Something out of Kafka: A multimodal analysis of an actual jury deliberation

Abstract

The jury constitutes the essence of American Democracy and guards against governmental tyranny and overzealous prosecution. As an instrument of justice and symbol of democracy, the jury consists of a group of ordinary citizens who deliberate in a decision-making process to reach a verdict in a criminal or civil case. And the most important feature in jury deliberation is the interaction among jurors. But since that interaction occurs behind closed doors, empirical studies of real deliberations have been rare. Other than the pioneering work of Manzo and Maynard and Manzo, no studies have investigated actual jury deliberations. And no studies (to the best of my knowledge) have studied jury interaction as a multimodal process in which the integration of speech, gesture, material objects, gaze and facial expression is brought to bear on legal meanings en route to a verdict. This study investigates that neglected dimension of jury deliberation and demonstrates how a multimodal analysis of the communicative process can yield significant findings for jury deliberation.