Bias and the economics of jury selection

In considering the expected social loss of the jury process, we investigate the role of peremptory challenges based on observable juror characteristic s such as race or gender. The effectiveness of peremptory challenges depend s on the relative social costs of incorrect verdicts and hung juries, and o n jury pool population demographics. Some of our results are: (a) for a def endant clearly in the majority, awarding peremptory challenges is unlikely to be optimal because of increased wrongful acquittal costs; (b) for a defe ndant clearly in the minority, asymmetric challenges in favor of the defens e may be optimal but only if wrongful conviction costs are "very large" com pared to hung jury costs; (c) when optimal, more symmetric challenges shoul d be awarded the less biased the population, but more asymmetric challenges should be awarded the more biased the population; (d) to reduce wrongful a cquittal costs, it may be optimal to award asymmetric peremptory challenges in favor of the prosecution; and (e) our results offer no support for the complete elimination of peremptory challenges. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science In c. All rights reserved.