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Copyright 2004 by the | Psychology in Spain, 2004, Vol. 8. No 1, 28-38 |
Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos |
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Verdicts and deliberation content analysis of judges and juries in the Spanish legal context. A comparative approach. In view of the fact that jury performance has been subject to considerable criticism in various countries, the aim of the present paper is to compare the performance of judges and juries. A total of 15 nine-member juries and 15 three-member panels of judges deliberated and reached a verdict on real cases. The results of a comparative analysis reveal that: a) neither judges nor juries perform in a normative way; b) judges perform better than juries; c) judges and juries have different tendencies, juries towards the demands of the defence and judges towards the demands of the prosecution; and d) juries deliberations are not more exhaustive than those of judges, as we might expect in order to compensate for their lack of legal knowledge and experience, and tend to be redundant in content. Finally, we discuss the practical implications, especially in relation to mechanisms for mitigating the non-normative decision-making of judges and juries.
Sobre la base de que son numerosas y consistentes inter-contextos jurídicos las críticas a la eficacia de los Tribunales de Jurados, nos hemos planteado un estudio comparativo de la ejecución de Tribunales de Jueces y Jurados en el ordenamiento jurídico español (L.O. 5/1995). Tomando como material estimular tres casos reales, formamos 15 Tribunales de Jurados y 15 Tribunales de Jueces, que emitieron el objeto del veredicto tras la discusión grupal. Los resultados mostraron que tanto Jueces como Jurados no ejecutan de un modo normativo; que la ejecución de los Jurados es de peor calidad; que Jueces y Jurados ejecutan tareas distintas, más orientados a la defensa los Jurados y más a la acusación los Jueces; y que las deliberaciones de los Jurados no son más profundas para compensar su falta de conocimientos en la materia. Finalmente, discutimos las implicaciones para contrarrestar estos déficit en la actuación de Jueces y Jurados.
The original Spanish version of this paper has been previously
published in Psicothema, 2003, Vol. 15. No 1, 127-135
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Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ramón Arce,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago
de Compostela, Spain. E-mail: psarce@usc.es
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