Jury Impartiality

Answer choices

1. A

   Opposite, if anything6% picked this

   Jurors should put aside their personal experiences when deliberating a case and base their decision only

   The author never says that jurors should put aside their personal experiences. She thinks that impartiality results from a process of deliberation among the "many members of a panel of informed, curious, and even opinionated people". The notion of being informed and opinionated goes hand in hand with drawing upon personal experience from outside the courtroom.

   6%
2. B

   Correct82% picked this

   Jurors should rely on their overall experience when deliberating a case even when the case was subject to

   Why this is right

   This is the flip of (C), and this one aligns with the author's stance in the final paragraph. If a jury is to be truly impartial, it must be composed of informed citizens representative of the community's collective experience; today, this experience includes exposure to mass media The author thinks it's okay for jurors to be opinionated people who have heard pretrial stuff about the case; this is what makes them representative of the community's collective experience, and impartiality results from the process of twelve such people deliberating together.

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

   82%
3. C

   Opposite, if anything5% picked this

   Jurors should make every effort when deliberating a case to ignore information about the case that they may have

   The author is NOT part of the crowd of people who are determined to find oblivious jurors or to force jurors to ignore information learned outside the classroom, which is described as "mental contortions which are beyond anyone's power to execute". The author is okay with jurors being opinionated people. She thinks that impartiality isn't found in the mind of each juror but rather in the process of 12 representative citizens collaborating and deliberating on a verdict.

   5%
4. D

   Too Strong: based on their degree5% picked this

   Jurors should be selected to hear a case based on their degree of exposure to mass-media coverage of

   The author would not say, "We should pick jurors based on who has the least exposure to mass-media coverage before the trial". After all, she says this about impartial juries: If a jury is to be truly impartial, it must be composed of informed citizens representative of the community's collective experience; today, this experience includes exposure to mass media But she also wouldn't say that "We should pick jurors based on who has the MOST exposure to mass-media coverage". She isn't saying that mass-media exposure is the way we decide who makes the jury. She's just saying that mass-media exposure shouldn't be a dealbreaker that keeps somebody off a jury.

   5%
5. E

   Too Strong1% picked this

   Jurors should be selected to hear a case based on their capacity to refrain from reading or viewing mass-media coverage of the case

   Too Strong: based on capacity to refrain This again sounds like the people who worry about jurors being blank slates with no previous knowledge of a trial. The author isn't part of that crowd. She's cool with jurors having exposure to mass-media coverage prior to the trial. This answer, though, is talking about whether jurors should be gaining even more mass-media exposure to the trial while it's in progress. Our author never expresses any specific view about mass-media exposure during the trial, but we have no basis for supporting this strongly worded answer that, "Jurors should be selected based on this criterion: how capable they are of refraining from being exposed to mass-media coverage of the case while the trial is in progress".

   1%