Trial procedures: juries Flashcards
Right to a jury trial
Under the Sixth Amendment, a defendant has a right to a jury trial for all serious offenses—those where the authorized punishment is more than six months.
In a criminal jury case, a judge may order a directed verdict only for acquittal—the power to convict is reserved to the jury.
Right to a jury trial: requirements
A federal jury must:
- Have 12 members; and
- Decide the case unanimously.
States can use juries of six or more in criminal cases, and they must be unanimous as well.
Jury selection: venire
The venire, or jury pool must:
- represent a fair cross section of the community, from which no distinctive group is excluded; but
- the actual jury selected need not represent a fair cross-section of the community.
The right to have a jury selected from a representative cross-section of the community is not subject to harmless error analysis.
Jury selection: for-cause challenges
For-cause challenges are used to ensure an importail jury:
- Jurors can be removed for cause when they reveal something that will prevent them from being impartial and deliberating fairly;
- There is no limit to the number of for-cause challenges.
Jury selection: peremptory challenges
Generally, peremptory challenges can be made for any reason including hunches, but the Equal Protections Clause prohibits challenges made on the basis of race or sex.
Each side is statutorily limited in the number of peremptory challenges.
Jury selection: impermissible peremptory challenges
To determine whether a party exercised a peremptory challenge based on race, the U.S. Supreme Court has set forth a three-prong test:
(1) The moving party must establish a prima facie case of discrimination;
(2) Once that prima facie case is established, the party who exercised the challenge must provide a race-neutral explanation for the strike;
(3) If they succeed, the burden shifts back to the moving party to establish that the race-neutral explanation is only a pretext.
Jury selection: death penalty
A trial court properly may excuse a juror for cause from serving in both the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case if a juror’s views regarding the death penalty would prevent or substantially impair the juror from impartially deciding whether the death penalty is warranted in that particular case.
Exclusion of such jurors does not violate the fair cross-section right of the Sixth Amendment.
Waiver of the right to a jury trial
Although a defendant may waive the right to a jury trial and opt for a bench trial, a defendant does not have a constitutional right to a bench trial.
But a defendant who can establish that a jury trial would deny him a fair trial may be entitled to a bench trial on that ground.
Inconsistent jury verdicts
When a jury renders a verdict that a defendant is guilty of certain offenses—but not guilty of other related offenses—the guilty verdict is not reviewable on the grounds of inconsistency.
The verdict is not reviewable even when the jury acquits the defendant of an offense that is a predicated on an offense for which the same jury finds the defendant guilty.
