The following is one long, run-on sentence-question:
I was wondering that since during a trial both presenters of evidence: the prosecution and the defense, are totally partial and may not be interested inn the presentation of the actual truth, and might be more interested in other things, fame, money, etc.,
would the jury, which I would view as an impartial body, apart from the judge who is also supposed to be one, be able to ask a question, or questions, if they found that there were some unanswered questions related to facts which might be key to arriving at a decision/conclusion?
A few states give jurors the right to submit witness questions by statute. In other states it’s at the discretion of the judge. I think there are also some states that explicitly disallow it. I know it has been allowed in some federal civil cases, but I don’t know about criminal.
Typically the judge will discuss the merit of submitted questions with both sides to see if there are any objections before allowing the witness to answer it. In all cases the question will be read in court by the judge or a clerk, not the actual juror who submitted it.
I followed this link. I found the sentence: “Given the stakes in a criminal trial, it’s understandable that most states do not want jury members actively questioning witnesses.”
My asterisks.
Don’t exactly understand the thinking on that.
Also, that a prosecutor and defense attorney can veto a question seems to defeat the purpose of giving this permission to jury members. I would think that any question would be prejudicial to one side or the other.
So in my state (Bardoland) at the moment my thinking would be to definitely give the jurors permission to ask questions after each cross examination ends.
The procedures seem to relate to formal questioning of the witness by the Jury, rather than Jurors slipping a note asking a question during deposition which IME may be done with the judges permission at anytime.
There are lots of questions the prosecution would love to ask. They are prohibited by laws, precedent and court rules. For instance a juror may be curious if the defendant had a prior record for similar offenses. The prosecutor would love to have the jury know he was convicted of 3 previous robberies. But prior bad acts are prejudicial and not allowed to be introduced in trial. That’s why questioning is limited even in those states that allow it.
Arizona is one of the states that allow jurors to ask questions. The recent Jodi Arias case is a good and well publicized example. I believe the questions were submitted in writing and approved before being asked.
Now that opens up a debate. Within my own thinking brain.
So, a man’s character and background is not admissible, only the facts pertaining to the specific case being tried. Interesting concept. Is my interpretation correct?
[hijack]Aren’t there exceptions to that? If the accused had a very specific trait that showed up in all his previous crimes, and is present in this one, like a safecracker who uses a very specific set of tools that were found at the scene of this crime, would that be permissible? Or have I been watching too many movies?[/hijack]
Pretty much. Just because I broke into a house last year doesn’t mean that I broke into this house. But in the mind of a juror, knowing that I was a criminal in the past will prejudice him against me. Along the same lines it’s why a defendant isn’t restrained or in prison clothes during a trial. I’ve seen an investigator get in trouble for mentioning on the stand he interviewed the defendant in jail. You would think that the juror would figure out the guy had been arrested at some point due to the fact he was on trial.
Yes there are exceptions. I’m just a cop and never had to pass the bar but in my experience trying to get prior bad acts admitted is an up hill battle to say the least. I’ve never actually seen it happen in a case. Then again I’m in an area where the courts are not very prosecution friendly.
Not completely. A defendant’s character and background may be pertinent to the specific case being tried - depending on what evidence or testimony is introduced by the defense and/or the particulars of the case. I’ll let someone who actually knows what they’re talking about take it from here.
About 10 years ago I sat on the jury of a Special Court Martial for an enlisted member of the Navy. Technically its called being a “Member of the Court”, but functionally it seemed quite similar to being on a jury(I have not been on a civilian jury, yet). If memory serves me, we were allowed to submit questions to the judge, and he would ask them if the questions were admissible.
Years ago when I served on the jury for a criminal case, a number of the jurors had questions they wanted asked. They would give these to the bailiff during breaks. The bailiff would pass these along to the judge. The judge would decide which ones were pertinent (a number of the jurors kind of got off track of the actual case - trying to solve the crime and not try the defendant). The judge would then confer with both attorneys. If both attorneys agreed, then the question would be put to the witness.
So a lot of filtering and approval took place. But some of the submitted questions did get asked.
I served on two juries here in CA, one was around 5-6 years ago, the other a little over a year ago. In both cases the jury could submit questions in writing to the bailiff, who would take them to the judge. The judge and attorneys would figure out whether the question could be asked (as others have noted in this thread, there are reasons why certain things cannot be asked or introduced into evidence) and things would proceed from there.
As far as requesting that certain testimony be read back we were allowed to do that - they’d pull up the appropriate part of the transcript and read it back to us. We were cautioned that we couldn’t do this too much, part of our job as jurors is to pay close attention in court.
Any question a juror is likely to ask is probably going to fall into the category of inadmissible evidence, which is why the objectionable question was not asked in the first place. Verdicts are rendered not on “the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, but on a narrow band of admissible truth, excluding those elicited by question for which an objection is sustained.
One does not need to watch very many jury trials (in real life, not on TV) to realize that criminal justice is one of the most flawed of all American institutions…
As a general rule, evidence of the defendant’s character is disfavored in criminal trials. The defendant may testify about his curriculum vitae to a limited extent (“how many kids do you have, Joe?”), since he is entitled to humanize himself to the jury to offset the effect of being the defendant in a criminal trial.
The prosecution generally cannot introduce evidence of prior crimes committed by the defendant except for impeachment purposes (we’ll get to those in a moment). In the most basic sense, this means the prosecution can’t argue that you robbed a liquor store just because you robbed a liquor store in the past. The prosecution can generally introduce such evidence for reasons other than proving character. For example, they can introduce evidence of modus operandi that is highly specific; for example, if you used a Sig Sauer that was painted red with a checkerboard inlay for both robberies, that might come in. It would not be evidence of the defendant’s bad character, but evidence of his identity and common scheme.
At least under the Federal Rules, this is not true of sex crimes; there, the prosecution may liberally introduce evidence of prior sex offenses.
When I was on a criminal jury, also in California, we were told that we could ask to review the transcript if needed when we were deliberating. We could also ask questions of law, such as around self defense. It never came up for us.
I could see the opposition to letting jurors ask questions, since they are an indication that the juror is building a hypothesis about the case, where the juror is supposed to be listening to evidence with an open mind.
