Jury deliberations

[mtbc]

A couple of months ago, I mentioned having served as a member of a jury at a sheriff court here in Scotland. The instructions given to jurors about secrecy are quite clear and seem summarized well by HMG's,

After the trial you must not talk about what happened in the deliberation room, even with family members. You can talk about what happened in the courtroom.

The Juries Act 1974, provision 20D, is similarly unambiguous; following provisions' exceptions relate largely to handling jurors' misconduct. So, research into jury behaviour is typically performed using mock trials.

I was therefore considerably surprised by an American website planning to publish people's accounts of the dynamics within the jury room. After a bit of searching online, my impression is that rules in the US, at least after the trial has concluded, are typically rather laxer. For example, a jurors' handbook for US District Courts says,

After the jurors return their verdict and are dismissed by the judge … the court may enter an order in a specific case that during any such interview, jurors may not give any information with respect to the vote of any other juror.

Thus have I learned that American jurors often appear to be able to say something about what happened during deliberations.

Comments

[thewayne]

I don't remember our deliberations, but it was almost 40 years ago, so hardly surprising. :-)

The kid was charged with four counts of selling 1 kilo of marijuana. We did not convict on one count because the cops got lax: no photos, no fingerprints. There was dog hair that could easily have been linked to the seller's dog, whom he slept with in his car, but they didn't do it. The sole evidence was: "Hey, here's a baggie with pot and dog hair. He did it!" So we threw that one out. But they had photos and other evidence on the other three counts.

The case still stank to high heaven.

[muninnhuginn]

Interesting. I've always kept schtum about the time I did jury service (England). We were dismissed when the case collapsed so there were no deliberations. But I can talk about the bizarre experience of listening to a recording of a consultation with a medium which was part of the evidence.

Less edifying was the anti-Roma/anti-traveller bias amongst the jurors (not all of them).

[mtbc]

Goodness, a medium!

Back in a previous Scottish abode, definitely plenty of other such kinds of bias among the local Nextdoor community.

[wpadmirer]

Yeah, there's definitely some people who are very inappropriate after a trial is over. There may not be the stringent rules that the UK has, but you'd think common sense would come into play.

Unfortunately, common sense seems to have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

[emperor]

My impression was certainly that the US was more relaxed about jurors talking about what went on in the jury room; but you're right that the UK rules are very strict.

My Dad ended up doing jury service a number of times, and was quite good at refusing to tell us what had happened. He did once say that during a drugs case, they joked in the jury room about whether they should test the material themselves just to be sure ;-)