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Down to the Last Strike: The Effect of the Jury Lottery on Criminal Convictions

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  • Scott Kostyshak
  • Neel U. Sukhatme

Abstract

How much does luck matter to a criminal defendant in a jury trial? We use rich data on jury selection to causally estimate how parties who are randomly assigned a less favorable jury (as proxied by whether their attorneys exhaust their peremptory strikes) fare at trial. Our novel identification strategy is unique in that it captures variation in juror predisposition coming from variables unobserved by the econometrician but observed by attorneys. We find that criminal defendants who lose the "jury lottery" are more likely to be convicted than their similarly-situated counterparts, with a significant increase (~19 percentage points) for Black defendants. Our results suggest that a considerable number of cases would result in different verdicts if retried with new (counterfactual) random draws of the jury pool, raising concerns about the variance of justice in the criminal legal system.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Kostyshak & Neel U. Sukhatme, 2025. "Down to the Last Strike: The Effect of the Jury Lottery on Criminal Convictions," Papers 2505.18431, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2505.18431
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    5. Mark Hoekstra & Brittany Street, 2021. "The Effect of Own-Gender Jurors on Conviction Rates," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 513-537.
    6. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2012. "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 1017-1055.
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