If jury is finder of fact can court ask them to find a fact?

Factual Questions
1

Suppose there is some novel court case going on, wherby the defence and the prosecution are in huge disagreement as to whether if a fact is found proven/not proven the defendant will be guilty.

Simple example (and if there is settled case law or ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT THIS HYPOTHETICAL OFFENCE please ignore it for the purposes of this quesiton - I AM BASICALLY MAKING UP THIS OFFENCE FOR THE PURPOSES OF ILLUSTRATING MY QUESTION) - suppose there is an offence of causing death by dangerous driving. And the person who died could have died in (at least - these are the only ones relevant for this question, the others would obv be not guilty) two ways. He could have died because the defendant mounted the kerb and hit him, but he could also have died because he stepped out in front of the defendant (who was doing a very high speed indeed).

If either were to be proved then the defendant is guilty, say the prosecution. But the defence say that only if the defendant mounts the kerb was the victim killed through dangerous driving; otherwise it was an unfortunate accident. The prosecution on the other hand essentially say that either the defendant mounting the kerb OR the defendant driving at a very high speed indeed and hitting the victim in the middle of the road would be causing death by dangerous driving. And it is not at all certain who is right here. This is because the law on dangerous driving is not settled and both the prosecution and defence’s approaches have something to recommend them.

Can the court ask the jury to rule not just on whether the defendant is guilty or not - but also to find fact as to wehther the victim was in the road or not? If so, why? And if not, why not?

I think there is some sense in them deciding one way or the other, such that if it goes to appeal for a higher court to decide what is dangerous driving and what isn’t then it would be helpful fo the jury in this case to have found some facts regarding the defendant’s driving. Then the upper court merely needs to decide if what the defendant was found to have been doing was dangerous. Not to speculate upon what the jury’s verdict meant. But I know very little about this stuff and this is a super duper interesting question to me, so what happens in practice?

2

My understanding of the usage of the word fact in the expression “the jury is the finder of fact” is that it’s definition number 5 given in that link.

Intepreting the law, on the other hand, is not the purview of the jury. That’s for the judges, ultimately being the province of the Supreme Court.

3

Under US law, before the case is submitted to the jury, the judge has to decide whose interpretation of the law is correct, that of the prosecution (in a criminal case) or the plaintiff (in a civil case), or that of the defense. She then instructs the jury that the elements of the crime or the civil claim that must be proven are A, B, C, and D according to which version she decided was correct. It is then up to the jury to decide whether the facts of the particular case satisfy each of those elements.

In a civil case, the court can ask the jury to return a “special verdict,” which finds facts element by element, as you are envisioning. In such a case, the judge decides upon a verdict form that shows the list of questions that the jury must answer (based on her interpretation of the required elements of the case, and she provides that to the jury when it begins its deliberations.

In a criminal case, however, the jury’s verdict usually must be up-or-down, guilty or not guilty; this is called a “general verdict.” There are some exceptions, particularly involving very complicated criminal statutes such as RICO, where special verdicts are used, but I think they are rare.

Under no circumstances is the jury ever deciding which interpretation of the law is correct.

4

[nitpick, unless it was an unfortunate auto-correct]
Provenance
[/nitpick, unless it was an unfortunate auto-correct]

5

Thanks, Leo! It was simply the wrong word. Drat!