SOC 3730 Chapter Notes - Chapter Article: Expected Utility Hypothesis, Detection Theory, Jury Nullification
19 Mar 2017
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The distribution of evidence: during a trial, jurors weigh the testimony, opinions, and facts presented to them and form an overall impression of the culpability of the defendant. Jurors must make two decisions in addition to the task of determining the culpability of the defendant, the juror must decide how much evidence he requires to convict. Where should the threshold be: the optimal location of the threshold depends on the juror"s goals given certain goals, the juror needs three theoretical tools. Adjusting prior beliefs: perhaps with the right prior probability of guilt, a juror could achieve acceptable error rates without stupendously diagnostic evidence, for purposes of simplicity, we assume that the utilities for correct and incorrect decisions are. Jury decisions are not made by individuals: even with the exceedingly unlikely assumption of complete independence of jurors, error rates still exceed 10%
