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FactLogic lets
you know precisely the relationship between the demographic characteristics
and life experiences of evaluators and their evaluation of the case. Before voir
dire, conduct an experiment to help you select jurors.
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Create
Your Case. Create your case by entering some case identification, key
facts. and assertions.
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Select
Evaluators. Select a number of evaluators with known
characteristics and experiences that are thought to be relevant to the
facts and assertion(s).
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Conduct
An
Experiment. Let evaluators evaluate the case without communication -
either from the facts alone or from the facts in the presence of
persuasion (during a mock trial). Since the case is posted on the Convex
Web site, evaluators can be
dispersed or collocated, but their locations depend upon the
experiment.
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Select A
Response Variable. A response variable is a variable of interest
that responds to variations in the experiment. Hopefully it will
provide the information you are seeking. Although FactLogic provides
almost any response variable you could desire, the margin is a
particularly important one. It is the variable from which jurors decide
and from which the verdict is determined:
Margin
= (Probability the Assertion is True) - (Standard of Proof).
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Analyze
The Experiment. After the experiment is conducted, you can
use FactLogic to select/deselect evaluators according to their characteristics and
life experiences. Then you can see how any evaluator or subgroup of evaluators judged
each fact, evaluated each assertion, and
predicted the verdict for each and all assertions. Only FactLogic
can predict verdicts from the quantified judgments of facts and evaluations
of assertions.
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Select
Jurors. Select jurors, based upon the relationships between the
judgments of evaluators and their characteristics and experiences.
1.
Select Evaluators
Usually
evaluators should be representative of the venire (and, hence, be drawn randomly from
it), but the method of selecting evaluators should
depend upon your objective.
The number of
evaluators is determined by either
The more evaluators, the more precisely the response variable can be known.
If you assign evaluators, FactLogic, sends an
e-mail message inviting each evaluator. It allows each evaluator to access
your case
and evaluate it in a secure and private Internet session. See
Internet Evaluations.
2.
Measure the Response Variable as a Function of a
Characteristic or An Experience
The following
example shows how a demographic characteristic affects a response variable
(i.e., the margin). It shows that the margin and the predicted verdict are
both significantly different for two categories of age.
Example.
The son of a patient at Golden Homes LLC alleges that the company
fraudulently sold a nursing home contract to his mother by grossly
overstating the care to be provided. Key evidence includes similar
contracts between the company and seven other patients, all of whose
relatives agree the contracted service was not rendered.
Should age be
considered in jury selection? A group of 31 evaluators was
randomly chosen from automobile driver license holders in the venue in which
the civil trial is scheduled. The number of evaluators was
selected by budget constraints rather than by the desired precision.
Since this is a civil case, the standard of proof is fixed by statute, so
evaluators were not asked to judge it. (It would be necessary to obtain it in a criminal case.) The
facts and the the assertion (claiming a major unmet promise) are entered in FactLogic
software.
Select
the margin to be the response variable.
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Compare
the margin from two groups of evaluators.
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Predict
the general verdict from a jury of younger jurors and from a jury
of older jurors; assume the general verdict requires concurrence of
a majority of six jurors.
Solution
(Compare the Margin from Two Groups).
Not
surprisingly, the 23 younger members of the group of evaluators registered a
significantly lower probability that the assertion is true than did the
eight evaluators in the 55 and older category. Specifically, the average
probability that the assertion is
true among the younger members is 40.246%, and the average probability the
assertion is true among the eight older members is 64.998%. In terms of the response variable:
- The
margin from the 23 younger members is 40.246% - 50% = -9.754%.
- The
margin from the eight older members is 64.998% - 50% = 14.998%.
Although
these results are not surprising, FactLogic allows the judgments to be quantified and additional analysis is possible.
For example, due to the distribution of the probabilities comprising
these two averages, a comparison test revealed that the margin from
the two groups (i.e., 23 that are younger than 55 years and eight that
are 55 years or older) are significantly different at the 5% significance
level. That is, there is only a 5% probability that these two groups
provide the same value of the margin: Age is a significant characteristic
for this fact, and older jurors should be selected for your client.
Solution
(Predict the General Verdict from Each Group). The predicted
verdicts are extremely dependent upon age:
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The
margins among the 23 younger evaluators averaged -9.754%, and analysis
from FactLogic shows that the probability of a verdict For the Plaintiff
from the younger evaluators is less than 2.5%.
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The
margins among the eight older evaluators averaged 14.998%, and analysis
from FactLogic shows that the probability of a verdict For the Plaintiff
from the older evaluators is 94.3%.
3.
Select Jurors from Knowledge Obtained from the Evaluators
The above example demonstrates how FactLogic can measure the relationship
between characteristics/experiences and judgments. Often the affects of
different characteristics/experiences are confounded, and further analysis
is necessary. The response variable
can vary with no characteristic, one characteristic, or more.
If the response variable is the margin, the predicted verdict
from each group of evaluators can be measured as a function of
characteristics and experiences. If the response variable is a more basic
probability (e.g., the probability a specific fact is true or the
probability a specific assertion is true), you may want to conduct a
significance test, to determine if one group of evaluators is significantly
different from the other with respect to the response variable. In any case,
use the knowledge you obtain from the evaluators to select jurors.
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