Judge‐Jury Agreement in Criminal Cases: The First Three Years of the K orean Jury System

This study examined jury trials conducted during the first three years since the introduction of a new jury system in South Korea. Case information from all jury trials held during the time was collected and empirically analyzed with a focus on judge‐jury agreement. The statistical analyses were guided by previous studies (Eisenberg et al. ; Spencer ). Results indicated that judges and juries agreed on the verdict 91.4 percent of the time (70.3 percent for conviction and 21.1 percent for acquittal). When they disagreed, juries had a greater tendency to acquit than did judges (7.4 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively). Neither evidentiary strength nor complexity had any systematic impact on agreement rates. Judges were more likely than juries to convict across all levels of evidentiary strength. The accuracy and error rates of jury verdicts were assessed by estimates of conditional probability.