[Mick]

Unfortunately in the civil courts today cases are often not decided by who is right, but rather by who the jury feels sorry for. 

If that is true, it would argue for a sweeping reform of the civil justice system. I'd be very interested in links to some good quality, non-anecdotal evidence for your statement of fact.

I don't know if you would consider this high quality, but the National Judicial College interviewed 446 judges as to the percentage of the time that they agreed with the juries.  Choices were in quartiles, 0% to 25%, 25% to 50% and so on.  366 of the 446 chose the 0% to 25% option.

62 judges selected the 25% to 50% option.  And 18% chose the 50% to 75% option, meaning they disagreed with the juries more often than not.

To your point:

"One said that an attorney can easily convince a jury to reach a wrong decision by playing on the jurors’ emotions or by focusing on certain details of a case that a judge wouldn’t consider important. This judge offered the example of a case in which an attorney argued that a client arrested for DUI was acting responsibly by sleeping off intoxication in a vehicle instead of driving it."

https://www.judges.org/news-and-info/her...s-verdict/

And an interesting article on jury nullification.  Sounds like the percentage of situations in which juries fall prey to emotional arguments is small, but increasing.  Also sounds like it's more on the civil side than the criminal side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nulli...gh%20other

[Mick]

Unfortunately in the civil courts today cases are often not decided by who is right, but rather by who the jury feels sorry for. 

If that is true, it would argue for a sweeping reform of the civil justice system. I'd be very interested in links to some good quality, non-anecdotal evidence for your statement of fact.

I don't know if you would consider this high quality, but the National Judicial College interviewed 446 judges as to the percentage of the time that they agreed with the juries.  Choices were in quartiles, 0% to 25%, 25% to 50% and so on.  366 of the 446 chose the 0% to 25% option.

62 judges selected the 25% to 50% option.  And 18% chose the 50% to 75% option, meaning they disagreed with the juries more often than not.

To your point:

"One said that an attorney can easily convince a jury to reach a wrong decision by playing on the jurors’ emotions or by focusing on certain details of a case that a judge wouldn’t consider important. This judge offered the example of a case in which an attorney argued that a client arrested for DUI was acting responsibly by sleeping off intoxication in a vehicle instead of driving it."

https://www.judges.org/news-and-info/her...s-verdict/

And an interesting article on jury nullification.  Sounds like the percentage of situations in which juries fall prey to emotional arguments is small, but increasing.  Also sounds like it's more on the civil side than the criminal side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nulli...gh%20other