Jury Impartiality

Answer choices

1. A

   Contradicted13% picked this

   Flaws in voir dire procedures make it unlikely that juries capable of rendering impartial decisions

   The author's last few sentences are saying that you can have an impartial jury that is composed of people who have had prior exposure to the subject matter in a trial via mass media exposure. Impartiality ≠ a juror who is oblivious to the case Impartiality = a process of deliberation among the members of the jury (even if they already have an opinion on the case when they show up) So since the author thinks impartiality is very achievable, as long as we redefine it, she wouldn't say "it's unlikely that juries capable of impartiality can be selected".

   13%
2. B

   Too Strong: the best4% picked this

   Knowledge of a case before it goes to trial offers individual jurors the best chance

   The author is saying that we can be tolerant of jury members' having prior exposure to some of a case's details, via mass media exposure. If that exposure is representative of the community's collective experience, then we're good. But the author isn't saying that prior knowledge is a necessary ingredient to achieving the best kind of impartial decisions. If there were a case that didn't have any mass media exposure, then it would be more representative of the community's collective experience to not have any prior knowledge. The author isn't suggesting that in such circumstances, the best jury members would be the weirdos who for some reason had prior knowledge of the case.

   4%
3. C

   Correct70% picked this

   Jurors who bring prior opinions about a case to their deliberations need not decrease the chance of the

   Why this is right

   This has the very weak language we're attracted to: People who are X need not do Y just means that "in at least one case, someone could be X but not Y". Does this author think that it's possible sometimes for jurors to bring prior opinions about a case, but it doesn't decrease the chance of an impartial decision? Certainly! Her idea at the end is that impartiality isn't dependent on whether the minds of individual jurors have prior opinions. It's dependent on a process of deliberation among the many members of the panel. So the jury can still render an impartial decision even if the people empaneled are opinionated when it comes to this case.

   Skill tested: Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   70%
4. D

   Too Strong: only Opposite2% picked this

   Only juries consisting of people who bring no prior knowledge of a case to their deliberations are capable

   The author's main point is basically the opposite of this. This represents the old conception of impartiality (individual jurors have no prior knowledge). The author is re-defining impartiality as something that results from the process of deliberation among jury members, some/all of whom may have prior opinions.

   2%
5. E

   Unknown Comparison Relative vs. Absolute10% picked this

   People who know the facts of a case are more opinionated about it than those

   This answer is frustratingly appealing, on a common sense level. How could someone who doesn't know the facts of a case be more opinionated than someone who does? Well, just think back to all the covid masking/vaccine debates. The people who knew the (still-emerging, nebulous) facts the best were the epidemiologist, virologists, and doctors. The people with the strongest opinions were the TV pundits and culture-war-stoking social media trolls. Beyond the fact that even in the real world this answer is not necessarily true, we have no support sentence to match this up with. The author's voice appears in the final few sentences of the passage, and nowhere there does she compare how opinionated different groups are. "Opinionated" is only used in an absolute, yes/no sense. It's never used in a comparative sense.

   10%