Scottish Jury Research: Findings from a Large Scale Mock Jury Study – An interactive discussion on the implications for potential criminal justice reforms

The Scottish Jury Research: Findings From a Large-Scale Mock Jury Study, published in October is the largest and most realistic of its kind ever undertaken in the UK.

It involved 64 mock juries and 969 individual participants and is the first to consider the unique nature of the Scottish jury system with 15 jurors, three verdicts and a simple majority.

The report sets out the researchers’ findings but does not make any recommendations. It suggests that:

Reducing jury size from 15 to 12, as is the norm in most English language jurisdictions, might lead to more individual jurors switching their position towards the majority view.

Asking juries to reach a unanimous or near unanimous verdict might tilt more jurors in favour of acquittal.

Removing the not proven verdict might incline more jurors towards a guilty verdict in finely balanced trials.

Jurors hold inconsistent views on the meaning of not proven and how it differs from not guilty.

When the research was published, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice stated that now that we have the evidence from this research, the Scottish Government will engage in serious discussions on all of these findings including whether we should move to a two verdict system. This is your chance to participate in these important discussions.

Scottish Jury Research: Interactive discussion - Inverness