Jury Study to Look at Racial Biases, Trial Results : Justice: Cal State Fullerton researchers will examine panelists’ experiences and their possible preconceptions about defendants.

Do criminal juries regard Asian defendants differently than white defendants, black defendants differently than Latinos? Three Cal State Fullerton social scientists intend to find out.

The three will conduct a groundbreaking study to determine whether racial preconceptions affect parts of the judicial system.

“This is a pioneering attempt to gain an empirical look at whether racial or ethnic bias impinges on the jury-trial process,” said Gregory Robinson, associate director of the university’s Social Science Research Center.

Robinson, psychology professor Ronald E. Riggio and criminal justice assistant professor George M. Dery III have contracted with the Judicial Council of California for about $73,500 to examine jurors’ experiences and trial outcomes, university officials said Wednesday.

“With all these high-profile trials going on now, it’s likely that people will be interested in the results,” Riggio said. The Judicial Council, which oversees the state’s courts, is expected to release the study findings this spring.

The researchers said they are arranging to access computerized records of tens of thousands of cases involving charges of murder, robbery and other felonies. They plan to examine jury decisions in felony cases in Orange and Alameda counties, as well as misdemeanor cases in Los Angeles County that involve driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Riggio said prior studies did not ask jurors specifically about racial or ethnic bias, and no existing studies use as much data as the researchers plan to examine.

The researchers’ first step: going through case dispositions as far back as 1990. That can mean as many as 40,000 cases in each county per year, Robinson said.

They will examine verdicts involving defendants of different races, ethnicities and gender, which can be difficult to compare at first, researchers said. But by using statistical methods, they will eliminate some of the factors beside racial or ethnic bias that could account for disparities in juries’ verdicts.

Robinson said those factors include whether defendants use interpreters, whether they have private lawyers or public defenders, their ability to post bail and previous convictions.

The researchers also will look for trends in cases in which defendants plead guilty without going to a jury trial.

In addition to analyzing convictions, acquittals and mistrials, the scientists will talk to jurors.

They plan to survey 750 former jurors in Orange and Alameda counties by telephone to ask whether they think race and ethnic prejudices played a role in the jury’s decisions. Afterward, they hope to conduct personal interviews with members of six to eight juries who deliberated recent cases.

Riggio said the three researchers work well together because he has prior experience in interviewing jurors, Robinson is an expert in analyzing data and research methods and Dery is a former prosecutor for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

“We feel pretty fortunate we fell in together,” Riggio said. “We’re a perfect team.”