A brief link to a NYTimes article on the acquisition of extra-trial knowledge by jurors. The “situated” nature of jurors with respect to prior knowledge is something I’ve been thinking about lately. As Jeffrey Abramson and, more recently, Sharon Krause have argued, ignorance does not entail impartiality—so what sort of knowledge do we want to forbid jurors to possess? Following up on yesterday’s post, it’s worth noting that medieval jurors were assumed to have access to public and personal or private knowledge about the circumstances of the trial—and even the vicinage requirement in the United States suggests that there’s something attractive about people having local knowledge in the sense of the nature of a particular community, either in terms of its geography or perhaps even its norms. The capacity to exclude particular “prejudicial” information may be attractive, but the use of Google maps to get an accurate sense of the length of a car ride might be utterly benign and even helpful. Anyway, have a look.
{ 3 comments }
An additional wrinkle: our whole adversarial system relies on competent attorneys (and incompetence is still a valid basis of appeal). Yet, the economics of the law profession often don’t give us the most skilled lawyers in public defense or prosecution (and their workloads are insanely high).
From personal experience, I have been on a jury when the information presented by defense, prosecution, and/or witnesses was misleading, unless one had access to more information to figure out what actually happened. In my case, a witness claimed to have been on a particular corner of an intersection on an overhead map the defense provided, when it was clear to me that they were on a different corner, because I know that intersection. It didn’t materially affect the outcome of the trial, but it definitely annoyed me for the 20 minutes of wasted time in trial as they tried to sort out the question, when I could have cleared up the mystery in 10 seconds, if I had been allowed to speak.
It’s a nasty question, though.
If a juror provides evidence to other jurors, unbeknownst to the judge and the atorneys, this may serve as a silent witness not under oath and not subject to cross examination. The movie with Cher as a defense attorney and Dennis Quaid as a juror was good drama but played fast and loose with the rules. A juror should not disregard what he knows but becoming a witness, silent or open, presents issues of whether or not the trial was fair. Keep in mind that a trial is not truly a search for the truth. Rather, the evidence presented is what limits the decision making. Who knows what the truth really is?
Interesting too since most formal models of jury decision making assume that jurors have independently drawn private information about the guilt or innocence of the defendant.
Comments on this entry are closed.