That’s a thing, but does not apply to a prosecutor who pulls his punches. You have to violate a court order or show (extreme) disrespect to the judge.
There really isn’t a remedy for the OP scenario. Other than political pressure.
But how would that happen? If the prosecution doesn’t want him found guilty, they won’t present the video, and you’re not supposed to use external information? This is why I keep saying they need someone whose job is to be only about the facts. And, yes, why jurors should be able to ask questions.
I was on a trial jury about ten years ago, and based on what I was told, in this hypothetical, I’d ask the bailiff if I could speak directly to the judge.
This. Follow the judge’s instructions, vote not guilty.
As a juror, that was my understanding of it. It was up to us to determine whether we believed the evidence presented was factual or not. This goes both ways. If evidence is presented poorly, but we believe it, then if it proves the prosecution’s case beyond a reasonable doubt (whether the prosecutor is intentionally doing a bad job) then we are required to find the defendant guilty. And conversely, even if the evidence is presented in a good manner, if we don’t believe that it proves the prosecutor’s case, we have to find the defendant not guilty.
Well, I was assuming in this hypothetical that the video presented was the reason that we knew the prosecution was intentionally whiffing it.
I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding of why jurors aren’t allowed to ask questions has to do with jury impartiality. The prosecution and the defense investigate the crime and present evidence. The jury is supposed to decide impartially based on that evidence. If the jurors can ask questions, then they become investigators and are no longer impartially judging the evidence. Someone with more legal training than me (I’ve had the experience of serving on one jury, that’s it) can probably explain this better.
We also weren’t allowed to take notes, as that would make the better note takers have more influence over those who didn’t take good notes, and jurors are all supposed to be even.
I found both the inability to ask questions and the inability to take notes to be a bit odd at the time, but once I found out the reasons behind it I had to admit that it made sense.
A Pennsylvania judge recently ordered prosecutors to bring charges against an engineer involved in a train crash. The prosecutors did not want to file charges and the statute of limitations was about to expire.
Judge Orders Prosecutors to Charge Amtrak Engineer in Crash
I do not understand quite how this works, but it appears that Pennsylvania law allows the family of the victim to file a “private criminal complaint” and the judge can order the prosecutor to bring charges.
I wonder if a prosecutor who was ordered to bring charges would face any consequences if they tried to either deliberately blow the case or did not put full effort into prosecuting the case.
I was a juror in a civil case a few years ago. We were allowed to write down questions on a piece of paper and give the paper to the bailiff at the end of a witness’s testimony. The judge and the lawyer took the questions into the back room and then came back and the judge read some of the questions to the witness. After all the jurors’ questions were answered, the lawyers were allowed to question the witness again.
This was actually quite nice. The previous trial where I served as a juror did not permit jurors to ask questions. It was so frustrating because there were a lot of obvious questions that nobody asked that could have made our deliberations so much easier and probably fairer.
On the issue of jurors asking questions, in my experience on English juries in criminal cases, judges have to allow it - as a note passed to them via the usher - but seem to generally discourage it.
(In one instance, the case involved an incident on a football field during play. While the referee was on the stand, one of the jurors wanted to know what was the score at the time of the incident. While this seemed to flummox the judge and the lawyers - and the ref couldn’t remember when the question was put to him - we as a jury all agreed that this was just the obvious, common sense bit of context that was worth us asking about. There was then the fact that, once we were sent off to reach a verdict, one of the other jurors realised that it was trivial to work out from the ref’s formal match report, which had been given to us to consult as necessary. And which I believe the ref had had in front of him while on the stand. In the event, the knowledge didn’t sway the deliberations.)
Was the score relevant to determining the outcome or wasn’t it? If not, I should think it a waste of the court’s time to address the question.
I’ve seen analyses on TV that argue the prosecutors deliberately tanked the George Zimmerman trial for murdering Trayvon Martin. Yet the jurors didn’t note or care.
I think that’s the case in general. The jurors just aren’t into caring if the prosecution (or defense for that matter) isn’t doing their best job.
I don’t know if the failure of the prosecutors was deliberate or due to incompetence. It doesn’t matter much though, it’s not the job of jurors to care evaluate the prosecution’s ability in general, only in how well they present their case to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. When they leave the jury box they can go home and vote for better government, in the trial they have to look at the cases provided by the prosecution and defense and make their decision based on what they’ve seen and heard in court as if there was nothing more to the matter.
As I indicated, in retrospect, we as a jury - having trivially independently figured it out for ourselves - ultimately though it wasn’t relevant. Largely because it was a draw at the time. Which is no doubt what all the professionals had concluded in advance. But it was still an obvious “man-in-the-street” question about the situation. And given that the audience is a jury that consists of …
Approach the press? I’m assuming that would be legal . . .
Jurors are typically free to contact the press after returning a verdict, but definitely prohibited from doing so before then.
As to the OP, a juror could ask to talk to the judge during trial if convinced the prosecution was tanking its case, but most judges would refuse the request. Those few who permitted it would have to allow lawyers for both sides to be present for the meeting. It would not surprise me to see an inquisitive/critical juror like that excused from further service on that case.
I’m a magistrate who typically does bench trials but I’ve had a few jury trials over the years. I permit jurors to submit written questions at the close of the lawyers’ direct and cross examination of each witness. I then review the submitted questions (if any) with the lawyers at sidebar. Having instructed the jurors that some questions may be rephrased or not asked at all where necessary to avoid a violation of the rules of evidence or to avoid undue prejudice to one side or the other, I ask aloud any appropriate questions of the witness. Jurors have told me afterwards that they really appreciate having this option, for the reasons Alley Dweller mentioned.
I’m guessing he had very little to say about it.
I think the case in general is suggested by that example, but in a different way. A legal analyst on TV seeking to have something interesting and different to say, and build a personal audience to help their career on TV (which is what they are there for, talking heads on TV of any legal/political persuasion) might have made a halfway plausible case the prosecution was ‘throwing’ the Zimmerman case. But it was very far from obvious. Not to get sidetracked debating that case, but IMO that very well could have been the best the prosecution could do under the rules, or they at least felt they were doing their best*.
That’s my main problem with OP scenario, imagining a case where such a conclusion is really apparent to any objective person, but the judge also doesn’t do anything, rather than being the opinion of some idiosyncratic and generally highly opinionated type of juror.
As a juror I would never (consciously) vote ‘guilty’ based on anything other than what was actually presented. The evaluation of the prosecution’s case as ‘deliberately throwing’ seems to me fraught with the possibility of bringing in some outside facts or general prejudice (‘defendants in cases like this are guilty’) to reach that conclusion in the first place. If whatever the prosecution does present, and whatever they rebut of the defense’s case, removes reasonable doubt from my mind that the person is guilty then I vote ‘guilty’, otherwise ‘not guilty’.
*eg how about if, subconsciously, a prosecutor’s doubt that a case was really being brought on legal grounds, as opposed to satisfying political activist elements of the public, made them 90% as effective as they would have been on a case they really believed in, even though they’d decided consciously to do their best on the dubious case?