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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

sure, but there are also some good reasons for doing research. the jury could be filmed. the tape archived until the judicial process is over and any sentence completed, then anonymised (court official bleep out names or something) and then rleased to selected researchers. I don't think anyone's rights would be seriously violated. Hey, you could ask the defendant for his/her permission.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I was on a jury which had an 11-1 vote for conviction which reversed to acquittal. The fiction in the movie, from my experience, is that it happened for dramatic effect over time. In our case, we began to review the evidence again - and then again - and someone noticed a new point about the gun at issue. We all looked at the gun and realized collectively that we couldn't see if there was a serial number and thus it was unfair to convict a person for having a gun without one because there was no proof - no evidence at all - that he knew it was missing. The vote on that count went immediately to 12-0 for acquittal and I suspect that most such changes are cascades of 1 or 2 steps.

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