I hate it when I'm right about things like this.

[elfs]

Damn, I hate it when I'm right. August 10th, 2006: Jail guard allegedly accepted offer of sex. August 31st, 2006: Jurors deadlock in jail sex trial. That's what all the negotiating over drugs and addiction was about: they were dealing with knowledge about each other's tactics in the previous trial!

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Why would that get them into jail? That's an extremely weird thing to hear from a USain point of view: after a trial, the jurors go back to being private and sovereign citizens with the right to speak about whatever they saw and heard.

Attempts by the judicial system to rein in a jury either during or after the procedure have been so destructive to the efficacy of the process that we accept the need to permit our citizens their sovereignty even at the risk of tainting future proceedings. That's why we have such a time-consuming jury selection process; we assume that a large number of jurors (who, by the way, are selected primarily from voting rolls, so they're in that half of the US population that is politically motivated enough to at least vote) are sufficiently well-informed that they have to be excluded from cases based on prior knowledge.

[lovingboth]

It's based on an old bit of Common Law here, which I'm surprised didn't make it across the Atlantic, making any evidence from jury deliberations inadmissible.

When someone went to the European Court complaining it denied him the right to a fair trial (because he couldn't be sure he was convicted for the 'right' reasons, from memory) they told him to get lost: "The rule governing the secrecy of juror deliberations is a crucial and legitimate feature of English trial law which reinforces the jury's role as the ultimate arbiter of fact and guarantees open and frank deliberations among the jurors."

It was most recently reinforced by section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 which makes it an offence to "obtain, disclose or solicit any particulars of statements made, opinions expressed, arguments advanced or votes cast by members of a jury in the course of their deliberations in any legal proceedings."

Allegations of impropriety are supposed to be made to the judge - the classic case involved half a jury using an Ouija Board to determine their verdict (in 1995!) - who can order a retrial. But there are only a handful of such cases, and the basic idea has support of the police, lawyers on both sides, human rights organisations, judges and the media here.

If you were a famous defendant, would you want the jury to decide your fate, in part, based on whether they thought they could get more for their story if you were convicted or acquitted?

If you'd been on the jury, would you want everyone (including the state, the defendant and any victims) to know how you voted and what you said?

We have reporting restrictions limiting what can be published prior to (and during) a trial. Plus a much more basic jury selection process - it's also based on the electoral roll, but everyone should be on that, and without the endless 'can I get the jury I want' challenges.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

If you were a famous defendant, would you want the jury to decide your fate, in part, based on whether they thought they could get more for their story if you were convicted or acquitted?

Instead, apparently, famous or not, you get your fate determined by a Ouija Board rather than the rule of law? Frankly, I'll take the story possibility for $200, Robert. ;)

If you'd been on the jury, would you want everyone (including the state, the defendant and any victims) to know how you voted and what you said?

Because no one, including the state (save for that department that is in charge of the jury pool), the defendant, and any victims, knows the names of the members of the jury, no one does. Unless the juror chooses to open his/her mouth afterwards and tell everyone (in which case it was his/her choice), each juror is Juror #N. So the most another juror could say was that "Juror #43 said such and such." Yeah, I don't think Juror #43 is listed in the White Pages.