When a hung jury is a reasoned “verdict”: The John Edwards trial

Alan Dershowitz makes a compelling case in a CNN op-ed essay that the jury in the John Edwards criminal trial got it right when they failed to reach a verdict on most charges. As he sees the case,

The judge essentially instructed them to get into John Edwards’ mind (as well as into the minds of several other actors in this political soap opera) and to determine precisely what his intention was in receiving money from friends….If [Edwards'] intention was primarily personal (to try to save his marriage and not humiliate his wife any further), then there was no crime. But if his intent was primarily political (to help him get elected president), then there may have been a crime. Precisely how many angels were dancing on the head of that pin?

This may be an example of a case that reads one way in the media and another in the courtroom. Like many other observers, I assumed this was a straightforward case of soliciting campaign contributions illegally. That political context for the case was the obvious one from my vantage point, but in retrospect, I have to admit I hadn’t thought about the personal explanation as relevant. As Dershowitz argues, the judge gave the jury a task even trained social scientists couldn’t handle–the reading of intentions in a situation fraught with ambiguity. And as for Edwards’ fate? Dershowitz writes,

Let him be relegated to his deserved place in history, and let us reserve the criminal law for real felons who knowingly violate clear criminal statutes. If Congress wants to criminalize what Edwards was accused of doing, let it enact a clear law that gives fair warning to all politicians that they may not accept any gifts, regardless of intent. I doubt Congress will pass such a law.

New York Times Weighs in On Voir Dire Discrimination

The New York Times just ran an editorial that concerns racial discrimination in jury selection:

Marcus Robinson, who has been on death row in North Carolina since 1994, was the first person to challenge a death sentence under the state’s 2009 Racial Justice Act. That law is the nation’s first to give inmates the chance to have their sentences reduced to life without parole based on proof that racial bias played a significant role in their case…On Friday, Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks ruled that Mr. Robinson was the victim of clear discrimination in jury selection and commuted his sentence.

In cases like this, the immediate harm of such discrimination is failing to form a jury of peers and grant the defendant a fair trial. As is often pointed out in this blog, however, such practices also do a lesser harm to the prospective jurors themselves, who are denied the civic educational opportunity that the jury provides.

In any case, glad to see the Times recognizing the importance of challenging racially biased voir dire processes.

Juries, judges, and the determination to reach a verdict

In perusing news about juries, we often come across stories like this one, from the Washington Post:

A federal judge has told jurors to continue deliberating at Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford’s fraud trial after they indicated they’re deadlocked on at least some of the 14 charges against him.

In this particular case, the judge had to instruct the jury to resume deliberations–in other words, keep at it. In such cases, prosecutors often fret that the jury will end up deadlocked or only reach agreement on lesser charges, but in the end, the jury delivered a harsh verdict. The AP story that followed, such as the version that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, may have emphasized the prosecutors’ sense that no punishment was good enough, but the point here is simply that the jury had to keep working until it satisfied the judge that it had finished its task.

Imagine if other quasi-deliberative bodies, such as legislatures, city councils, or commissions, had to keep working, even when they reached an impasse. It’s not clear who they judge would be, but the experience of the jury suggests that people are often more capable of finding agreement and common ground than they believe. Time and again, jurors will plead with a judge to be excused as a hung jury, only to turn around and reach a verdict or even a sweeping set of verdicts. Surely that sometimes results from minority voices opting to go along to get along, or from a crude compromise between opposing sides, but sometimes, it appears to reflect a genuine arrival at a point of agreement that would have proven elusive had it not been for the judicial instruction to keep at it.

 

Dodging jury duty via a fantastic fabrication

Though we take our job seriously at this blog, we can’t help but post the occasional zinger. From Modesto, Calif., we offer this great true story of the prospective juror who got carried away during voir dire when asked why he would not be able to serve.

According to the court transcripts, Walker told Cordova — under oath — he was the starting catcher for the San Jose Giants baseball club, which plays in the Single-A California League (same as the Modesto Nuts).

He also told Cordova the Giants were in the playoffs at the time.

“When is your next game?” Cordova asked.

“There was actually one today,” Walker told him. “I haven’t looked at it, but if we won, we have another tomorrow … .”

His interest piqued, Cordova replied, “So if you didn’t win today, you would not have a game tomorrow?”

“Correct,” Walker answered.

Cordova then took the unusual step of waiving the court’s no cell phone rule and asked Walker to call someone to get an update.

To see how the story resolves itself, continue here at the Modesto Bee.

How jury deliberation ties into politics and democracy

What do juries have to do with deliberative democracy? Here at the Jury and Democracy Project, we regularly hear that juries are an administrative curiosity, unconnected from the more central concerns of democracy, government, and politics.

In our view, juries have a great deal to do with how we interpret and enforce laws. They open the judicial branch in the U.S. and many other countries to direct citizen involvement–and empowerment–in a way that legislative and executive branches don’t.

But occasionally, one can see more clearly the nexus of juries and politics. Two recent cases highlight this. A federal jury just convicted a county commissioner in Florida on corruption charges:

U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill told jurors White had abused his position, promising assistance to people who gave him money. He said after the verdict that they upheld the principle that elected officials have a duty to represent all the public, not just those who pay. “We cannot have public officials acting corruptly,” O’Neill said afterward. “It perverts our system of justice and the democratic process.”

Though O’Neill gets the lead quote in the story, but it’s a remarkable thing to have a corruption verdict handed down not by a vindictive and suspect rival public official, but instead by a cross-section of the lay public. It’s one of the geniuses of a jury system that it makes the public the judge of public officials. And just one verdict like this can help rein in future electeds, who get from the jury a better sense of what the public will and will not permit from its officials.

The second example we pull is a case still underway. This time, a Brooklyn assemblyman stands trial. The same basic idea operates here, his fate is in the hands of the lay public, as assembled in the form of a federal jury. As this post goes up, the jury has sent the judge a note that explains it is at “an impasse.” The author of the note added, “Be back tomorrow.”

For an evening, the jurors will go home to their families, their homes, their communities. They will not discuss the trial, but they will reconnect briefly in their regular, daily lives before trying again to reach agreement on how to address an allegation of public corruption. In this way, the U.S. keeps the sensibilities of a lay public connected to the enforcement of the laws governing the government itself. Once again, it’s just another clear example of how jury deliberation plays a vital role in the larger democratic process.

Why jury selection discrimination hurts more than the defendant

The Equal Justice Initiative has filed a lawsuit alleging that an Alabama prosecutor has abused the voir dire process to systematically exclude African-Americans from serving on death-penalty juries. The thrust of the complaint is the miscarriage of justice this causes:

The jury in every death-penalty case in Houston County over this period has been all white or had only a single black juror despite the fact that the circuit is nearly 25% African American. Houston County has the highest per capita death sentencing rate in Alabama.

One might expect such a complaint to foreground the defendants harmed by the alleged discrimination, but in its October 24 press release, the Equal Justice Initiative chose to make a juror the face of its suit:

“Removing people from a jury on the basis of race is shameful and inexcusable,” said Plaintiff Vicky Allen Brown. In 1998, an Alabama appellate court concluded that Valeska’s office illegally struck Brown from jury service in a capital trial because of her race. An accountant who was born and raised in Houston County, Brown joined the lawsuit to expose and challenge Valeska’s illegal jury selection practices because “many times you cannot do anything about discrimination – especially when it is committed by public officials who know how to disguise and justify their behavior.”

“Removing people from a jury on the basis of race is shameful and inexcusable,” said Plaintiff Vicky Allen Brown. In 1998, an Alabama appellate court concluded that Valeska’s office illegally struck Brown from jury service in a capital trial because of her race. An accountant who was born and raised in Houston County, Brown joined the lawsuit to expose and challenge Valeska’s illegal jury selection practices because “many times you cannot do anything about discrimination – especially when it is committed by public officials who know how to disguise and justify their behavior.”

What is less obvious from this suit is the harm that voir dire discrimination does to plaintiffs like Ms. Brown. As we have argued in our research on juries, the jury experience provides a rare opportunity in civic education. Beyond learning about the legal system itself, jury deliberation can promote attitudes more favorable toward political and community participation, confidence in government, and more. It also leads to higher voting rates among those previously disengaged. In other words, excluding a specific population disadvantages those people in a democracy.

As this important lawsuit moves forward, we will watch it closely. It’s our hope that the will continue to shed light on how the alleged discrimination affected the jurors themselves, as well as the defendants who may have been deprived a jury of their peers in life-or-death trials.

Mixed juries: The case of Italy

We’ve all seen the headlines about the acquittal of former University of Washington student Amanda Knox, who was in her second year of a 26-year sentence for a murder in Perugia, Italy. What may have escaped notice was that the verdict came from a six-person jury, aided by two judges.

A CNN report breaks down the decision-making procedure used at this juncture:

Eight jurors — six members of the public and two judges — decided the case. The judges take part and vote as part of the jury: their role is to guide but not to instruct the other jurors how to vote. The presiding judge, Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, who was also one of the jurors, read out the verdict.

From the perspective of a U.S. legal scholar, this is interesting in a few respects. First, the role of judges sitting alongside jurors stands in contrast to the independent American jury, or even the mixed juries now in Japan (with judges and jurors voting together). Second, the size of the jury is interesting, using just six people to decide a person’s fate on a murder charge. Finally, it’s noteworthy that this jury played a role in an appeals process. This verdict overturned a trial court, and if Italy’s high court rejects this verdict, the original trial court’s sentence would resume for Knox.