Archive for the “Jury” Category

Is it the current economic crunch or do jurors take their duties so seriously that they develop a low tolerance for BS? My experience shows it’s the latter, but the former certainly has dramatically affected jury service of late.

When I was a court administrator in Los Angeles County, my darling wife served as a courtroom clerk assigned to limited jurisdiction civil trials in another court. The economy is always an issue, but there was nowhere near the financial squeeze in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s compared to what we find ourselves in today. Her experience was that jury panels routinely threw out civil cases when they smelled a lack of sincerity or a hint of the BS factor.

A friend and colleague from Ohio (let’s call him Milt) reports that in his service as a judge, juries would often find for the defense when they sensed that claims were petty or not worth their time or attention. To illustrate his point, Milt passed along a story from the Los Angeles Times in which jurors berated a case before it even started because they didn’t think it was worthy of their losing time off of work to hear it. The plaintiff wisely waived jury and opted for a bench trial after this demonstration.

The story has an even deeper undertone that finding qualified jurors to serve is becoming more difficult in our nation’s trial courts because of the economic hardship that service imposes, especially on the self-employed. I think the part that is missed here is that attorneys, too, are affected by the financial crunch and some may now be more willing to take petty cases to jury trial than in the past.

While I have dutifully showed up for service the few times I have been called, I also appeared with proof in hand that my calendar availability was limited to short cause matters. As fortune would have it, I was never seated, although I did go through voir dire once. The judge and counsel wisely noted that having a court management consultant on the panel would not likely work in anyone’s favor.

In my view, there are two major issues at play here … first, jurors take their service VERY seriously. Sure, they will often do everything in their power to avoid service, but once chosen, they largely pay close attention and respect their powerful role. Second, courts and lawyers should take heed that while most people will suck it up and do their civic duty, they very much resent having their time wasted. That means courts should honor a one-day-one-trial rule when summoning jury venires and attorneys should carefully choose which cases to put before a jury.

So I am not chalking up the latest jury news to good jurors gone bad … I just think current economic conditions should cause all of us to re-examine our priorities and the effectiveness of our jury management.

Photo credit = Twelve Angry Men

Our good friends at the National Center for State Courts’ Jur-E Bulletin covered the new online jury system for the US District Courts. 52 districts out of 94 have the system up and running with an expected 81 to fire it up by the end of the year. All I can say is WHOOPPEE !!!

The eJuror Program is appended to the courts’ Jury Management System and allows jurors to respond to summons, answer qualifying questionnaires, update personal information, check when they are supposed to appear, request an excuse or deferment and select alternative service dates online. Wow !!

The pilot courts reported that 33% of the test jurors chose to use the system and the Administrative Office plans to track the data over the rollout period to see if the number increases. The Travis County (TX) District Clerk’s I-Jury program showed a disproportionately high number of citizens used their online services compared to demographics that indicated the elderly, the poor and Hispanics would likely not use the Internet. The Clerk’s Office anecdotal evidence showed the previous manual system requiring an initial personal appearance for qualification and subsequent appearance for the actual service was so unpopular that traditional technology have-nots found alternative ways to access a computer just to avoid the hassle.

I’m particularly pleased with the development because this means the feds have raised the bar for state trial courts by offering online jury services as a baseline E-court delivery application. It will be a lot harder now to argue that virtual jury services are too hard or not worth the effort.

Coincidentally, I have been called for jury duty at my local court and only offered in-person, phone or fax as methods of managing my service. I would MUCH prefer to surf my way through qualification, postponement and service confirmation. I plan to bring this development to their attention.

Photo credit = Norman Rockwell’s The Holdout at Global Gallery

The National Center for State Courts’ ever informative and entertaining Jur-E Bulletin brings us jury related news this week that is also related to the swine flu. How you ask?

Philladelphia’s KWY news radio reports that a young man serving as a juror in the early stages of a medical malpractice trial (of all things) complained of swine-flu-like symptoms resulting in the declaration of a mistrial in order to safeguard the health of those who may have been exposed to the fellow. The problem? He was faking it to get out of jury service! YIKES!!!

In a wise ruling, the judge in the case ordered the miscreant to sit in a trial court for three days to observe the justice system and hopefully to see how juries operate.

I will refrain from editorial comment on the moral lessons from this soap opera, but suffice it to say that if you can’t spot at least five of them you aren’t paying very close attention.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, let me say that I am thankful to live in this great country and to have the honor to work in our system of justice. I wish you and your family a holiday in which you enjoy the many small blessings of life.

Photo credit = Jay Adkins blog

The diminishing number of trials by jury in civil cases has become an accepted phenomenon. This week’s edition of the National Center for State Courts’ Jur-E Bulletin carried a story from the Richmond (VA) Times Dispatch reporting that criminal jury trials are also on the wane.

The right to a trial by jury in criminal and civil cases is embedded in the fifth, sixth and seventh amendments to the US Constitution. So why would the number of jury trials shrink?

According to Robert Burns, law professor at Northwestern University School of Law, in his book entitled The Death of the American Trial …

The reasons that the trial is dying are complicated and differ depending on the context. Lawyers’ fees, judges’ procedural rules and other technical steps that must be followed on the way to court make trials more expensive. Long delays in getting to trial make settlements more appealing to plaintiffs. Fewer lawyers have the experience and skills to go to trial. Because of legal developments, judges more regularly dismiss cases in motions and in summary judgments — based solely on papers and affidavits.

The Virginia experience with shrinking criminal trials is largely attributable to local legal provisions that juries, not judges, fashion sentences upon conviction and are not bound by sentencing guidelines. The result is often harsher sentencing after a conviction by jury.

The vanishing civil trial may be just as attributable to the pervasiveness of Alternative Dispute Resolution that offers less costly and more timely case disposition options. I referred to ADR as Appropriate Dispute Resolution, because I believe many litigants view justice as being served when both sides give up something as opposed to one side winning all, and therefore prefer a mediated outcome. A little tracked statistic is the percentage of satisfied judgments after a mediated versus adjudicated outcome, which at least in small claims studies have shown to be two-to-three times higher.

There is something to say about a citizen’s right to his or her “day in court,” including the catharsis of telling one’s story. The harsh reality is that jury trials are expensive and in an overwhelming number of instances, unnecessary.

With some exceptions, nationwide we try approximately 2% of cases filed in our trial courts. This number may be on the wane, but even 10 or 15 years ago the number was not more than 3%. So no matter how you cut it, we’re dealing with a substantial minority of the total caseload.

That’s my verdict !!

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

Today’s edition of the Jur-E Bulletin from the National Center for State Courts has a great compilation of sample court policies addressing cell phone usage by jurors.

We covered this topic last month with When Good Jurors Go Bad, in which jurors conduct independent research and pull other inappropriate tech-related antics despite admonitions to refrain from these activities.

The sample court policies offered run the spectrum of confiscating cell phones altogether, to allowing jurors to keep them but not use them.

Obviously the cell phone itself is not the problem, but the enhanced smart phone features most of these devices now have that enable web surfing, email and texting. Personally, I favor the policy approach of clearly stating what is acceptable and unacceptable and then holding individuals accountable for honoring the rules, as opposed to playing hall monitor and taking away the offending devices altogether. Some folks have legitimate personal and professional needs to stay in touch.

One thing is for certain … technology will advance and courts have to keep pace to ensure our core functions of accessibility, fairness, timeliness and integrity remain intact.

Cell phones are now an integral part of our lives. Banning them altogether is becoming increasingly difficult. Making sure they don’t subvert our mission is our charge.

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

We occasionally cover the antics of juries as reported by the Jur-E Bulletin published by the National Center for State Courts. Their March 20, 2009 edition featured some doozies.

TECH DREK

The first in our good-juries-go-bad stories is about jurors Googling in the federal courts. Despite admonitions not to conduct individual research, nine (count ‘em, nine) of the dozen jurors were found to have Googled their way into the penalty box. The cost? An eight week criminal drug trial down the drain after the granting of a motion for mistrial.

The news reports of this incident coined the phrase Google mistrial and cited several other tech-related jury mishaps as indicative of the trend including an Arkansas juror using Twitter to blab about deliberations and a federal court juror using Facebook to chronicle his experiences in a political corruption trial.

BAD HAIR DAY

A Spokane, WA juror got clipped when he dissed a prosecutor’s hair style at a social gathering while he was still hearing evidence in a murder trial. The trial continued while the coiffure-critical juror’s service was cut short.

HANNIBAL LECTURE

A New Jersey law professor thought he was doing jurors a favor when he decided to educate them on legal concepts while serving as foreman on a grocery store slip-and-fall case. The court of appeals disagreed and ordered a new trial saying the legal lecture influenced the verdict.

The always educational Jur-E Bulletin is only one of several terrific e-news publications offered by the National Center for State Courts.

Photo credit = Wikipedia

Photo credit = FreeFoto.com