ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the responses of jurors who were exposed to the M’Naghten and Durham instructions and asked to choose between them. The qualities of a “forced conversation” that characterize many interviews in survey research were lacking in the jurors’ responses. When the jurors’ pre-deliberation verdicts in both trials were combined, the proportion of NGI verdicts among jurors who were instructed under Durham was 8 per cent higher than the proportion instructed under M’Naghten. Neither instructions nor verdicts contributed significantly toward differentiating jurors’ satisfaction scores. The rules of law did not differentiate jurors’ preferences for a jury trial over a bench trial. For criminal cases, over 80 per cent of the jurors in both the housebreaking and the incest trials reported a preference for jury trials over decisions by a judge.
