Wielding Reasonable Doubt in Jury Deliberations

• In Event: 40810 - Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology: Navigating Knowledge, credibility, and Accountability in Talk

Abstract

Juries in U.S. criminal cases are instructed to determine whether the evidence demonstrates the defendant’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” This threshold is intended to simultaneously set a high evidentiary bar, in order to reduce the risk of false convictions, and to free jurors to find a defendant guilty in spite of the felt lack of complete certainty. The “reasonable doubt” requirement is not something that jurors merely apply introspectively; they also wield the notion aloud, when deliberating, particularly when there is no immediate consensus. This paper uses conversation analysis to study when, how, and with what immediate consequences “reasonable doubt” was invoked during three real-life jury deliberations, based on audio-visual recordings. Jurors make use of cognitive and conversational resources borrowed from ordinary life, but reasonable doubt is not something native to ordinary conversation, and the data reveal how they hone its application, and defenses against it, through repeated use.

Author

• David R. Gibson, University of Notre Dame