Can’t speak to that specific jurisdiction, but there have historically been some quite precious rules about jury deliberations.
Some judges suggest that notes not be taken because the juror is then missing out on subtleties of demeanour, etc as the evidence is given. Some take the view that notetaking undermines the official transcript. If the note is inaccurate, it might mislead the jury. If they want to hear the evidence, they can just have it accurately read back rather than rely on a dubious note. (I find this unconvincing). Some express the view that the highlighting of some evidence may be to the unfair detriment of other equally important evidence. I find this unconvincing too - jurors got to discriminate; that’s their job.
Those are some of the reasons that might be articulated about notes by a jury, but I am in favour of notes and transcripts going before the jury. In Australia, every trial on indictment has the benefit of a running transcript, so that you get a copy of each day’s hearing at the end of the day, and can have any particular part specially transcribed within that cycle as needed. Both sides have the capacity to challenge its accuracy (although that is rare).
Northern Piper’s system is similar to Queensland’s as discussed above. The principles against jury polling (the term used for questioning jurors for suitability) are that random selection is a better protector of the accused than direct questioning, which assumes that the answers are reliable (even without dishonesty, people tend to underreport their own biases.)
In Queensland, the preliminary process of winnowing jurors whose work prevents them from sitting, etc, is similar to Northern Piper’s. Thereafter, in trials with one accused, a preliminary panel of 28 is generally raised. Each side has 8 peremptory challenges (in the case of the defence) or stand-bys (in the case of the Crown) but the difference in language is of only historical significance. 28 is the number of the preliminary panel because if each side exhausts all 8 peremptory challenges, 12 will be left to form a jury.
There is also an unlimited number of challenges for cause, but these are exceedingly rare, to the point where the practical possiblity of them can be ignored.
At the end of the selection process (“empanelment”) the prosecutor reads out the names of the prosecution witnesses to the 12 selected jurors. This is not so important in big cities but is very important in country towns where everyone knows everyone, and jurors identifying that they know a witness is quite commmon. Aside from acknowledging that they know a witness, a juror is also invited to raise with the judge (often privately) if they have any reason why they should not sit, perhaps because of some bias or any other reason at all.
I should qualify what was said above about never questioning jurors in Queensland. It is exceedingly rare, but the power exists for it to occur. It has been used relatively recently (and for the first time in many decades) in two high profile homicide cases. The first were the re-trials of Patel. The second was the trial of Baden-Clay.
As you can see from the link, the questions are very non-intrusive. They involve whether the prospective juror lived in the area of the murder (there was much gossip in that area), whether they ever attended a fundraising event for the deceased (which were common and popular, reflecting the outrage the crime generated) and whether they had ever expressed an opinion about the guilt of Baden-Clay.
Once again, this is very rare. The Commonwealth countries work on the principle that a juror’s good sense will knock the edges off obviously embarrassing issues like knowing a witness, and otherwise biases, etc will cancel each other out. Randomness is a better protection that a contrived attempt to find someone who has no views about a topic. On this we depart from the views of our American cousins.
