Statistical Lab for the outcome of Jury selection given a specific demographic

Help for a Man on Trial

Case # 07CR-1234

This was an exercise in a statistics laboratory at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

The directions are:

It is our Job as Mr. Blue Jay’s legal statistician team to investigate this matter. 

 The question is :

 Is it likely that only 2 out of 8 jurors chosen are African-American? 

(You can insert your own demographic into the statistics and the outcome will be the same.  We were given the specific parameters above)

Presented by Team Smack

Nick

Brian

Keri

Cynthia

Help for a Man on Trial

Case # 07CR-1234

            Mr. Blue Jay is an African-American citizen from Anytown, County.  This county has 100 citizens 50% of which are Caucasian and the remainder are African-American.  A jury has been selected that contains six Caucasians and two African-Americans.  It is our Job as Mr. Blue Jay’s legal statistician team to investigate this matter.  The question is : Is it likely that only 2 out of 8 jurors chosen are African-American?  This document is to advise Mr. Blue Jay, whether or not to pursue further legal action to have another jury selected.

            The first method of probability used was Binomial Formula.  This method was executed using Minitab Statistical formulation. Below is the histogram chart that indicates: Out of 100 persons selected for jury X amount of African-Americans were chosen out of every 8 for jury.      

The histogram states that 8 times in 100 trials indicated that 2/8 African-American jurors were selected.

            Next the team chose to flip a coin to see how many African Americans would be selected out of 100 tosses.  African-Americans were heads and Caucasians were tails.  When placed into the Minitab Probability Simulation dot-plot chart, 0=heads and 1=tails.  The following dot plot shows that the number of tails were equal to the number of heads.

The final simulation that Team Smack chose was a Random Integer Generator.  They used The Minitab Probability Simulation Program again for this project.  The integer number parameters were as follows

0-50 = African-American jurors

    51-99 = Caucasian jurors

The out come was that out of 100 trials 46 African-Americans were chosen and 54 Caucasians were chosen. Thus, the last two trials show that both races may be randomly chosen on an approximate 1:1 ratio.

            One final test if we use formula   ₈ P ₂      our probability is 56 that this outcome would happen. In a percentage that is 56% that 2/8 jurors would be African-American. We recommend that our client Mr. Blue Jay stick with the cards he has been dealt.  Mr. Jay should avoid the cost of hiring another attorney and starting another court case just for the jury selection. After the hearing, if he does not get a pleasurable outcome, he may appeal to a higher court as happens in the due process of the law.