WINONA, Minn. – A statistically indicative survey found 89% of people in Winona County read or heard news about Maddi Kingsbury’s 2023 disappearance and murder. Further, when the survey was conducted, 75% held an opinion on the case. Of them 65% viewed Adam Fravel as guilty. The findings are in a written report being considered by Judge Nancy Buytendorp on whether to move Fravel’s trial this fall out of the county. The survey was commissioned by the law firm representing Fravel. The firm seeks a venue change. The survey was conducted by the respected research company SNG, a subsidiary of Forum Communications, which also owns the Rochester Post Bulletin. The SNG sample comprised 100 people – half living in the city and half in Winona County. Without a venue change, the jury would be drawn from a county-wide pool of citizens.
Venue considerations
The concept of peer trials favors a jury from the locale of a crime. Exceptions can be made if a judge is convinced that local prejudice precludes a fair trial –a citizen right as guaranteed to every citizen in the U.S. Constitution. It’s a judgment call. Judges are mindful of the difficulty of finding a pristine panel of jurors with no prior knowledge of a case. Also, a jury so out of touch wouldn’t be a good idea. As a group, low-knowledge citizens are short of critical thinking skills to make sound judgments. Also: Prior knowledge about a case, even a prejudice, doesn’t mean necessarily that a juror cannot assess evidence intelligently and fairly. Sometimes a practical consideration for a judge, hardly ever stated, is that moving a trial a can be costly and wreak havoc court budgets.
Statistical sampling
The ideal in public opinion sampling is to interview everyone. In Winona Count that would mean putting a question to 49,478 people. That’s not practical, of course. Would one fewer person still yield an accurate finding? Probably? How about two fewer? Somewhere between one and 49,478, a statistically reliable indicator can be found for whole. For a huge population, like then whole country, a a sample of 1,500 will reflect the whole within 3 percentage points — a variance that statisticians call the margin of error. There is a proviso: Everyone in the whole population must have an equal chance to be sampled. George Gallup, who invented modern polling the 1930s, likened the process to a cook sampling soup: One spoonful can reflect the taste of the whole pot, provided that the soup is well-stirred. In other words, it’s all about finding a sample that reflects the larger population. According to the laws of probability, it’s not necessary, for example, to sample the opinions of all 300 million Americans. A much smaller sample can reflect the larger population — if the sample is truly representative.