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Fair Selection of Jury Panels From Jury Pools

Published

Author(s)

J L. Blue

Abstract

A standard problem of courts at all levels is the selection of a panel of potential jurors from a jury pool, which is a list of people who are eligible to serve as jurors. The problem is to select N people out of the M possible people in a fair way. One definition of fair is that each of the M people has an equal chance to be selected for any jury pool. A much more rigorous definition is that each of the possible combinations of N people has an equal chance to be selected as the entire jury pool. A working computer program incorporating a fair algorithm for the problem stated above has been produced, together with a brief testing program. The properties of this algorithm are discussed, and an improved version of a program developed previously is presented.
Citation
- 6569
Report Number
6569

Keywords

chi-square test, jury selction, lagged-Fibonacci generator, Pseudo-Random Number, random numbers

Citation

Blue, J. (2000), Fair Selection of Jury Panels From Jury Pools, - 6569, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (Accessed October 31, 2024)

Issues

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Created October 1, 2000, Updated October 16, 2008