Not always true. When I was on a jury, we were allowed to submit questions to witnesses… well we submitted them to the judge, who reviewed them with the lawyers, then the judge asked the questions and both prosecution and defense were allowed to ask any follow up questions.
In this case, I had specific computer knowledge and was able to basically get a witness to introduce some points I was amazed neither side had brought up.
In fact, this is a question with fifty different answers – more if you count the federal circuits. In some states, jurors are not permitted to take handwritten notes, much less write questions for submission to a witness. Some states and at least one federal circuit permit jurors to submit written questions for witnesses in civil trials. Some give judges the discretion to allow the practice in criminal trials as well.
My one jury experiece: the state was making an offer to buy a piece of land. The state provided an expert witness to tell us what they thought was a fair price. The other side didn’t show up (hence presented no evidence.) The judge told us that we must now decide that was the price of the land. He said that, if the other side had presented alternate evidence, we could have accepted either price or any price in between, but since they didn’t, we must accept the evidence presented. One juror raised his hand to ask why the other side didn’t show up (e.g., a sick old person who was in hospital?). The judge said, OK, you’re off the jury, and they brought in another juror. So we shrugged our shoulders and agreed with the evidence.
Thus, there’s a limit to what jurors can ask. We weren’t allowed deliberation time, either, although we all felt extremely dissatisfied at not knowing the reason for the other side not showing up. (If the reason was that they were OK with the price, that was one thing. If the reason was the peron didn’t even know this was going on… )
C K Dexter Haven, that case was a textbook example of a legal principle which comes from Roman law if no further: when someone can’t be present to defend his side, he’s considered to be conceding it. Why he wasn’t there is irrelevant. And with the existence of lawyers, even something like “plaintiff got run over by a truck” isn’t an excuse to not appear: their lawyer should appear and, if appropriate, ask for a delay.
Nava, that assumes that the plaintiff can afford a lawyer for a civil case. I don’t think it’s impossible (or even unlikely) that the other party in that case had a very good reason for failing to appear. I’m pretty sure it’s even possible that the party who did appear filed motions changing the venue or date of the hearing in order to confuse or cause unnecessary expense to the other party (who may have been travelling from out of state, for example). If I’d been on that jury, I think I’d have told the judge I couldn’t serve after the first juror was let go. I understand the legal principles involved, but I don’t think I could participate in good conscience in a case like that, where I knew I wasn’t hearing both sides and wasn’t being given all the pertinent information, and was being coerced into rendering a certain decision. If the court wants (or is required) to render that decision as a matter of law, fine, but I couldn’t honestly give my imprimatur as a citizen that the facts were as I was being told.
So, did the jury have time to deliberate, or were they expected to rubber-stamp the one side’s version? I would imagine that a jury could say to themselves “the expert looks shifty, i don’t believe him” and raise the price 20% and the judge would have no grounds to dispute that… although the one side might appeal. After all, the whole point of a jury is “do you believe the witness(es) presented”? If the judge simply dismissed a juror for asking instead of explaining the law, sounds like he was in on the railroad.
Yeah but that’s BS in it’s own way. Let’s say a crime happened and blah blah blah the prosecuter’s math is faulty in a subtle way that the defense didn’t pick up on. Am I as a juror with an BA and MS in math really not to say to my fellow jurors that the math the prosecution is hinging their case on doesn’t work? Or if Martini Enfield is sitting on the jury dopefest and he points out an error in the prosecution’s description of a rifle, he is supposed to ignore that?
ETA: I’m not necessarily saying the juror should expouse their knowledge a la Henry Fonda, but our specialized knowledge certainly should influence how we vote.
If it involves knowledge that was not presented in open court, then yes, it must be ignored. Otherwise, the case is being decided on secret information that the parties do not know about, which is a breach of basic principle of a fair trial.
The jury’s job is to decide the case that is presented to them. Why the one side did not appear is not relevant to the case. The judge in this case apparently concluded that the juror’s questioning meant that he was not going to confine his decision to the facts of the case, and therefore should not sit on the jury. That’s not a sign of corruption on the judge’s part.
Hey, I was just explaining it. My own legal tradition doesn’t have that principle; the divergences between Roman and Foral Law are a constant headache for out-of-region lawyers practicing here and for local lawyers who get an out-of-region judge. Just last year there was an enormous scandal when a local judge agreed that handing back a mortgaged flat cancelled the mortgage: “but that goes against every other judicial decisiooooon!” “but it goes against [national law which does not apply here]!” I tried to explain to a non-local lawyer that in Navarra mortgages are specifically set like that, by local law, but he didn’t believe me until I showed him my mortgage contract and gave him the reference of the law.
“Questioning”, or “question”? A jury relies on the judge to explain the finer points of law. If the juror started arguing with the judge, then dismissal was warranted. Simply asking an obvious layman’s question and being turfed for it does not sound like fair and impartial; it sounds more like “I’m going to fire the guy who sounds like he won’t go along with what I say” which defeats the purpose of having a jury and also intimidates the remaining jurors. Motives are anyone’s guess. I guess it depends on the whole context of the conversation.
Yeah, but I’d rather have a jury full of geniuses with multiple degrees than a jury full of illiterate, dumb-as-a-rock knuckle-draggers, if I was on trial. Wouldn’t you? 
Would you want your case decided based on secret evidence that you don’t know about and haven’t had a chance to test?
You’re confusing intelligence with personal knowledge of the jurors. I’d want a jury of intelligent people; I wouldn’t want a jury that decides my case on allegations that I don’t know about and haven’t had a chance to challenge.
A case is to be determined based on the evidence presented by the two parties in open court, with both parties being able to challenge the other party’s evidence.
It’s not to be decided based on secret evidence unknown to either party. Nor is it to be decided on evidence that neither party has had a chance to challenge. Why assume that the juror is right and the witness was wrong? The juror’s assertions have not been tested in open court by either party; the witness’s assertions have been tested in that way.
How are photos of the perp’s shirt, vs. defendant’s shirt, “secret evidence”? It’s right there, in the exhibits presented in open court. The fact that people who don’t care as much about clothes (men!) did not pick up on the fact that they were rather obviously two different shirts simply means that it’s a good thing 12 varied people not 1 are looking at the evidence.
If the prosecution had this data, and did not present evidence that the person could have changed shirts, well that’s a detail they did not present. If the jury convicted on “we think he changed shirts” when nobody in court made any such suggestion, then that would be concerning. If they decide on evidence presented, even if the details were not pointed out to them, that’s their job.
At what point does general life experience come into play? If a jury is told by an “expert” paid for by the one side “This property is worth $100,000” and several of them think “Hey, I paid a lot more than that for my house, it’s smaller and and a worse location”, should their common sense override the one-sided testimony? I thought the one thing the jurors DO bring to court is their common sense.
Somewhere, valuation stops being expert territory and starts being common sense. I can tell the difference between a house worth $50,000 and $250,000 without expert testimony (or else he would have to really explain his logic!), but I would have to rely on an expert to tell me the difference between, say, $240,000 and $260,000.
Hi, md2000, I wasn’t talking about the OP; I was responding to Saint Cad (Post 27) and his suggestion that jurors should be able to rely on personal knowledge that was not led in court, and also to al27052 (post 32). Sorry if that wasn’t clear - the thread is moving quickly.
With respect to the OP, I agree - if the evidence was led in court, tested by both parties, and both parties had a chance to comment on the evidence, then it’s up to the jury to assess that evidence. If they found a significant discrepancy between two pieces of evidence and decided the case on that discrepancy, that is exactly the role of the jury.
Depends on whether I’m guilty. 
Thanks.
What about common sense. If you were in a one-sided case where IYHO the expert was undervaluing, would you think it was the jury’s entitlement to use their common sense about their world to disagree with him?
OTOH, I guess the question is - where does your world experience stop being common sense and start being specialized personal expertise? I would suggest when less than half the jurors have such expertise or you have to explain it to them, but then, IANAL.
But that approach means that a party who doesn’t want to participate in the court process can defeat the rights of the other party. If that principle were followed, then why would any defendant ever appear in court?
The judge’s role is more than just to explain the law; the judge also has the responsibility to ensure that the trial is conducted according to the law and to ensure a fair trial. That role includes deciding questions of the relevance of evidence. The fact that the defendant hasn’t shown up to defend the case is not a relevant issue for the facts that the jury is being asked to find, and to apply to the law in rendering their verdict. The judge must have concluded that the juror was straying too far from the role of the jury. Not sure I would have done that if I were a judge in that situation (might have tried to explain it to the jurors), but you’re right - the context is important; the juror’s tone of voice and body language are factors the judge can consider.
Yes, the jury has the option to not believe a witness, based on their common sense ( at least, in my jurisdiction - as Bricker noted upthread, the rules on this sort of issue can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). Even when there is only one witness to a particular fact, the jury is not bound to accept that witness’s testimony. For instance, if a witness testified that a late model Honda that had been destroyed in an accident cost a million dollars, the jury can say, “we don’t believe you”. It gets tricky in the case CK Dex mentioned, where there is no evidence from the other side.