This paper sets out to examine the role of the jury in the United States Criminal Justice system and, more specifically, just how safe are the verdicts that the jury reaches in criminal trials. According to Judge Rebecca Knight (2007), a defendant’s right to a trial by jury was written into the 1776 Constitution and ratified in its later updates. Knight quoted the original Constitution as stating “the ancient mode of trial by jury is one of the best securities of the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.” As a basic principle, it does seem logical to assume that a verdict reached by a group of (usually) 12 citizens is more likely to be fair than might be the case if (say) a single judge made that crucial decision. After all, juries are guided by the courts in matters of law, and efforts are made to ensure that they consider only admitted evidence in reaching their verdict. Yet sometimes the wrong person is charged with the offence and/or the wrong verdict is reached; i.e. the defendant is convicted (or not), but the verdict is later found to be unsound or incorrect. This paper examines how and how often such situations arise, and whether they can be overcome in the future.
Possible Jury Problems and their Causes
Diehm (1991) in his paper: “Impeachment of Jury Verdicts: Tanner v. United States and Beyond” cites a number of causes of assembling a less than perfect jury, which can lead to problems that may ultimately affect the validity of their verdict. They include:
Untruthful answer by a juror to a question during the jury selection process;
Jurors basing their verdict on inadmissible evidence such as newspaper articles (or TV coverage), rumors, comments by others overhead in court;
Personal or other bias against a defendant or witness;
Pressure or threats by others (including other jurors);
Misunderstanding of court guidance / advice;
Agreeing with other jurors in a spirit of compromise.
In addition to the above, other causes of an unsatisfactory jury may include such basic problems as one or more jurors being intellectually ill-equipped to deal with the issues involved. Ideally, such situations should be detected during the jury selection process, but could be overlooked due to inadequate questioning of the potential jurors. Also, there can be situations where the accused appears to one or more jurors to be the only obvious suspect, which seems to make it what’s often referred to as “an open-and-shut case”. As a consequence, there is a temptation to take the easier option; i.e. to consider only if the accused committed the crime or not, instead of considering the possibility of a different perpetrator, as yet unidentified. If any of the above problems is detected during a trial but prior to a verdict, it is usually possible to resolve it, for example, by the court excusing a particular juror. However, as Diehm notes, “if the problem is first detected after the verdict is rendered, the damage is not easily undone.”
Bad Verdicts – How Many?
Across the nation many criminal cases are brought to trial annually. For example, an Overview of Federal Criminal Cases Fiscal Year 2009 reported that “The United States Sentencing Commission received information on 81,549 new federal criminal cases in which the offender was sentenced in fiscal year 2009.” But how many cases result in a “bad” verdict?
In a ScienceDaily article “New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong” (June 28, 2007), a study by Northwestern University is cited, which found that in a sampling of 271 cases taken from four areas, the wrong jury verdict was reached in at least one in every eight cases. Bruce Spencer, the author of that study, is convinced that more careful studies might give even better insight into the accuracy (or otherwise) of the jury verdicts. His study compared the jury verdict in each case with the notes made by the presiding judge (which included the judge’s learned opinion of the correct and proper verdict). Based on certain statistical assumptions, Spencer concluded that verdict accuracy averaged not more than 87 percent. From that result, Spencer asks the question: “As a society can we be satisfied if 10 percent of convictions are incorrect?” Although some of those verdicts resulted in acquittals, Spencer also asks: “Can we be satisfied knowing that innocent people go to jail for many years for wrongful convictions?”
Specific Verdict Example
A verdict must stand unless an appeal to re-visit the case is granted by the courts, usually on the grounds of new evidence (such as DNA) that may come to light after the original verdict was reached and sentence passed (if the defendant was found guilty). However, there have been verdicts in recent times that have received much publicity from the media, questioning the validity of the trial outcome. One such prominent case comes to mind: The O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, where the popular view seemed to be that he was found not guilty largely due to the skill of his defense lawyers in convincing the jury, in the face of incriminating evidence to the contrary.
Reversal of the Jury Verdict
As stated by a Florida Defense Attorney Andrew D. Stine, P.A., a judge can – if he wishes – overturn a jury verdict at the end of a trial, if he considers that a new trial is needed, perhaps due to some procedural or evidential error. Alternatively, if the jury found the defendant guilty, the judge can decide to rule a Not Guilty verdict and acquit the defendant. However, he cannot do the reverse; i.e. decide on a Guilty verdict if the jury has delivered a Not Guilty verdict. Nonetheless, all of these situations are rare events.
Conclusions
Although the jury system is – on the surface at least – the fairest method of determining the guilt or innocence of a defendant, it does seem that it has faults that allow mistakes to be made; mistakes that can too often set a criminal free or convict an innocent person.
The solution must be to ensure that trials procedures are tightly controlled, that jury selection procedures are scrupulously followed, and that all available evidence is collected and presented at the trial. A mistrial can be declared if it is subsequently determined that vital evidence was not presented, but that is after the event, which is stressful for all concerned and a waste of taxpayers’ monies.
References
Diehm, James W. (1991) Impeachment of Jury Verdicts: Tanner v. United States and Beyond. St. John's Law Review: Vol. 65: Iss. 2, Article 1. Retrieved from http://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/lawreview/vol65/iss2/1
Knight, Rebecca, B. (May 2007). District Court Judge 28th Judicial District. The Right to a Jury Trial in Civil Actions in North Carolina. Retrieved from http://www.sog.unc.edu/sites/www.sog.unc.edu/files/07%20Knight%20Right_
to_Jury_Trial.pdf
New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong. (June 28, 2007). ScienceDaily. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070628161330.htm
Overview of Federal Criminal Cases Fiscal Year 2009. The United States Sentencing Commission. Retrieved from http://www.ussc.gov/Research/Research
_Publications/2010/20101230_FY09_Overview_Federal_Criminal_Cases.pdf
Stine, Andrew, D. (July, 2011). Can a Judge Overturn a Jury Verdict? Retrieved from http://www.andrewdstine.com/blog-78/post-361-can-a-judge-overturn-a-jury-verdict.aspx
