The Right to Disagree: Judges, Juries, and the Administration of Criminal Justice in Maryland (original) (raw)
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The declaration of a hung jury is one of the most dramatic moments in the legal process. all of the resources and efforts invested in a trial can be perceived to have been for naught when a jury expected to reach a unanimous verdict (either guilty or not guilty) fails to do so. For the defendant, a hung jury may be celebrated as a brief reprieve—there will be another trial or pressure to plea bargain from the state, but it is significant that a jury of one's peers did not find the evidence adequately convincing. For the prosecution, the hung jury is likely felt as a waste of time and money. The judge often has a more complex perspective, she may understand why the jury failed to reach a consensus but is still disappointed with the outcome of a mistrial (almost always cause for greater official scrutiny of the decisions of the judge). This essay examines when the hung jury should be understood as a mistake—that is, an outcome that reveals a breakdown in the procedures of the trial or undermines the tenets of the adversarial justice system. The hung jury is a sanctioned option within u.S. law so should not be seen as an aberration, but the mixed reactions to it suggest room for interpretation about what it reveals about the jury process and the obstacles to consensus. The hung jury is also a highly significant outcome for the judge because it results in a mistrial; to prevent such an outcome a judge may issue a version of the allen charge, a second set of instructions a judge gives to a jury that appears to be struggling to reach unanimity. The judge may address topics such as the expense of the trial, the value of the randomness of the
The Rule of Law and Jury Trials
Stance: an international undergraduate philosophy journal
In The Rule of Law in the Real World, Paul Gowder presents a new account of the rule of law based on three conditions: publicity, regularity, and generality. In this essay, I examine two closely related questions that are prompted by Gowder’s version of the rule of law. First, does the rule of law require citizens to follow the law? Second, what does Gowder’s account mean for jury nullification? I argue that the rule of law does not require citizens to follow the law, but it does prohibit jury nullification. A discussion of some moral implications and objections follow.
Twelve Angry People: The Collective Mind of the Jury
Columbia Law Review, 1984
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The Rise of Directed Verdict: Jury Power in Civil Cases Before the Federal Rules of 1938
2013
Jury practice in the state and federal courts evolved dramatically in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Around the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, important legal thinkers praised the civil jury as a bulwark against judicial tyranny. By the advent of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, many commentators regarded the civil jury as an antiquated nuisance. Diminishment of the jury and open exercise of judicial power, encouraged in the Federal Rules by procedures such as summary judgment, would not have been possible without earlier changes in jury practice. Two major changes were the rise of directed verdict procedure and the related judgment notwithstanding the verdict. These mechanisms allowed a judge to give a binding instruction to a jury, or to enter a judgment contrary to the jury's decision. This Study reveals that railroads revolutionized the law of jury control. Changes in directed verdict were part of a larger program of jury reform beginning in the mid-nineteenth century in England, the states, and the federal government. Because of growing numbers of complicated personal injury suits against railroads, and because of perceived jury bias in those cases, many judges sought to control juries more efficiently. Directed verdicts began to replace new trials. Opposition arose, but the overall trend was toward greater judicial control of juries. The striking changes in jury practice described in this Article suggest difficulties in maintaining a consistent jury trial right by constitutional requirement.
Arguments: Jury lawfinding and constitutional review in 1840s New Hampshire
Ian Ward and Gary Watt (eds), A Cultural History of Law, vol 5: A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Reform, 2019
The Age of Reform 1820-1920 witnessed a significant move from popular constitutionalism, rooted in traditions of participatory democracy, to a much more exclusive, judge-centric, view of the law (Kramer 2004). This chapter explores this general development through detailed consideration of the particular case of Pierce v State (1843) 13 NH 536. The importance of the Pierce case, which concerned a conflict between the respective powers of judge and jury, has long been acknowledged. In the Supreme Court's 1895 rejection of jury lawfinding, it was one of the most influential cases cited by Harlan J; and in more recent academic literature its final appellate judgments have been described as "two of the most well-reasoned discussions opposing the jury's right to judge the law" (Conrad 1998: 69). But despite its foundational status within the judicial rejection of the jury lawfinding argument, little is known about the way the judgments were formed. The present chapter relies on contemporary newspaper reports and pamphlets to fills this gap in the cultural history of the case. In so doing, we will shed light on the popular cultural reception of constitutional developments in the Age of Reform. The trial jury in America started the nineteenth century as an essential republican institution, with Thomas Jefferson having declared in 1789 that the jury was "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution" (Jefferson 1853: 71). As the century continued, the judiciary increasingly came to view itself as a better, more legitimate constitutional anchor; and by 1895 the US Supreme Court, finally willing to sanction this significant reform of judge-jury relations, held that jurors should not be alerted to their power to find the law independently of the bench (Sparf 1895; Abramson 1994: 67-95). As several legal historians have shown, this transformation was (unsurprisingly) controversial, with some mid-century judges holding to the jury-centric view of the law, while others held to the now more familiar judge-centric vision (Alschuler and Deiss 1994: 902-921). Academic commentators exploring the shift to a judge-centric view of adjudication have often suggested that the most important transformation concerned the 2 development of the American legal profession and, with it, American legal science. This view contrasts those "who were hostile to lawyers and to legal doctrine" to those "who understood that the intrinsic complexity of human affairs begets unavoidable complexity in legal rules and procedures. With legal complexity comes legal professionalism" (Langbein 1993: 566). Pierce v State offers an early example of an American judge pursuing the judge-centric vision of jury trial, in which the jury is expected to simply following the legal directions coming from the Bench. This case also allows us to see the development of a single set of arguments in various settings, for here we have a trial, a public debate, and then an appeal, all three of which centred around a dispute between the same two sets of people: the State's Chief Justice, and counsel for the defence. Drawing on pamphlets held at the Library of Congress, this chapter explores the three stages of the argument culminating in the appellate decision in Pierce, and finds that the sophistication of the Chief Justice's appellate judgment is vastly different to his more direct, and far less doctrinal, arguments in the debate's first two phases. Not only had the newspaper reports and pamphlets helped publicise the debate, but by giving the protagonists the opportunity to publicly air their views multiple times they had also helped to shape it. This is ironic, given that the Chief Justice's argument was largely based around a rejection of the claim that public debate might form a legitimate part of legal adjudication. The media theorist James Carey once suggested there were two basic ways of conceptualising communication: that it is either about the "transmission" of information or the "ritual" enactment of a shared view of the world (Carey 1989). Under a "transmission" view of communication, Carey argued, newspapers are simply concerned with the spread of knowledge, and analysing them means questioning "the[ir] effects … on audiences: news as enlightening or obscuring reality, as changing or hardening attitudes, as breeding credibility or doubt" (Carey 1989: 20). Understood as ritual, on the other hand, the act of reading a newspaper becomes "a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is confirmed" (Carey 1989: 20). The public debate between the Pierces' trial and their unsuccessful appeal included a meeting of local people, several letters in the
Negotiating Justice: The C riminal Trial Jury in a
1996
The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together.-Justice Harlan Plessy v Ferguson Justice precedes peace.-Isaiah On October 12, 1994, the Governor of California placed a phone call to the chief prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial. The prosecutor was scheduled to begin jury selection in the case early the following week, and the Governor expressed his firm belief that a racially representative jury panel would best serve the interests of the people of the State of California as well as the interests of justice. The prosecutor stated that while she agreed in principle, her job required her to take all necessary and proper steps to secure the conviction of the defendant in every criminal case, regardless of the case's political sensitivity. The Governor said that he did not see it that way, and that, for his part, he was confident that any government employee deliberately jeopardizing the peace and safety of the community as a whole for the sake of an ethical code would not advance far. The prosecutor admitted that the Governor had a point. The Governor was glad she saw it his way, and stated that he was grateful that she had taken time away from her busy schedule to chat. While this conversation never occurred, it would not be too surprising if it had. From almost every angle, the Simpson case had racially charged Andrew G. Deiss received his J.D. from the Unversity of Chicago in 1995 and his B.A. from Yale University in 1986. He is currently an Associate with the law firm of Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy in Salt Lake City, Utah. 324 Roundtable characteristics. Indeed, few are "oblivious to the interracial marriage at the heart of this story."' The accusation that Simpson was framed by Officer Mark Fuhrman because of racial animosity is by now well-known. Even before the trial, it had been discussed in diverse publications ranging from "an ultralurid tabloid, The Globe, to the most up-market mass-circulation magazine in America, The New Yorker." 2 The racial tension surrounding the case was such that on July 19th, district attorney Gil Garcetti felt it necessary to meet with fifteen black leaders who were concerned that Simpson would not get a fair trial; they urged him not to seek the death penalty. 3 Even at that stage, opinion polls confirmed that the O.J. Simpson trial had significant racial overtones. One poll showed that, while 62 percent of white Californians thought it was "likely" that Simpson committed the murders, only 38 percent of black Californians did. 4 In light of this disparity, it is striking to note that the jury that the prosecution finally accepted was 70 percent black, in a city where only 10 percent of the population is African-American.' After this jury was empaneled, U.C.L.A. law professor Peter Arenella declared that "the defense should be dancing in the streets."6 Prosecutors also had reason to feel relieved, though they probably did not feel that way at the time. With the dust from the Rodney King riots just beginning to settle, it is likely that the O.J. trial posed a real threat to public safety and property. As two young black men told one reporter, "L.A. gonna burn to the ground if O.J. convicted." 7 Empaneling an all-white jury would have only exacerbated the effects of a conviction. Even before Simpson's arrest, courts and legislators across the country were developing mechanisms to ensure that juries represent a racial crosssection of their communities.! The idea is that such mechanisms will increase public confidence in the outcomes of criminal trials, or at least minimize public outrage and prevent race riots sparked by controversial verdicts. 9 Florida and California have passed statutes requiring judges to consider the racial composition of the communities involved when they decide to transfer venue." 0 Other jurisdictions have statutes mandating that jury lists, which are
The Transformation of the American Civil Trial: The Silent Judge
William and Mary law review, 2000
INTRODUCTION The power juries wield over civil verdicts has caused concern in recent decades. Critics claim that unpredictable jury verdicts have undermined confidence in our civil justice system.(1) Many remedies have been proposed. Some advocate more vigorous use of summary judgment, or limits on awards--especially punitive damages--or greater use of mediation and arbitration.(2) Some even recommend abolishing the civil jury in certain types of cases.(3) This Article will explore the history of a method of jury guidance that is both rooted in tradition and respectful of juries' power: judicial comment on the evidence.(4) Much has been made of the independence of juries in America's early history. But it is not so well understood that this formal independence coexisted with a large amount of informal influence by the judge on the jury.(5) Judicial comment on the evidence was one of these informal practices, and has deep roots in our legal traditions. It was widely used in A...