ANATOMY OF A JURY: The System on Trial

by Seymour Wishman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 1986

Criminal lawyer and author (Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer) Wishman knows the importance of a jury but rightly concluded that a learned treatise on the subject wouldn't get far. His solution--take a juicy murder case based on fact (wealthy and beautiful white woman found brutally stabbed and almost naked in suburban New Jersey community; black excon who had been her lover accused of the crime) and interlard it with all the facts you can muster on jury selection, jury research, jury history. No matter how hard Wishman tries, it's obvious which side of the jury box he's been on all these years--his portraits of the downtrodden defense lawyer and the tough-guy prosecutor (each far less omniscient then the public would like to think) have much more verve than the flat, fussy and occasionally stereotypic asides about the jurors in the case. Still there's an underlying drama here--for both defendant and jurors--which is well-served in this book. From the time trial by jury suceeded trial by ordeal, lawyers have been trying to figure out what makes jurors tick. More recently, social scientists have been asking the same question. The instinct and sheer guesswork used by lawyers for jury selection in all but the rarest cases is heart-stopping, considering that an individual's liberty and even his life may rest on them. Statistics on who is harsher (judges or juries, men or women, young or old) make for often surprising reading. As Wishman is quick to point out, Twelve Angry Men scenarios are few and far between, and many people are reluctant to serve as jurors at all. In sum, heartening results are often the product of shocking random. ness--as this provocative book makes clear. A good read that could inspire some good thinking as well.

Pub Date: June 16, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION