Provided that no promise of payment is made in advance of a verdict, is it legal for a defendant to pay jurors upon his acquittal? If so, what’s preventing wealthy defendants from establishing a precedent whereby juries which acquit are rewarded? That is, say one wealthy defendant pays his acquitting jury with, say, $50,000 per juror; other wealthy defendants might start to do the same after their trials. Eventually it would become common knowledge that if you’re a juror trying a wealthy defendant, you have a good chance (but obviously no guarantee) of being rewarded for acquitting him. This would lead to a situation where juries would start acquitting wealthy defendants simply in hopes of obtaining payment, rather than on the basis of the law and the evidence presented at trial.
On the flip side, what’s preventing wealthy civil plaintiffs and wealthy crime victims from establishing a similar precedent for payment of juries which convict the defendant? (And please don’t answer “the market system”—it’s rare that both the defendant and plaintiff/victim have equal purchasing power.)
Again, keep in mind that no promise of payment is made in advance of the trial. Payment is made only afterwards, and then not necessarily in every case, but often enough that juries come to expect it implicitly. I think this is pretty much what psychologists would refer to as operant conditioning, except that it’s carried out on a population rather than an individual.
Aren’t jurors relatively anonymous to prevent this from happening?
By anonymous, I mean that the parties to the case do not have contact information for the jurors, so they would not be able to have any post-case interaction.
The anonymity can be waived by the juror herself, as evidenced by the books written by jurors involved in famous trials. Presumably a juror would voluntarily reveal her identity if it were announced that a large payment to her was pending.
What would be the incentive for any particular plaintiff to follow through on the deal? I suppose it might pay off if he or she were planning an extended life of crime, but why pay up if you’ve already got your aquittal and the precedent you create is only going to help someone else?
Well, let’s say you have a gentleman’s agreement amongst all the members of your particular white-collar criminal conspiracy to perpetuate this jury-tipping system.
In short, once someone thinks of it, no, it’s explicitly NOT legal:
From 2001:
In the absence of such a law, if it were done really blatently, I wouldn’t be surprised if a DA tried to make a charge like jury tampering or obstruction of justice stick anyway. It may not apply to THAT particular case, but by establishing precedent, it certainly screws up the objectivity of juries in future cases. Long before it got to be expected by juries, it would be stomped out, hard. If the members of the “gentlemen’s agreement” could be identified as an organization, RICO could very well apply, too.
It needs to be blatantly against the law in all states, and as need be it should be specifically mentioned before a trial starts. Otherwise, someone on the Phil Spector jury might be thinking a not guilty vote with earn them a big payday, and ignore the facts of the case.
It’s not necessarily only going to help someone else; it could help you as well in the event of any future prosecution. The likelihood of you getting prosecuted again is very low, but you can think of it in the same way you would purchasing an insurance policy. You, and everyone else, pay into the scheme, despite the low probability of any one person actually needing the protection it affords, but everyone who does end up prosecuted benefits.
Keep in mind also that if one is very wealthy compared to the average citizen, then one need spend only a pittance, relatively speaking, to bribe jurors of average wealth.
It seems to me that, provided the precedent for paying jurors already existed, this law would be ineffective in cases where the wealthy defendant unquestionably committed a crime for which he faces over 10 years in prison. (By “unquestionably”, I mean that it’s practically inconceivable that any jury weighing the evidence would vote to acquit, such as when the defendant was caught red-handed.) Serving 10 years for issuing gratuities to 10 jurors would be much nicer than serving 20 years, or serving a life sentence, or being executed, for the original offence.
Of course, the law would discourage the precedent from being established in the first place; while a multimillionnaire may not balk at spending a few ten thousand to pay a jury, few of them would be willing to go to prison just to start a favourable trend.
There are some people who want to “do the right thing”, irrespective of any potential gain on their part. There are also people who would consider the idea of getting a “tip” after the trial insulting and may even be more likely to convict. Thinking something like, “who is this rich jerk thinking he’s above the law just because he’s got money? I’ll show him.”
So I think we’d end up with more hung juries, rather than acquittals, IMHO.
It was illegal in some states as early as 1916, according to a Case Note in the Yale Law Journal Practice. New Trial. Conduct between Parties and Jurors. Gratuities after Verdict on JSTOR (I can read the actual article through another service). In the case described, Ellis v. Emerson, 147 Atl. 761 (Me. 1929), after the plaintiff won a trial, he invited the jury out to dinner, after they accepted, he learned of the statute and revoked his offer. The trial court granted a new trial and the appellate court affirmed the decision.
New York’s statute apparently did not prohibit this conduct, which is why it ultimately got amended:
Summer, Erica, “Post-Trial Jury Payoffs: A Jury Tampering Loophole?” 15 St. John’s J.L. Comm. 353 (2001) (citing numerous examples of juror gratiuties from New York).
When I served on a jury part of the voire dire (jury selection) was that we all got up, stated our full name, city of residence and job. Unless everybody was named John Smith it’d be pretty easy to track down the jurors.
Jury selection was done with all attorneys and the defendant present.
[Quibble]Behavioral psychologists like Skinner and Jack Michael (http://www.abainternational.org/saba/awards/awardees/dsba_michael.asp) would point out that operant conditioning involves the increase in the behavior immediately preceding the presentation of reinforcement). In most cases, we are talking about what Jack Michael always described as more complicated verbal or rule-governed behavior. Although, I’ll acknowledge that the distinction is a bit murky and you can find references to rule-governed behavior as “operant behavior.” *See, e.g., * http://www.bfsr.org/BSI_11_1/11_1JMoo.pdf If it was truly operant conditioning at work, the behavior would be described as increasing in frequency because of past contingencies of reinforcement–not because jurors expect it. [/Quibble] Nevertheless, I don’t dispute your claim that such a plan might have the effect that you describe, if it was legal. As you can see, it might be legal in some places and not in others.
But then you’re engaging in an action with the intent of influencing the outcome of a future trial - even if you and the people you’re paying are not personally involved in that trial. So you’re tampering with the outcome of that trial.