Abstract
This paper uses data from over 700 felony trials in Sarasota and Lake Counties in
Florida from 2000-2010 to examine the role of age in jury selection and trial outcomes.
The results of the analysis imply that prosecutors are more likely to use their peremptory
challenges to exclude younger members of the jury pool, while defense attorneys exclude
older potential jurors. Having established that age has an important role in jury
selection, the paper employs a research design that isolates the effect of the random
variation in the age composition of the pool of eligible jurors called for jury duty
to examine the causal impact of age on trial outcomes. Consistent with the jury selection
patterns, the empirical evidence implies that older jurors are indeed more likely
to convict. These results are robust to the inclusion of a broad set of controls for
the racial and gender composition of the jury and a series of county, time, and judge
fixed effects; almost identical effects are estimated separately for each county.
These findings have implications for the role that the institution of peremptory challenges
has on a defendant’s right to a fair trial and to an eligible citizen’s rights to
serve on a jury.
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