Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 21, No. 5, 1997 Research Note Illuminations and Shadows from Jury Simulations Shari Seidman Diamond1,2 In the 18 years since authors in Law and Human Behavior's special issue on simulation research called for more realistic jury simulations, jury simulations of all kinds have proliferated. While simulations in general represent a significant improvement over nonempirical armchair speculation about jury behavior, the more ecologically valid features of recent simulations increase both the quality and the persuasiveness of simulation results. Still missing, however, are theories and a data base that will signal when these more elaborate and expensive design features are crucial. INTRODUCTION How well do jury simulations reflect jury decision-making? What methodologi- cal features affect the ability of simulations to provide trustworthy information about juries? How are courts likely to respond to simulations that purport to represent how juries behave? What can researchers interested in policy do to ensure that courts are provided with valuable and persuasive evidence from simulations? In 1979, Law and Human Behavior published a special issue on Simulation Research and the Law (Diamond, 1979). Authors writing in that issue raised ques- tions about the theoretical, empirical, and policy value of available research on the jury. Most of the jury experiments in the literature at that time were based on rather crude and minimal trial simulations. Some of us (e.g., Vidmar, 1979; Weiten & Diamond, 1979) suggested strategies that we believed could improve the caliber of jury research (e.g., using videotaped trials instead of short, written vignettes as experimental stimuli; studying juror or community-member respon- dents rather than students from college subject pools; using more ecologically valid dependent measures). 1American Bar Foundation, Chicago, IL, and Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL. 2Correspondence should be addressed to Shari Seidman Diamond, American Bar Foundation, 750 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60611. 561 0147-7307/97/1000-0561$12.50 c 1997 American Psychology-Law Society/Division 41 of the American Psychological Association