Rigging the Verdict: An Intelligent Consultant for Jury Selection in a Courtroom

摘要

Jury selection, a process that has significant impact on thernoutcome of a trial, involves decision making in a dynamicrncourtroom environment. Scientific jury selectionrntechniques have gained popularity in recent years. Arnwidely accepted approach involves rating prospectivernjurors on demographic and other predictive factorsrndetermined from a random survey of the population andrnapplying multivariate analysis to categorize the candidaternpool. We develop a process model of scientific juryrnselection and propose the use of linguistic variables andrnfuzzy sets to represent juror profiles in a fuzzy rule-basedrnsystem that aids the attorney during a trial. An intelligentrnJury Consultant assists the attorney in voir dire, to framernappropriate questions based on juror profiles and tornchallenge prospective jurors on both causal andrnperemptory grounds.