Court Phase 2: Court Flashcards
(41 cards)
When are Juries used?
Criminal and Civil Trials
How many Jurors are there for a criminal trial?
12
How many jurors are there for a civil trial?
4
How many reserve jurors are permitted?
Between 2 and 6
Who are the jurors?
Members of the public between 18 and 70Random selection from the electoral rolls Some are not eligible for jury service For example: Current or ex-police officers Government officials People with previous convictions Eligibility questionnaire
Studies on who is actually on the Juries
In 2001-02, a sample of Queensland District Court Jurors contained:
Persons aged between 18 and 69 years
107 females (56%)
65 jurors had a University education (34%); 38 jurors had some other form of tertiary education (20%)
73 jurors were not in the workforce
Exemptions to Jury Duty
Other members of the community who may be excluded from participating as jurors include:
persons of old age, pregnant women, people with child-care responsibilities, people with a medical condition, individuals with prior criminal convictions, individuals who cannot speak English.
Those with professional involvement in the legal system and any number of skilled occupational group members (doctors, school teachers, ministers, senior bureaucrats).
All these exemptions from service make the jury pool less representative
Voire Dire Process
The two main goals of Voir dire is to determine
1) whether the potential jurors are qualified to serve as jurors
2) to identify any biases that may interfere with their ability to be impartial
Objection to a juror can be raised by defense or prosecution
Voir dire typically lasts hours but can take months – especially in trials with intense pre-trial publicity (PTP)
It has been argued that there is no aspect of a criminal trial that is more important to the ultimate outcomes than the jury selection process (Lieberman & Sales, 2007).
Juries Act
Provincial and territorial legislation that outlines the eligibility criteria for jury service and how prospective jurors must be selected
Jury Summons
A court order that states a time and place to go for jury duty
Representativeness
A jury composition that represents the community where the crime occurred
Impartiality
A characteristic of jurors who are unbiased
Impartiality: Centres on what 3 issues?
1) For a juror to be impartial, he or she must set aside any pre-existing bias, prejudice or attitudes and judge the case based solely on the admissible evidence. e.g. Juror must ignore the defendant belongs to an ethnic group against which he or she holds a bias
2) To be impartial also means that the juror must ignore any information that is not part of the admissible evidence. e.g. prior to the start of the trial, a case may have received media attention highlighting facts about the defendant that are biased, irrelevant, or inadmissible
3) It also is important that the juror have no connection to the defendant so that the juror does not view the evidence subjectively or unduly influence the other jurors
Challenge for cause
Lawyers make a challenge for cause to the judge that potential juror x is unsuitable for reasons y and the judge makes the decision to excuse or not.
Whether a juror’s particular background or beliefs make them biased and therefore unsuitable for service (Vidmar, 2000).
Peremptory Challenges
Gives both the defence and prosecution a specific number of unconditional peremptory challenges
Jurisdictions in Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and United States
No justifications (reasons) have to be brought to exclude a specific juror. Judges must exclude these jurors.
Generally, defence lawyers exclude jurors who have professions or backgrounds similar to the victim as they may feel an emotional link to them, while prosecutors tend to exclude jurors who may show affinity for the defendant.
Change of venue
Moving a trial to a community other than the one in which the crime occurred
Adjournment
Delaying the trial until sometime in the future
Challenge for cause
An option to reject biased jurors
Some methods for increasing the likelihood of an impartial jury
1) The crown or defence may argue that the trial should be moved to another community because it would be very impartial jury from the local community
2) Allowing sufficient time to pass so that the biasing effect of any pretrial prejudicial information has dissipated by the time that the trial has taken place. Thus the judge may call for an adjournment, delaying the trial until sometime in the future
3) The crown or defence may argue hat although the perspective jury pool may be partial, if questioned, these prospective jurors could be identified and rejected from serving on the jury. Jurors can be probed with a set of predetermined questions
Jury Nullification (Ignoring the law)
Occurs when a jury ignores the law and the evidence, rendering a verdict based on some other criteria
Chaos Theory
The theory that when jurors are guided by their emotions and personal biases rather than by the law, chaos in judgments results
Jury Functions
1) To use the wisdom of 12 to reach a verdict
2) To act as a conscience of the community
3) To protect against out-of-date laws
4) To increase knowledge about the justice system
Post-Trial Interviews
Post-trial interviews
Assess jurors’ understanding of judges’ instructions
Jurors may not be explicitly aware of what influences them
Issues of reliability of self-report data
Hindsight bias
Social desirability
Recall degrades over time
Post-trial interviews of jurors who served on six criminal trials in New South Wales disclosed that jurors who admitted difficulty understanding DNA expert evidence nevertheless proceeded to convict (Findlay 2008).
High external validity
Can only discuss variables, not cause and effect
Archival Research
Records of trials, police interviews with witnesses
Only have the information available
Cannot go back and ask more questions
High external validity but cannot establish cause and effect.