Female Blago jurors may deliberate differently

CHICAGO — Since they disappeared behind closed doors, jurors at the corruption retrial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have left behind a much-discussed question in the corridors of the federal courthouse and across Chicago's media waves.

Could the final verdict be influenced by the fact that 11 of the 12 jurors are women, when juries normally break down fairly even along gender lines?

The short answer, according to jury consultants and legal scholars, is no.

"There is no evidence that men and women, in the end, actually vote differently," said Nancy Marder, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and director of its Jury Center.

But, while many factors contribute to how a juror might vote, juries dominated by men or women may get to a verdict using somewhat different deliberative processes, Marder said, citing small-scale studies that often rely on mock juries.

The longer the Blagojevich jury deliberates, the more questions arise about what could be going on in the jury room. Jurors entered their seventh day of deliberations Tuesday on the multiple counts, including that Blagojevich, 54, allegedly sought to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated to become president. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Academic findings suggest that men may be more inclined to take a vote on a verdict right away and then form competing, sometimes combative coalitions in a jury room. It is an approach depicted in the 1957 movie, "12 Angry Men" starring Henry Fonda, where an all-male jury almost comes to blows.

"'The '12 Angry Men' was a verdict-driven approach," Marder said. "Then there's an evidence-driven method where every juror offers their point of view — then comes the vote."

"The second method could take more time before you get to a vote — but you might get to a better result," she added. "One hypothesis is that women are more inclined to the second."

Chicago-based jury consultant Beth Foley says the nearly all-female jury is a statistical anomaly, with most juries reflecting the roughly 50-50 gender breakdown of the country.

The first Blagojevich jury, which ended deadlocked, had six men and six women. The jury in former Gov. George Ryan's corruption case in 2006 was also evenly split between men and women — though two jurors were later replaced by alternates.

Foley agrees that you can't predict a verdict based on gender. But from what she's gleaned from years of observation and post-trial interviews with jurors, there are differences in how female and male jurors go at assessing the evidence.

Women appeared more eager to understand why defendants did what they did, to understand the context of their actions — while many male jurors tend to look at the cold, hard facts in isolation, Foley said.

Foley said that meshes with another characteristic stereotypically ascribed to women: A greater desire to talk things out.

"A woman might ask what was Blagojevich thinking, while a man might say, I need to know the facts — I don't care what he was thinking," she said

Foley has studied post-trial interviews of jurors from the first Blagojevich trial, where the jury could reach agreement on just one count, agreeing to convict the ex-governor of lying to the FBI. Some of those jurors most adamant about Blagojevich's guilt were men, she said; the lone holdout who prevented conviction on the Senate seat was a woman.

"So I have to think (Blagojevich's current attorneys) like having more female jurors," she added.

But the foreman of that initial jury said he didn't detect any difference in the way his fellow panelists deliberated on the basis of gender.

"I didn't think the females were necessarily more sympathetic or more methodical, or the men more aggressive," James Matsumoto said. "It came down to individual personalities, not gender."

Foley and Marder, too, agree that factors other than gender are more instructive about how a juror might vote, including their personalities, their own life experiences and their socioeconomic status.

The retrial jurors include a librarian, a school teacher, a longtime church choir director and a recently laid-off marketing director.