By Thomas M. O’Toole, Ph.D & Kevin R. Boully, Ph.D
A group of prospective jurors clambers into the courtroom (or Zoom room), and the attorneys scan the crowd. Looking at a random group of their peers, naturally an attorney on one or both sides leans into a colleague and whispers “looks like a motley crew.” Typical Monday morning.
Meanwhile, these jurors, as Americans, are grappling with a lot. Trust in institutions is near record lows. Even conservative Republicans hate corporations now. People lose their cool on a daily basis in road rage incidents, ER waiting rooms, family dinners, and more. Studies show people have fewer close friends than 30 years ago. Just 24% of Americans have a positive outlook on the economy, while 61% expect a recession within a year.
This is stressful, and the potential jurors sitting in front of you are going through it right now. Don’t know about you, but we have enough stories about personal and family drama in the last five years to write quite a book.
The Blame Game. The data shows Americans don’t trust each other. According to a May 2025 Pew Research study, only 34% of us say most people can be trusted — and distrust is highest among the less privileged. Just one in four Americans with a high school education or less, whose household earns $50,000 or less, and age 18-29 expresses general trust in others. Concerns about sexual assault among women under 50 have risen 20% in the past decade, and young men face an epidemic of loneliness.
These are the people who show up for jury duty, stressed and distracted by their priorities of working hard to pay inflated bills and buy expensive groceries.
As you’ve certainly heard, damage awards from juries have been on the rise for a decade, reaching “mega-nuclear” proportions in the last few years. Washington ranked eighth highest for nuclear verdicts in a 2024 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform. So, the crazy American juror is here in our state, right? Yes. And no.
In this column, we explore what we are seeing with individual juror behavior in Washington and beyond, how it relates to the common perception that jurors (and therefore, juries) are “crazy,” and what it might mean for the predictability of jury behavior for your case.
The Rise of Nuclear Verdicts. The data doesn’t lie. The 2024 Institute for Legal Reform report analyzed 1,288 nuclear verdicts from 2013 to 2022, and about one-third were between $20 million and $50 million; 19% exceeded $50 million; and 115 awards (9% of the sample) were $100 million or more. The average award was $89 million.
These eye-popping verdicts are often for catastrophic injuries and severe corporate misconduct. Jurors carry the responsibility of whether and how to compensate victims, doling out verdicts against distrusted corporations for which they feel no compassion. So, is this irrational?
The Rise of Disruptive Conduct. These high verdicts are happening in the context of political polarization and increasingly extreme conduct in many aspects of American life. People are being pushed. People are watching the rules and norms being pushed in very public ways. We observe it in our mock trial and focus group studies right here in Washington. It is increasingly common to see irreconcilable conflict among mock jurors during one-day research projects, increasing rates of hung mock juries, and the need for intervention and closer monitoring to even ensure mock jurors are not being disrespectful if not intentionally rude to each other.
In a recent King County focus group, facilitators had to dismiss two mock jurors who fervently insulted one another in front of the group, each taking issue with how the other was processing the case information. These jurors were rude not only to each other but to undeserving administrators and tech professionals.
In one recent trial (not a mock trial), a handful of jurors were submitting questions for the court to ask witnesses. One juror posed questions that, even taken with grace and some context, felt unusual if not downright odd. The questions referenced the juror’s belief system and made assumptions from that set of beliefs about what a witness had said or should have said during testimony. It felt, “out there,” to be generous. It concerned the trial attorneys that the juror was going rogue and would render an illogical or irrational decision and that justice was in jeopardy. It seemed … well, a little crazy.
Predictably Irrational. Jurors are human. As the tenets of jury economics emphasize, each person brings their own experiences, values, and emotions to bear on their evaluation of evidence. That’s actually their job. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
When faced with cases involving tragic and preventable harm, jurors naturally empathize with victims and look for explanations. They use what they know, what is familiar, and what makes sense in the context of their experience. This is expected and predictable human behavior, not craziness.
The Wisdom of the Crowd. Juries are more than just the jurors. The collective group is critical to the value of a jury. It is a long-established principle, and proven through quality research in our field, that a group of diverse people brings wisdom to decision-making that individual decision-makers cannot. More diverse juries make better decisions.
The group — especially a diverse group like we see in King County juries — is a powerful check on the craziness of any individual. So much so, in fact, that we even label it the “wacky juror phenomenon” when one or two jurors are so “far out” in their logic and arguments that the collective group will galvanize together to help persuade them and/or move in a different or even opposing direction because of the failure to bring common sense or logical persuasion to bear on the discussion.
As a trial lawyer, you can and should trust in the wisdom of the jury. The aforementioned juror who posed unusual questions during trial was ultimately a dissenting juror among the group, which was unable to persuade the individual but was also not persuaded by that person. This situation added another hashmark in the column confirming that “crazy” behavior is neither common nor persistent in our experience with juries.
The Power of Good Communication. For you as a persuader, let’s harken back to the tenets of jury economics and good communication more generally. Research continues to show there are ways to reach jurors and to persuade them.
Start with empathy and the understanding that jury decisions are a social behavior stemming from an economical, egocentric, and symbolic process of understanding and choosing. Despite outcries over nuclear verdicts, fascinating research in just the past few years shows jurors do a surprisingly good job of determining damages based on what Valerie Hans, Valerie Reyna, and their associates call “normative benchmarks.” It is not crazy. It is normal. And your guidance about damages and the reasons for your position on damages (including reasons for specific numbers) can reduce unpredictability and increase reliability among jurors’ damages perceptions.
Labeling juries as “crazy” oversimplifies their job and their humanity. High verdicts and crazy conduct are less about erratic behavior than about people being people. Rest assured: People are crazy, jurors are people, and juries are still pretty predictable.
Thomas M. O’Toole, Ph.D. is President of Sound Jury Consulting in Seattle. Kevin R. Boully, Ph.D. is Senior Consultant at Perkins Coie in Denver.
