Challenge: How would you reform the American jury system, if at all?

Great Debates
1

In a thread about the Casy Anthony verdict, Jackknifed Juggernaught writes:

Now, I have no opinion about the Casey Anthony verdict as such, because I haven’t followed the case even a tiny bit. I don’t know what sort of evidence the prosecutors put forth that the jury found less than credible, or what the defense may have done that is unfair or unjust. In short I have no opinion on whether Ms. Anthony was innocent or guilty. And, even if I did, I wouldn’t be starting a new thread about this case in particular; there must be several such already running.

Instead I want to talk about the jury process in general. Thus, while you may use the Anthony trial as an example, any other case is fair game so long as it’s recent enough that it reflects the current state of American jurisprudence. Thus I will ask two questions:

  1. If you feel the American jury system needs some major change(s), what would you prescribe, and why?

  2. If you feel the American jury system does NOT need such changes, how do you respond to persons who disagree?

2

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3

I think a good way to kick off the debate is to discuss the relative merits of “a jury of your peers” as done in the U.S., and professional jurists, as is done in other countries.

I haven’t given it a great deal of thought, but there are some definite pro’s and con’s involved in either option.

4

I would like to see a return to an actual jury of your peers. From my experience being called (but never serving due to challenges), our system does not currently reflect anything close to a cross section of our society.

Instead, we seem to have a jury of retirees (nothing else to do), government workers (typically can be paid regardless of length of service), and others who can not get out of jury duty.

We need a system that makes it possible to serve on a jury without too much of a financial impact (tax credits / deductions?) so that we have a better pool.

5

Because of a number of factors, juries seem to be disproportionaltely made up of students, the retired and the unemployed.

  1. Make the time when you MIGHT be called to serve less onerous.
    Lots of places seem to be working on the first one. Rather than sitting in a courthouse for 2 weeks, wondering if you will even be in a jurist pool, I hear people saying that they have to call in the evening, to find out if they need to go in in the morning.

2)Widen the database that people are called from.
I’ve never been called. I’ve had a driver’s license, been registered to vote and have been a home owner, yet in 20+ year, not a single notice to serve. If you are over 18 and live in the county, you should be eligible and on the list of potiential jurists.

3)Remove most excuses to get out of serving.
I have a vacation planned. I have an important meeting. I have a second cousin who is a police officer. I’ve heard it joked that only the incompetent can’t get out of jury duty. If you have a conflict, you should get moved to the next rotation. If you’re not dead and you can walk or roll to the court house, you should be required to serve.

Finally -
Give up on the idea that jurors aren’t going to hear any outside news during the trial, and that the only information they possess will be that given by the lawyers. That just isn’t reallistic. Treat a trial more like a grand jury. If the jurors have questions, not just about procedure, but about the evidence or testimony, let them ask. The jury’s job is to decide the validity of the charges. If they feel that they don’t have all the information they need, they should be able to ask for it. With the open access to information that we have come to expect in our every day lives, people will trust juries and courts less and less, if the decisions continue to have to be made based on censored information.

6

A lot has been done already in some states to make it quite difficult to get out of jury duty. You’re expected to serve and they time box how long you wait to be assigned to a jury or to be dismissed.

7

What I would do Skald:
1.) Let any juror question a witness. This can be done by passing a note to the judge.
2.) End this shit of attornies saying whatever they want to in order to smear the other side. If an attorney makes a claim, i.e. Anthony’s defense team claiming her father had sexually abused her, they had better provide some evidence or face disbarment and prison.
3.) Start enforcing the penalties for perjury. It should be a serious crime.
4.) I think I might approve of jury nullification. If 12 good men and women true find a law stupid or antiquated, i.e. our marijuana laws, vote the defendant innocent
5.) Pay them their normal daily salary so more people will be tempted to serve. In Indiana, you take a hell of a financial hit for every day of jury duty.
6.) Stress in our schools and Congress and media that jury duty is sacred. It is not a burden, it is part of being a good citizen.

Personally, despite the Anthony verdict, I think a system of non-professional jurors works quite well. I once read a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, I think, that ran something like this: “There is no surer safeguard against tyranny than the right of 12 citizens to hear and decide the law.” I would look it up, but I am too lazy.

8

If I was on trial, I’d want the entire court to be clothing optional.

9

BMalion, does that include you?

10

I don’t want to know what the judge has under his robes.:eek:

11

I agree that we need changes to the jury system. Regardless of any drawbacks to the jury system, however, it still beats hell out of a judge who is beholden to the system for his job.

Here are a couple of improvements:

  1. Free exercise of jury nullification. It has been our law since the 1600’s at least (some say since magna carta, though no examples exist that I am aware of) that a criminal jury have the power to judge both law and fact. when the law itself is unjust, the jury should be able to protect the defendant from it, or when it is wrongly applied. But in 1895, the Supreme Court decided in Sparf v. Hansen that juries only judge the fact, and everything the majority said was practically a lie. Not exactly a lie, but…false by omission.

Part of the reason our war of Independnce was fought was because of what some English judges were trying to do to juries. There was a huge debate amongst the judges over whether or not the Jury have the right…(no one seriously disputes they have the power) and in Foxe’s Libel Act in the 1790’s they decided it by act of parliament that the jury in fact do have the right to judge the law. But of course that was after we adopted our constituon and thus had no bearing on the common law.

But back to the S. Ct., what the majority did was ignore the side in favor of Jury rights and quote the side against it to death with no mention of the other side (and certainly without mentioning Foxe’s Libel Act) and then claim that that was well settled law. I have seen plenty of cases where they have been manipulative with law and fact, but can think of no toher supreme court case where the majority just lies lies lies. It cannot be said that they did so out of ignorance either since Justice Gray’s dissent clearly laid out the truth of what happened.

None of us who are reasonable would accept the losing half of a debate and call it well-settled. Neither should Americans today, and you should remember: Just because the judge in an American Criminal trial today tells you you have to obey his instructions, you do not. You cannot be punished for disobeying the judge as a juror. When they ask you if you will obey the law in voir dire, tell them “I fully intend to judge this case according to the law.” You will even if you disobey the judge because it is the law that you may decide on your conscience. No need to lie awake feeling guilty because you sent some poor schmuck to prison, though you did not want to, just because the judge told you you had to obey his instruction.

The enemies of jury nullification always point to the O.J. Simpson case as they probably will point to Casey Anthony to claim that the jury was “lawless.” However, in either case I see sufficient problems with facts to render an acquittal and there is no good reason to suppose that the juries are contentious with murder laws instead, which is what they are really saying. And we can’t forget that ol “race card” either.

The idea is that there is a circle of power–it begins with the people, flows into the constitution into the stae and federal governments, it flows from the lawmakers to the statutes, from the stautes to the courts and once again, for its final exercise to the people.

What is really kinda scary here is the fact it is being erased from our history. Being a book dealer, I have managed to hang on to an 1826 history book, which is the only place I have ever seen it claimed that this was a major cause of our revolution.

The book is America and Its People (our first fifty years) and it was written by a Professor White, published by Wicke and Associates New york New York, 1826.

12

When I was called for jury duty last year, it was surprisingly efficient. The only problem I had was parking. But I had to call each evening to find out if I had to attend the next day. I was there for two and a half days - they were picking for four criminal trials, so each time the group got smaller, but I was never selected.

I was amazed at how efficient it was and really enjoyed the proceedings. The court assistant was helpful and knowledgeable, and only a couple of people slinked out of jury duty with some excuses. I really expected a lot more, since I too hard heard that old thing about only the incompetent serving, but most people seemed content, if resigned, to do their duty.

I saw a decent mix of jurors with one exception - lots of white people. Now this is a predominantly white area, but it was still surprising in 200+ people, there was only a few blacks and a couple of Asians. But there were people of all ages, and looked like, people of all social class.

Everyone was very professional.

I, too think sequestering a jury is nearly impossible in this day and age, but mostly I like our jury and our court system. Maybe it’s different elsewhere in the country, but I don’t recommend any changes. Now I’d have to go through a whole trial to tell you proper.

Also, around here, if your company does not pay for jury duty, they pay you. Not a lot, but still.

13

Things must have been a lot worse in the old days than. Because in the last ten years I have been called up for jury duty in Georgia, Maryland and Massachusettts, and each time I sat in the courtroom all day (once for three consecutive days in Georgia) and never came close to being called. The last time there were 288 in the juror pool, and fewer than 100 were ever called up for the voir dire. It seems like having a couple hundred people hanging around for a day is considered a small price for the possibility that a trial might have to be adjuourned once every couple of months, when some freak occurance chews through the whole jury pool. I was once in a pool where a single jury was empanelled out of more than 100 jurors.

The problem seemed to me to be that all the professionals involved think of the POTENTIAL jurors as utterly inconsequential. Their time means nothing, their comfort means nothing. The bailiffs or guards talk to you as if you are a four year old who is bothering them. The last time all 300 of us were sent for lunch at the same time. Naturally the queue in the cafeteria was an hour long, but we had to be back in 45 minutes. You couldn’t eat your lunch in the waiting area.

14

I can second your quote if anyone cares to believe us. Oliver Wendell Holmes also wrote that the Jury brings a verdict “in the teeth of law and fact” as well but I forget the case he said it in. As that was well after Sparf it sort of makes one wonder. But there’s a lot about Sparf that makes any reasonable person wonder, including how much the Unions paid the Justices off. (Anti-Strike Laws were being nullified by juries during this period) (speculation on the judges taaking bribes)

15

For starters, “beyond a reasonable doubt” needs to be replaced with a clearer standard. What does “beyond a reasonable doubt” mean? When I served on a jury, there was a disagreement among the jurors on what it meant. All but one of us believed that the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, even though we all seemed to think it was very likely the defendant was guilty. One juror claimed that while the prosecution hadn’t done a very good job, he personally had no doubt that the defendant was guilty. He couldn’t rationally argue with our doubts, and in fact agreed that they were reasonable, but held that since he personally had no doubts reasonable or otherwise, he had to vote guilty. I and others tried to convince him that if he admitted that certain doubts were objectively reasonable, it didn’t matter how emotionally convinced of guilt he was. Anyone who believed he was guilty should nevertheless vote “not guilty” if they believed that a reasonable person could rationally disagree based on the evidence. The judge, however, refused to define or clarify it.

The judge also informed us that we were required to form a unanimous opinion, and that to declare ourselves hung would comprise a dereliction of our duty to the court. The result was that while we all began by making rational arguments, we quickly descended to emotional and even false arguments to convince the one hold out. Eventually, he acquiesced, but he was clear that he was doing so because we pressured him to, not because he was convinced that it was right. The system seemed set up to guarantee such a process, in fact, in any situation where the correct verdict is not immediately clear to everyone.

This combined with the fact that all of us agreed that not only was the defendant probably guilty but that if he was guilty a competent prosecutor could easily have resolved our doubts led me to leave the trial with a much diminished confidence in our justice system.

BTW, the defense attorney, while much smoother and more willing to play to the jury (successfully we had to admit, even though we all knew what he was doing) was also not a shining example of his profession. He spent most of the trial attempting to cast suspicion on the defendant’s cousin, but was stymied because each witness whom he asked “Was cousin X present at the time of the alleged assaults?” answered that he was not. This obviously surprised and frustrated the attorney until finally the last witness to take the stand mentioned that although cousin X hadn’t been there, his brother, cousin Y, had been present every time. :smack:

16

We also need reforms to voir dire, particularly in the ways that prosecutors skew juries to favor the government.

MOST OF ALL, any criminals who have been convicted under a law should be allowed to serve if they have satisfied their sentence. its a good way, for instance, to keep pro-marijuana jurors off a case. With the millions arrested for marijuana in this country, it is becoming a significant segment of the population. its Jury-of-your-peers-minus-anyone-sympathetic-to-defendant, which isn’t exactly a jury of your peers.

I’m in favor of stuff that others have mentioned too, such as note taking and allowing jurors to pass notes to the judge so that certain clarifying questions can be asked.

17

I think the real problem in your case was the judge failing to further define reasonable doubt. Most will. The problem of the idiot who can’t stop deciding by his emotions is very common–but it is usually 11 idiots and 1 thinker, rather than 11 thinkers and 1 idiot as you describe. The prosecution wants them as dumb as they can get them.

18

I wonder if defendants convicted in his trials took any action in their cases over this.

19

Cite? In this case, it was the defense who was slick and played to the jury, as I said. He started making his case during voir dire. The prosecutor seemed to go out of his way to avoid appealing to the jurors’ emotions (in a very emotional case involving child sexual abuse) and never tried to sneak an argument into voir dire or do anything else “sneaky.” If anything, he relied too much on the jury being intelligent and rational. I think there’d have been more than one hold out if he’d been more of a showman.

It wasn’t entirely his fault he lost, BTW. The police screed up the investigation badly. The investigating officer was an acquaintance of mine, almost a friend, and he moonlighted as a security guard where I worked. I was stunned that I was selected for the jury, but I also showed less of an emotional response to the description of the crime during voir dire than anyone else who was questioned, and I agreed enthusiastically with the defense that I would only vote guilty if the prosecution proved his case, even if no defense was offered at all, and no matter how much sympathy I might feel for the victim. I suppose the defense decided (correctly as it turned out) that I was worth taking a chance on despite my ties to the investigator. The prosecutor, of course, knew how badly the investigator had screwed up, and was no doubt glad to have someone who thought favorably of him on the jury.

20

I would say that the system works pretty well overall but that they need to make a couple of changes.

First they need to pay an acceptable amount per day of service to keep people from being financially burdened (I would say a minimum of $45 or $50 per day) and to make sure that for longer trials they pay you every 2 weeks just like a normal job would pay you. I was up for a trial that was expected to go for 4 months and I had to turn it down, not because I wasn’t interested or because I didn’t want to serve on that jury but because that would have meant 4 months with 50% less income in our household. A big check at the end of that time wasn’t going to prevent us from getting evicted 2 months into the trial so that meant they lost a potential juror.

Second, they should allow you to volunteer for jury duty when you have the opportunity. When my husband was unemployed he went and volunteered and spent his 2 days hanging around before they sent him home and he was told after that he couldn’t volunteer again until 6 years had passed. Allowing people to volunteer once a year or once every two years wouldn’t create “career jurors” by any stretch of the imagination and it would also make it so they wouldn’t have to spend half an hour asking 50 people why they don’t feel they can serve on this jury because many of them would be willing and able to put in the time required to serve.

This would go a long way towards addressing the stereotype that a jury is made up of “12 people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty” and might help people feel better about the verdicts of cases because they won’t assume that it is the dumbest of the dumb deciding trials in our nation.