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1. 1

   Jury trial (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 11, 2026Checked Oct 11, 2026

   “A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes findings of fact and reaches a verdict. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many common law judicial systems, but not all. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases. The use of jury trials, which evolved within common law systems rather than civil law systems, has had a profound impact on the nature of American civil procedure and criminal procedure rules, even if a bench trial is actually contemplated in a particular case. In general, the availability of a jury trial if properly demanded has given rise to a system in which fact finding is concentrated in a single trial rather than multiple hearings, and appellate review of trial court decisions is greatly limited. Jury trials are of far less importance (or of no importance) in countries that do not have a common law system.”

2. 2

   Boy v. man: The role of perception and the attribution of blame in court proceedings.

   Heliyon (Cooke)Published Jul 11, 2023Checked Oct 11, 2026

   “Juries are a core component of the criminal justice system. Although marked with a history of prejudice, segmentation, and discrimination, the framework of the 6th Amendment calls for impartiality among a jury of peers who are selected for the pursuit of justice. Influencing jury decision-making is the perception of witnesses, defendants, and victims. Specific to this work, the characterization of the victim is often a function of in-group bias in which the jury, operating collectively, decides if it is to cognitively distance itself from the victim based on assigned attributes. The group's agreement with the assignment of negative attributes is especially apparent when the victim is a Black male. In the case of this analysis, teenage murder victim Jordan Davis was described as a man and characterized as an adult aggressor and deserving of blame. The analysis is integrative and considers this case to elaborate on the cognitive theories, system behavior, and cultural norms that frame the perceptive process of jurors. Also reflected are the implications of biased decision-making processes, as well as suggestions for ways to mitigate them.”

3. 3

   Investigating the predictive value of defendant race and jury racial composition on decision making in a criminal trial.

   Law and human behavior (Maeder et al.)Published Jul 9, 2026Checked Oct 11, 2026

   “A dramatic leniency shift (5.8% of juries, compared to 26.0% of predeliberation jurors, convicting) prevented us from conducting our planned analyses on group verdict. Half of the guilty verdicts came from all-White juries evaluating a White defendant, and no all-White jury convicted a racialized defendant. Verdict change was not significantly predicted by either defendant race or jury composition.ConclusionsDeliberation elicited a leniency shift irrespective of defendant race. White jurors in all-White juries may have exhibited performative allyship, given the low cost of a potential wrongful acquittal in this simulation study. Findings have implications for jury research, in that our observed effects do not comport with real-world disparities between White and racialized defendants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).”

4. 4

   Survey of change-of-venue motions in appellate court transcripts of murder trials (2000-2020): Which factors make a difference?

   Behavioral sciences & the law (Goldschmied et al.)Published Oct 5, 2024Checked Oct 11, 2026

   “A court may move the location of the trial to another jurisdiction if the jury pool is deemed biased by the judge, a legal maneuver based on a "Change of Venue" motion (CoVm). We surveyed the frequency and the factors associated with granting the motion at the state level when the defendant was charged with murder. We reviewed court transcripts of appealed murder convictions during the 2000-2020 years from Nexis. We complied a sample of 832 CoVm and conducted a nested regression analysis. We repeated the procedure with a subset of 360 CoVm for which we could identify the race of the defendant and victim. Overall, the success rate of CoVm was 23.5% but varied widely between the states. The motion was more likely to be granted in jurisdictions with smaller populations and a policeman was the victim. It was also found that Black and Latino defendants were less successful than Whites in winning CoVm. The racial disparity in CoVm decisions is especially concerning given past findings that people of color suffer heightened negative local pretrial publicity. In light of the findings, we advocate for a more uniform state legislation.”

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   Intimate partner rape: do rape myths still influence verdict outcomes when the defendant is an ex-partner?

   Frontiers in psychology (Lilley et al.)Published Apr 15, 2026Checked Oct 11, 2026

   “Caucasian, university-educated mock jurors and jurors who rejected rape myths to a greater extent were those most likely to find the defendant guilty. Female jurors were also significantly more likely to return a guilty verdict before, though not after, controlling for variation in rape myth beliefs.DiscussionThese findings offer further support to the wealth of existing literature that suggests jurors' pre-trial rape myth beliefs, alongside other demographic characteristics, appear to predispose juror judgements and decision-making, and extend upon past literature in identifying a similar trend within intimate partner rape trials. Findings highlight the need for targeted juror reforms, such as myth-debunking juror education, before such recommendations are made. Before such recommendations are made, further enhancements to mock-trial procedures to maximise ecological validity, alongside greater research among genuine trial jurors, are warranted.”