Forty-nine states, the federal government, and the District of Columbia restrict a convicted felon's opportunity to serve as a juror. Of those jurisdictions, twenty-nine ban convicted felons from jury service permanently, eliminating approximately thirteen million citizens from the national jury pool. Justifying these statutory exclusions, policymakers and courts cite a need to protect the jury process from those who might compromise its integrity. Yet, to date, no study has examined how convicted felons impact the adjudicative process or are impacted by their inclusion in that process. Using a mixed methods approach, this project explores these interrelated themes by 1) examining how felon jurors shape jury systems (in the field and in the laboratory), and 2) analyzing the influence of jury service on convicted felons' perceptions of the law and, in turn, their subsequent reentry.
The reintegration of convicted felons and their participation in democratic processes often inspires polarized debate. This project will expand and inform that debate, filling voids in existing empirical research on the adjudicative process and the reintegration of former offenders. It will also extend research on legal compliance as a function of the perceived legitimacy and fairness of the law. In these ways, this project speaks to policy, practice, and theory as they relate to the jury process, reentry, and the tenets of participatory democracy.
Forty-nine states, the federal government, and the District of Columbia restrict a convicted felon’s opportunity to serve as a juror. Of these jurisdictions, twenty-eight ban convicted felons from jury service permanently, eliminating approximately thirteen million Americans from the national jury pool. Justifying these restrictions, lawmakers and courts allege that convicted felons lack the requisite character to serve and harbor an inherent pre-trial bias making each sympathetic towards criminal defendants and adversarial towards the state. Focusing on the exclusion of convicted felons from jury service, this project explores an understudied form of civic marginalization. The overarching goals of this project are to examine the possible impacts convicted felons may have on the jury process and how inclusion in the jury process may shape the attitudes and views of convicted felons. To that end, this study is divides into two parts. The first portion of this project is a qualitative field study in Maine, the only jurisdiction that does not restrict a convicted felon’s opportunity to serve. For that field study, I conducted 59 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with juror eligible convicted felons (N=32) and courtroom personnel (judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and probation officials) (N=27). The second portion of this project is a mock jury experiment involving mixed juries comprised of otherwise juror eligible convicted felons and juror eligible non-felons. In sum, I conducted 21 mock juries comprised of over 110 participants. The data for this second part of the project are just now being analyzed so I have no outcomes to report on this yet. Results of my field study in Maine reveal that those convicted felons who participated valued their inclusion in the jury process. For most, inclusion was seen as the State’s official recognition of their transformation from criminal to productive citizen. In response, participants expressed a level of particularized self-worth, often characterizing themselves as assets to the jury system. Participants explained that their experiences with the criminal justice system afforded them an appropriate level of empathy and a healthy skepticism of proffered evidence/testimony. Participants then seemed to incorporate this self-view into their own pro-social desistance narratives. Those who took part in the study also exhibited an accurate understanding of a juror’s responsibilities. Participants then ostensibly took on the juror role, bringing their behaviors in-line with what they perceived to be the "ideal" juror. In sum, findings tend to suggest that inclusion in the jury process may facilitate criminal desistance by helping former offenders build a coherent desistance narrative and providing former offenders with a model for pro-social civic behavior. Data derived from my interviews with courtroom personnel in Maine also yielded significant results. Contrary to popular assumptions, defense attorneys and prosecutors exhibited no consistent pattern with respect to their approach to convicted felons in the jury pool. Most defense attorneys and prosecutors tended to view felonious jurors as "wild cards." While the conventional rationales for felon jury exclusion seemingly assume that defense attorneys would favor felonious jurors while prosecutors would seek to strike jurors with a criminal record, my findings do not support these assumptions. Data also shows that in the face of for-cause challenges to felonious jurors, judges uniformly rely on a set of informal factors. Judges noted that in determining a juror’s fitness they look to: 1) the similarity of the jurors charge and that at issue, 2) the length of time since the juror’s conviction, 3) the juror’s reintegration progress (marriage, children, job, home, etc), and 4) the juror’s own declaration about his or her ability to remain impartial. Finally, data revealed that while judges in Maine did not view a felony conviction as dispositive of a lack of juror fitness, they did view certain crimes as "per se" indicators of a prospective juror’s lack of character and inability to remain impartial. Judges noted that sex offenses and crimes against women would almost always result in a successful for-cause challenge as these crimes indicate a level of criminality and irresponsibility that would taint the jury process. In sum, findings from this portion of the study do not support the popular suppositions about convicted felons and the rationales for their exclusion. The interviews do, however, suggest that certain crimes (e.g. sex crimes, domestic violence) prompt judges to question, and in many instances predetermine a juror’s fitness.
