Based on a current high-profile trial being decided by a jury, I’m curious about the jury foreperson in particular.
For those of you who’ve served on a jury, how did you decide on the foreperson? What role did they play during deliberation? Have you ever been the foreperson?
Whether or not you’ve served on a jury, what are your expectations of the role?
Typically the foreperson is the person that seeks out that role among the jurors. Simply most people wouldn’t want that role, so anyone that says “I’ll do it”, the remaining jurors are happy to let them take the lead.
The foreperson is the organizer, leads the discussion about the verdict, keeps track of the issues facing the jury, and in many cases also influences the other jury members based upon their own opinions. They typically have a leadership position within their field of work. They actually like the prospect of being on the jury, feel it’s part of their role as a citizen.
I was 19 years old and was selected for a jury. A criminal case.
We walked into the jury room and someone said “Who should be the foreman?”
Someone else said “How about we pick the tallest person?” Everybody looked at me. (I was about 6-2, 6-3.) I said, “Um, Mr. Hennessey, I think you’re taller than I am.” He shook his head no. “You’re the foreman, kid,” somebody else said.
So we all sat down at the table and everybody looked at me. I improvised. What else could I do? I suggested that we do a preliminary ballot, writing Guilty if we were ready to convict on all counts and Not Guilty if we had any doubts and wanted further discussion. I unfolded the papers and read them out one at a time: 12 Guilties. I asked if anybody wanted to discuss anything further about the case, if anyone had any doubts at all. No one did. I alerted the bailiff, and except for handing the paperwork to the judge that was the end of my role.
I still thinking choosing the tallest person in the room might not have been the best way to decide something like this…
Yep. I was the presiding juror (as they call it here) on both of my juries. It’s no different than running a meeting at work. I was the one who gave questions to the bailiff and filled out the verdict forms. In my first trial the judge read the verdict. In the second one, I did.
I’ve served on two juries, one civil and one criminal. We asked for volunteers to be foreperson. There were none. I don’t remember how we finally decided, but I think it was mostly whoever was most impatient to get started. Something like, “can’t we start deliberating”, “once we have a foreperson”, “why don’t you be foreperson”, “no”, “fine, I’ll do it”.
All the jury foreperson did was push the buzzer for the court official and pass any notes to them. And fill out the final form.
The discussions were free-for-alls. The foreperson didn’t direct the discussion. It was kind of fun, as we were equals in the sense that we each ultimately had a veto. Each jury developed its own way to handle who was talking.
That was my experience. The foreone of a jury does the official duties, but unless the other jurors decide to lean on them for presiding duties, it tends to be a pretty round-robin discussion with various jurors speaking in and out of turn. Kind of like democracy in action. Not all that formal, really, because it is just us doing justice.
The one time I was the foreperson, the bailiff told us to work it out amongst ourselves and left. Suddenly everyone needed to gaze at the lint on their shirt.
OK, says I. Let’s make this fair and started to look for coffee stirrers or something to draw straws. Someone spoke up saying that since I chose a fair method, I should be the forman. 
Everyone agreed.
Whatever, fine.
In my case not a lot to do. The idiot bailiff though placed the evidence on the table. A rifle that was pointed at one of us. That is a hard no right there. EVERY gun needs to be treated as loaded and is NOT to be pointed at something you don’t intend to shoot.
I gently picked it up, asked if anyone wanted to look at it. No one did. So I securely leaned it in a corner.
During the trial the cop that testified picked up the weapon and was painting the entire room with it. I felt like ducking.
Other than that, I called for votes, counted them and reported the findings.
I quickly saw that nobody was going to volunteer, and I didn’t want to sit there all day, so I volunteered and guided deliberations to a verdict as fast as I could.
As a long-running bonus, this has gotten me excused during voir dire in every other jury duty I’ve had. It goes like:
Every single time (if it gets that far).
It’s been awhile for me, about 7-10 years. A child molestation case, unfortunately.
I was the foreman. I saw my job was to tamp down anyone who was overly talkative and highly opinionated, and to check in with and draw out the quiet people. Fortunately nobody wanted to dominate the discussions. There were some strong-minded people and that’s fine. If they talked for a long time I’d encourage them to wrap it up and move to the next person.
The accused was guilty. It was clear to me from the case and the evidence. On the jury maybe 3 people were not sure of his guilt so we addressed their concerns and questions and built consensus so that those 3 eventually embraced their guilty decision.
So, it’s a little like herding cats. It helps to keep people in scope and focused, and to cut off any tangential stories. Any meeting where the moderator / leaders allow tangential stories to run wild is annoying to me. I mean, there can be some value in it, but it’s got to be clipped short and ended after a little bit of time.
It was an interesting experience.
For what it’s worth, in New York, apparently the first juror selected is automatically the foreman, rather than it being decided by the jurors. Though of course the jurors can still choose to let their discussion be led and organized by someone else. In almost every jurisdiction, the jury is free to choose their own procedures.
In my case the other people selected me. Because, during the trial’s early days I started getting to know the people. It was simply learning peoples’ names and faces. I wasn’t running for the job, I was simply being friendly.
So when it came time to choose a foreman, it ended up being quick. Everyone chose me. I pushed back. Someone said Bullitt, you’ve been posturing for the job since day 1. I said no, that I was just being friendly, but it quickly ended up being me.
I was fine doing it, but I certainly wasn’t trying to be the foreman.
In my case, the first juror chosen was declared the foreperson. This was the rule of the court. No decision on the part of the jury.
Exactly how I got the job.
The judge said that I should have a secret vote first, so that people wouldn’t get influenced by others. It was a criminal trial, though a relatively trivial one. The first round was 11 to guilty, one to acquit. I let everyone give their reasons, and the hold out changed his vote without a lot of convincing. I think everyone was happy that we were out of there quickly.
Afterwards I talked to the prosecutor and the defense attorney. I heard stuff that made me think it was considered a slam dunk for conviction on both sides, so I was pretty happy about how it came out. We weren’t around for sentencing, but I doubt that the perp got much jail time if any at all.
We had a couple people that had been on juries before and one of them volunteered. They mostly just filled out the paperwork.
I’ve never been on a jury and assumed that the foreperson just sort of rose to the top, but I was obviously mistaken. From the descriptions here though, I did have a pretty good sense of what the foreperson does.
The one time I was the foreperson, the bailiff told us to work it out amongst ourselves and left. Suddenly everyone needed to gaze at the lint on their shirt.
OK, says I. Let’s make this fair and started to look for coffee stirrers or something to draw straws. Someone spoke up saying that since I chose a fair method, I should be the forman. Everyone agreed.
Whatever, fine.
In my case not a lot to do. The idiot bailiff though placed the evidence on the table. A rifle that was pointed at one of us. That is a hard no right there. EVERY gun needs to be treated as loaded and is NOT to be pointed at something you don’t intend to shoot.
I gently picked it up, asked if anyone wanted to look at it. No one did. So I securely leaned it in a corner.
Other than that, I called for votes, counted them and reported the findings.
From my single jury duty (so far), the default was that the first seated juror was designated as the foreperson, but we were free to decide on another. On the first day of the trial I had raised my hand to ask for clarification on a statement in the forensic officers testimony, then during our first jury break a few of my fellow jurors wanted me to become the foreman. I asked juror #1 if he wanted to keep being foreman, and he did, so that’s were it stayed. He did take on a meeting chairperson role for our deliberations, and communicated our one one request for additional clarification to the court bailiff assigned to us. He also read the verdict in court.
This was a second degree murder case in Ontario back in 2000.
The last time I served on a jury, when we were sent into the jury room we were told that the first thing we should to was select a foreperson. Someone asked if anyone there had ever served on a jury before, and I mentioned that this was the third time I’d been on a jury. And that’s how I got to be foreperson. Fortunately, it was a fairly simple case and we were able to reach a consensus without too much discussion.
Two trials. Trial one… I think it was a random selection, maybe by the judge. Pulled a number out of a hat kind of thing. Also, we knew who the alternates were the whole time and they were dismissed at deliberation time.
Second trial the judge chose someone, a juror who was a non-trial lawyer. We did not know the alternate and they were selected at random and dismissed at deliberation time.
If I get chosen for a third jury, I’d probably want to be foreperson and it’d very unlikely someone was more qualified than me at that point.