When a judge overrules the jury

Here is an interesting piece of statistics:

"According to the National Center for State Courts, judges set aside jury verdicts in only 78 of 18,306 civil trials nationwide in 2005, the most recent year complete statistics are available. That's less than one-half of 1 percent." (WBZTV.com)

So basicly in 1 out of 200 trials, the judge tells to the jury: "you are too stupid and your verdict is ridiculous, go back and bring me a new verdict or even better, I will make a decent verdict myself.

Now when this happens, doesn't this undermine the whole idea of the jury system? If the jury is not allowed to bring a stupid/irresponsible/ridiculous verdict, what is the point of having them and where is the freedom of their choice???

 

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Sometimes the people on the jury are just not that smart to see what the truth is. They get blinded by the defense somehow and are mislled due to either stupidity or emotional responses.

 

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Well, but who is to say so? Do we need a jury of the jury? If the judge can judge by him/herself, why not just let 1 person rule over the whole trial? Actually, that happens quite often in certain type of trials. If it is good for tem, why is it not good for criminal trials??

If the jury system takes anyone as a juror, they should live with their decission. Oh yes, there should never be a hang jury either. Weeks wasted money and time and they end up in a hang jury???

 

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Is this in the US?

We also have Jury nullification where a jurer can say "you laws are stupid, I'm not playing any more."

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acording to my law lecture it happens in australia when ghe jury refusento follow the law because judges are judges of law and juries are finders of facts.

the example he gave (because this was the question i asked) was if a person helped his partner, child, pt ect and never disputed it, the procution proved it ect but the jury refused to find the person guilty because they dont like the law then the judge would set aside the verdict and find the person guilty. the same if the jury found the defendent to be a creep but the procution produced no evidence of the crime and the jury found them guilty anyway

 

my friend asguard is studying law. i myself have sat in numerous law classes and found there is no better way to gain insight into how the human brain works.

 

no actually im studying health. its just there is a law componant of that degree (hense the health reference)

 

It's not surprising

We should remember that, at least in the United States, prosecutors want the jury as ignorant as possible.

Really, watch for it next time you get called for jury duty. I was surveyed for a bail jumping trial for an accused coke dealer. Yes, we still call it "bail jumping" up here. One guy literally told the judge and attorneys, "I can't give this guy a fair trial." He went on to explain that cocaine addiction had almost killed his son. The judge bent over backwards to keep him in the pool. Meanwhile, I, like everyone else who mentioned the Constitution and the rights of the accused, were dismissed peremptorily at the prosecutor's request.

We shouldn't be surprised if every now and then a jury completely misses the point.

When it was Ollie North, the question was, "Can you really find twelve people who don't know anything about this case? Do we really want them on a jury?"

When it was OJ Simpson, the question was, "Can you really find twelve people who don't know who this guy is? Do we really want them on a jury?"

When it was Michael Jackson, the lawyers and pundits just shrugged and skipped such questions entirely.

I'd be very interested to see the numbers on how many of those cases are civil versus criminal, and which way the juries went.

 

Great post tiassa, but how do you think we could solve this problem?

I mean, what if someone is just unlucky and happens to have a stupid and easily persuaded bunch of jurors, its not like that cannot happen.

Do you think the court system would be better off if we had something like professional jurors?

 

Yes it does undermine the whole jury system.

 

Judges hate Jury nullification and don't want Jurors to be familiar with that concept.

 

The problem with "jury nullification" is that in addition to giving the people a way to neutralize unjust laws, it also leads to things like a southern jury refusing to convict someone of a crime simply because the victim was black.

 

Actually it strongly depends on who as a better case. If the prosecutor has a good case, he will usually want smart jurors who will understand that the evidence points to guilt. The defense will then want a stupid jury so that they can try to spin bullshit to try to get their client off despite the facts. If the prosecutor has a weak case, reverse. Either way, there's a good chance that one of the sides will want to kick off anyone who is unusually knowledgeable about anything relevant. If you’re a computer programmer, for example, your odds of ever ending up on a jury in a computer crime trial are close to zero, even though it would seem that the interests of justice would be best served by having someone who actually knows about computers on the jury.

 

No. There are intentionally two fail safes in the American judicial system: the judge and the jury. Both have to agree on a conviction of guilt. While a judge cannot say, "you're innocent", he/she can say, "No, this process is botched", declare a mistrial and start the process over again.

The jury's job, in short, is to ensure that the complexity of the law and evidence of the case is sound enough to convince a lay man that the case is beyond any reasonable doubt. If you cannot convince the peers that it's a sound case, then they can let the man go.

Moreover, this whole issue misses that original nature of the dual jury process (grand jury to indict and petite jury to convict). As mentioned above, it's called jury nullification. The purpose of the grand jury, originally, was not only to decide weather to allow the trial, but to put the law on trial, itself, and decide weather it was reasonable or not. Now, the whole system has been skewed and the grand jurists are instructed to ONLY make a decision on the facts. But that nullifies the original intent: to give the grand jury supreme power over the law and decide if the law is just reasonable or not.

~String

 

"Grand juries" originated back in the days when royal judges actually traveled around in "circuits," visiting one town after another and adjudicating any crimes or disputes that had occurred. When he moved on to a new town, a "grand jury" made up of respected citizens would report any crimes or disputes that had occurred since the judge last visited. This was in the days before full-time public prosecutors, so criminal charges were usually made by the victim or his family. Anyone who had been the victim of a crime or felt wronged in some way had to convince the local grand jury that their case was supported by enough evidence to be worth the judge's time, so that the trial didn't turn into a farce of accusations that weren't backed by evidence.

So far as I know, grand juries have never had the function of passing judgment on a law itself. Their purpose has always been to weed out cases that aren't supported by sufficient evidence to warrant the time and expense of a trial.

 

I think you will find if you search more that it *only* happens when a jury convicts and the judge finds, as a matter of law, that the evidence did not support the charge. It never has happened (to my knowledge) where a jury acquitted.

In a system where we believe that it is better to let the guilty go free than convict the innocent, it is just another escape valve to prevent injustice. That it is used so infrequently means that it is *not* being used in a way that disrupts the jury system, and that juries are given great deference.

If it were commonly used, then it would be a problem. But it is not, and worrying about what the world would be like if it were used more frequently is very hypothetical.

If the judge abuses his or her discretion in setting aside a verdict, I point out, the prosecution can appeal and the standard of review for the appellate court is usually "de novo" meaning that they give the verdict the judge entered no weight and aside if the set aside was right entirely for themselves.

It is less prone to abuse than "jury nullification" (as the appeals courts can't overturn that on a de novo standard), and many people feel that is a right of jurors...

 

Unfortunatly haveing lawyers able to dismiss jurrers makes it impossible to get " A JURY OF YOUR PEERS "
out of 9 jurrers your likly to get on average of 4 stupid, 4 smart, and 1 peer.

 

This and that

I'm of the opinion that a defense attorney has a better shot at establishing reasonable doubt in more analytic minds. The OJ Simpson trial makes a fair example: I'm pretty sure the guy is guilty, but having watched far more of the trial than is probably healthy, I'm certain I would have voted to acquit. High profile cases like that include a couple of factors that the average defendant doesn't necessarily have: Public scrutiny and money. Public scrutiny essentially puts the "system" on trial, as well. We saw evidentiary hearings and a good deal of the jury selection, and the last thing a publicly-elected District Attorney wants is a bunch of pundits and analysts across the country pointing out that the state is striking anyone who shows an understanding of the Constitution or justice system. And your average, say, alleged bail jumping coke dealer can't afford a jury consultant with a stratospheric retainer. Simpson got a good jury for the case he had to defend against.

Yet there are still people who don't care how the system works insofar as there are many who say they would have convicted. Between the appearance of evidence tampering, the appearance of police bias, the prosecution's utter failure to rebut the ill-fitting glove, the fact that investigators missed a huge piece of evidence (a large knife), and the botched time frame (an argument pertaining to how much some ice cream had melted), there really was no choice but to acquit. Still, though, there are people who would have convicted either for their gut feeling—which would require them to ignore the evidentiary record—or a need to exercise their authority over another human being. Or racism. There are plenty of reasons why someone would convict despite the gaping holes in the prosecution's ill-considered case, and none of them point to intelligence.

The thing that really disturbed me about the case I was dismissed from was that the judge required the defense attorney to burn a peremptory challenge when that challenge had legitimate cause. A potential juror declaring that he is unwilling and unable to give a defendant a fair trial sounds like cause to me, but in Snohomish County, Washington, it ain't so. Meanwhile, it was perfectly clear what the prosecutor was doing, and I've had lawyers and police officers alike affirm that this is the general practice. The more a juror understands about how a seemingly trivial error or omission can skew an evidentiary presentation, the more likely he or she is to acquit when those questions arise. In my case, hell, the guy jumped bail. His only legitimate defenses would be that he was never informed of his expected court appearance, which should be easily addressed by the evidence, or else an immediate need that could be fairly argued to take priority. And that, too, would be an evidentiary argument. Did someone die? Was he in the hospital with acute appendicitis? What the hell happened? Either the excuse will convince a jury, or it won't.

The prosecutor had no reason to fear the Constitution. Or did he? Therein lies a compelling question that I never did find the answer to.

There is a fairly interesting argument that still goes on today about what constitutes a jury of one's peers. Obviously, that doesn't mean I can pack the jury with friends. But does it mean I can expect a jury of people with similar knowledge, such as your computer crime example? Or does it mean I can expect a jury of people that reflects my general community? Depending on the charge, that latter could be a dangerous proposition for some people, myself included. I'm a statistical deviation in my community. The last thing I would want is a jury that takes offense to the idea that I took my oath over the Constitution instead of the Bible. To the other, neither would I want it to emerge that I took an oath over a book that I don't believe. I would prefer a jury that is smart enough to look past such superficial issues.

And if wishes were horses ... whatever the hell that means.

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Well, I'm not sure there is a specific solution. I don't oppose the idea of a judge telling a jury it's wrong. To consider one of Fraggle's points—

—there are cases in which it would be obvious to just about anyone paying attention that the jury didn't give a damn about the law or the judge's instructions. Unfortunately, the case with which most people would probably be familiar is fictitious: Alabama v. Robinson, in which the defense put forth a brilliant, accurate, and even simple case, but there was simply no way in hell a jury was going to acquit. In the real world, of course, these situations are far more complex than we can understand even from one of the greatest novels ever written.

How is it that juries recommend the death penalty more often for racial minorities than white people even if the crimes are similar? This phenomenon compelled the famous Illinois moratorium against executions.

The nearest thing to a solution I can offer is better education in our society. Smarter people are not immune to fits of illogic, but they are better prepared against them.

I don't think professional jurors would be a proper answer. I can only imagine the arguments that would come over that career path. Liberal conspiracies in universities, political committees running juror training programs in the private sector ... where American juries are prone to screwing up anyway, the last thing we want to do is institutionalize the problems.

I like the idea that everyday citizens are called upon to make decisions that directly affect their communities. But what does it say about our communities if the everyday citizen is deemed generally incompetent to make those decisions?

It's not much of an answer, I know. But it's the one I've got right now, so it's the one I'm going with.

 

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IF they are aware of it & IF they have the guts to go against the prosecutor & judge telling them otherwise.