I have jury duty and was talking with another juror about her past experiences. She said she was placed, and kept, on a jury in a trial in which her ex-boyfriend was the defendant. She also said her father was placed, and kept, on a jury in a trial in which his nephew was the defendant. These were both in Maryland, in county circuit courts, and both these jurors explained their relationships in the beginning of the selection process.
How close to the defendant or other parties in a trial does a juror have to be, before it is considered reason to remove them from the jury?
BTW I have no interest in getting out of jury duty, and anyway would think such possible conflicts ought to get one moved to a different trial, not excused from duty. I was just surprised and wondering.
I’m surprised she wasn’t excused. For the one jury I was on, they excused a potential juror because she had a relative who had a friend who was a security guard, anda primary witness for the prosecution was a security guard.
My mother was excused from jury duty on an armed robbery case because she was robbed three times when she used to work at a certain bank. It seems to me like they don’t take many chances when it comes to jury bias.
I was on a jury in a drug case locally, and the woman seated next to me at the beginning of jury selection raised her hand and explained that she was the sister of the person whose house where the defendants had been arrested. She was dismissed.
I find this person’s story rather suspect. I watched jury selection for a case in which I was potentially going to be called as a witness and my sense is that a relative or former lover would have been right out.
I think the hard and fast rule is “Don’t believe everything you hear from other jurors.” I can not believe the prospective jurors in those two cases were not dropped.
Well it seems to me that the juror is not likely to know the case they are on, until after being sworn in, so surely it should be up to those who pick the jurors to minimise the chances of them knowing a defendant?
I’ve been on dozens of juries over the past 40+ years and in everyone the Judge described the case and introduced the defendant, the lawyers, the prosecutors, and sometimes the witenesses to the prospective jurors before the selection began so that potentially biased jurors could be excused.
If either of their stories are true, I’d be very surprised, especially the uncle. The ex-girlfriend I could almost believe, though - maybe the defense lawyer thought the ex would be sympathetic, and the DA thought she’d know what a lying sack of crap he is. Anyway, reasons for challenges for cause in my state:
Coincidentally, my wife got summoned to jury duty on one of my criminal jury trials a couple of weeks ago. I made sure not to tell her any of the facts beforehand so the DA would have to use up a peremptory challenge on her.
Hmmm. I expressed incredulity when she told me these things, and perhaps it was well founded.
Pravnik, thanks for posting this list. It’s interesting. I don’t see anything on the list about knowing one of the parties, per se. Did I miss anything? The closest I see are questions about being able to be impartial, and being related. I understand “degrees of consanguinity” as being the number of line segments one would have to follow in the family tree to get from juror to participant, all of them being parent-child connections - you know if that’s right? A person’s nephew would be at the third degree (segment to parent, segment from parent to sibling, segment from sibling to newphew). I don’t know what a degree of affinity is; maybe that means you can also use segments that are not parent-child connections?
I’m sure some Doper will come along with chapter and verse, but is it not the case that when juries were invented, they were originally filled with locals who presumably knew and / or were related to either the defendant or the victim or both?
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps the cases were from an extremely rural area (we’ve got some of them in Maryland) such that there was a real risk of not being able to fill the venireage (the juror pool) otherwise. But even in this case, I’d be awfully surprised if the stories were true.
Yeah, I can’t see how that would be allowed. I damn near got picked for a jury because a local doctor was testifying and I swear 3/4 of the jury pool saw him at one time or another. Had another case not plead out that morning we’d have run out of people.
