The jury I was on didn’t discuss the trial, nor any of the juicy aspects (of which there were many) until we went into deliberation… 9 weeks or so after the trial began. We learned a hell of a lot about each others’ personal lives in the mean time.
Interestingly, we had a gun collector and a couple of sport-shooting enthusiasts on our jury, which was a multiple murder trial of a man who collected guns. Made for some interesting questions from the jury box during testimony. They had been questioned about it during the jury selection process, but weren’t eliminated.
You’d be surprised at who sneaks through voir dire, though. And there’s always the situation where a lawyer’s exhausted all his peremptory challenges and can’t develop a reason to strike a juror for cause.
Apropos the thread first referenced by Northern Piper (I think), it seemed that the consensus was that the jurors are bound by the evidence presented in court (even if known to be erroneous) and can’t rely on their own personal (not necessarily specialized) knowledge or experience. That may be entirely true as a statement of law (thank the Random Quanta I don’t have to deal with such questions, anymore), but as a practical matter I can’t see that the system can avoid such situations.
I’m thinking back to my prior incarnation, when I represented a person accused of armed robbery. According to the cops, my client confessed, and they typed out the confession “at my client’s request” and had him sign it because my client was illiterate and unable to write. The jury hung 7-3 for acquittal, and afterwards the foreman told me that he’d argued strongly for acquittal, because in his job (banker, stockbroker, or something like that–in the financial services industry in some form) he was required to deal with signatures on a daily basis. He said, “I’ve seen the signatures of many illiterate people, and the signature on the confession was much, much too good to be that of an illiterate man.”
Obviously, I had no objection to that juror’s assessing the situation based on his own experience, and I don’t see how it could be avoided, especially since (IIRC) you can’t impeach a jury’s verdict based solely on what happened during deliberations.
I guess it’s to prevent you from acquiring misinformation during the trial. Say you looked up the street but mistyped the address and didn’t notice or something… I mean, they can’t really help you bringing an incorrect recollection into the trial with you, but they can ban you from acquiring any more during it.
A retrial was ordered for convicted gang-rapists in Sydney after their conviction was overturned because it came to light that two jurors had done investigations of their own during deliberations, visiting the scene of the crime. Link to the story.
Didn’t happen to me, but I’ve known several lawyers who have received contempt citations and brief jail stays related to their representation of clients.
If the statute creating the offence does not define “cause”, then it’s presumed to have the ordinary dictionary definition. The judge cannot try to re-define the word, since that would be usurping the function of the Legislature. So, in this example, if the Legislature has not drawn a distinction between indirect causation and direct causation, it would be an error in law for the judge to introduce such a distinction in the offence.
The question of causation can be one of the most difficult legal issues, since it’s the intersection of the law and the facts of the particular case. That’s where we rely upon the common sense of the jury - not their specialised knowledge of factual issues, or of the law, but on applying the legal standard to the facts of the particular case. In your case, you and your fellow jurors evidently concluded that you were not satisfied that there was a close enough causal relationship between the accused’s actions and the injury to the victim. That’s exactly what the jury is for - to apply the law in a common-sense way.
It’s not the prosecution’s job to define the law - that’s the function of the judge.
The standard jury instruction that I’m familiar with is that the jurors are to decide the case solely on the evidence presented in court. They’re not supposed to rely on any other facts, whether obtained prior to the trial or before it. So I don’t think it would be appropriate for the jury to decide a case based on one juror’s personal knowledge.
The reason for this is that a trial is to try the facts. All of the facts that the case turns on have to be introduced in open court, and be subject to being tested by the defence. One of the most basic principles is that the accused is entitled to know all the evidence that is being brought to bear against him. He has the right to challenge all the evidence and to test it. Allowing the jury to decide the case on their personal knowledge undermines this basic principle.
To put it another way, if you were on trial, and at the conclusion of the case against you, the prosecutor handed a brown envelope to the jury and asked them to take the contents into account, without you or your lawyer seeing the contents, would you think that would be fair? As the accused, you have the right to know the entire factual basis of the case against you, and to contest it. Allowing the jury to decide the case against you on their personal knowledge that you don’t know about is just as unfair as the prosecution’s brown envelope.
So the jurors’ personal knowledge from outside the courtroom is irrelevant and disallowed?
Say the accused was saying. “I didn’t do it because at the time I was on the other side of the country in Z-ville, fixing a flat tire at the intersection of Y Street and X Road.” You were the only juror who’d grown up in Z-ville, and you were there visiting Mom around the time of the alleged crime, and you know that Y Street and X Road don’t cross? You wouldn’t be allowed to mention that?
You’re right that there’s more going on than just the search for truth. There’s also the question of fairness to the accused. One of those principles is that the prosecution only gets one bite at the apple. The prosecution cannot split its case, by calling evidence, waiting to see the defence evidence, and then calling more evidence to bolster the weaknesses in its case. This suggestion goes contrary to that basic principle, since it would allow the state to improve its case part-way through.
Seconded. Count me among the numerous posters here who don’t see why individual, personal expertise or knowledge should be inadmissable when making a decision as a juror.
Suppose I have some prior knowledge that is relevant to the case or some part of the testimony. I’m just supposed to ignore this prior knowledge of mine and rely on what the witnesses/expert testimony say? Isn’t that willful ignorance? That strikes me as some kind of perjury - not exactly lying under oath on the witness stand, but knowingly disregarding pertinent information in the courtroom.
What would happen if, during the pre-jury-selection interview, I refused to exclude personal knowledge and rely solely on testimony (I’ve never been called to serve on a jury before)?
Realistically, ain’t no way you can stop that from happening. All you can do is instruct against it and hope the jurors follow that instruction, but based on my own conversations with jurors after trial (and the comments here), most jurors, if forced to decide between rendering a verdict in a case based on their own knowledge (e.g., of a local landmark or street name, to drag this back to the OP’s hypothetical) or rendering that verdict based on what was said in court when the testimony contradicted that knowledge, they’re going to go with their personal knowledge. And I can’t fault them for that.
Then again, that did redound to my client’s benefit the one time I know it happened to me. I suppose had I come up on the losing end of that incident I might feel differently.
Yes, because it’s not evidence that has been admitted into court, by a sworn witness, and has not been tested by cross-examination. All of those requirements are fundamental protections for the accused who is on trial.
The jury could pose a question to the judge, and perhaps ask if a map had been entered in evidence on this point.
But how do the rest of the jurors know if the one juror’s recollection is right? Maybe it’s one of those street lay-outs that has variations. Maybe the accused was talking about Y Street and X Road, which do intersect, but the juror is thinking of Y Street South and X Road, which do not intersect. Or maybe the accused meant to say Y Street South, but in the stress of the moment, mispoke, and no-one noticed it because it didn’t seem important.
Before the jury can decide based on the juror’s recollection, his information has to be led in evidence in open court, with the accused and the Crown both having the right to challenge it by cross-examination, or by leading evidence to support their position.
That juror is not on oath. He’s not been tested by cross-examination. His recollection of the street layout is not public.
How is it fair to the accused to have his guilt or innocence decided by unsworn, untested, secret evidence?
If you were on trial, would you want your case decided by secret evidence that you didn’t even know about, let alone have a chance to rebut?
But it’s not a case of knowingly disregarding pertinent information in the courtroom - that juror’s recollection has never been introduced in the courtroom, only in the juryroom, in secret.
That’s a crucial distinction - the accused has the right to know all the evidence that is being considered by the jury when they decide if the accused is guilty or not guilty. The accused also has the right to challenge all evidence before the case goes to the jury. A case is not to be decided by secret information that neither the Crown nor the accused knows about. That’s one of the most basic principles of a fair trial.
If a juror has information that may be relevant to the case, and does not feel that he can ignore it, then it may be that the juror should declare that to the judge. That might result in a mistrial, and then that former juror might end up being called as a witness at the re-trial - and his recollection of the relevant issue would then be given on oath, in open court, and be subject to challenge by either the Crown or the accused.
If you read the follow ups to the OJ case, you will find a lot of the jurors that gave statements simply didn’t understand the DNA evidence and just disregarded it all.
Remember DNA was still new back then, and to be fair the DNA was presented in a very technical fashion that few lay people, especially at the time, understood.
This is one of the reasons why we have jurors. If a juror doesn’t believe an “expert” witness is credible he/she CAN disregard him totally. That is his/her right to do so.
For instance if the prosecuting attny has a expert witness who comes from the Acme University and the juror knows that that is a school that sells degrees over the Internet, he/she would simply share this knowledge in deliberations and disregard everything that person said. Then the jury decides the case on the fact minus that expert witnesses testimony
The problem comes because TV conditions Americans to believe a trial is a place where the truth comes out. A trial is a place for convicting someone. NOT for getting at the truth or finding justice.
As I’ve said before, we THINK a jury is 12 people who are impartial. That isn’t so. A jury is 12 people who have already have made their mind up AND MIGHT be persuaded to change it.
