In an idealized model of civil litigation, interested parties incur co
sts to produce statistical evidence. A subset of this evidence is then
presented to a naive decisionmaker (e.g., a jury). The jury is naive
in that it views evidence as a random sample when in fact the evidence
is selectively produced. In addition to being naive, the jury is also
biased by prior beliefs that it carries into the courtroom. In spite
of the jury's naivete and biasedness, a full-information decision is r
eached as long as both litigants choose to produce evidence. Our resul
ts suggest that criticisms of the jury process based on jury bias or t
he jury's use of simple or heuristic rules may be overstated, and unde
rscore the potential importance of competitively produced evidence in
legal decision-making.