And why do verdicts have to be binary–i.e. either “guilty” or “not guilty”? What if jurors were allowed instead to rate or score the plaintiff’s case, just like people rate movies or restaurants. In our most recent working paper, Why don’t juries try ‘range voting’? (pun intended), we propose just that: a simple “range voting” method for juries in which jurors would rate or score on a scale of zero to ten (or some other specified scale) the evidence presented by the parties at trial. The jury’s verdict would then consist of a numerical value, either the average or the sum total of all the individual scores. A plaintiff would prove his case only if the average value or sum total of the jury’s collective score exceeded some critical threshold. Since the jury’s numerical verdict would then be a function of this range voting procedure, we refer to such a numerical verdict as a range verdict. (By the way, we also discuss how range voting improves jury accuracy AND solves several problems endemic to juries, including holdouts, strategic jurors, and ignorant jurors.)
Our little paper is still a very rough proof of concept, so your critical comments and suggestions, especially destructive criticisms, are much appreciated by prior probability.
