Matthew Raymond is charged with four counts of murder stemming from a shooting spree that killed two police officers and two civilians in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Due to the need for many jurors in this notorious case, the trial judge decided tohold jury selection in a hockey rink. Can anyone envision the need to use Madison Square Garden for a New York prosecution?
Courtroom Layout Can Affect Guilty Verdict Rates
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a study of 400 criminal cases before mock juries in Australia resulted in almost twice as many guilty verdicts when the defendant was seated in a dock as compared to when a defendant sat next to his defense attorney. Although cage-type docks are not used in state courts, this study can alert readers to other forms of influence on jurors. For example, how might the visibility of shackles on a defendant affect juror voting?
A Lesson in Managing Voir Dire in a High-Profile Case - 300 Jurors Fill Out Questionnaires at Courthouse
The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, reports that last week Judge Laura Ripken summoned an “unprecedented” number of potential jurors to hear evidence in the homicide case involving a mass shooting of several Capital Gazette newspaper journalists.
Defendants in Class-Action Case Against Opioid Manufacturers Seek the Court’s Jury-Summoning Records
The defendant pharmaceutical companies in In Re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation have invoked the Jury Service and Selection Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1867(c), to obtain juror qualification questionnaires and other summoning data. Presumably, in preparation for a trial scheduled to begin later this month, the drug manufacturers want assurances that the jury pool is derived from a fair cross-section of the population in Summit County, Ohio. U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster has partially granted their request.
How Significant Was Minority Representation on the Jury That Convicted Texas Police Officer?
Reflecting on the highly publicized guilty verdict in the murder case against white police officer Amber Guyger, Slate magazine’s legal affairs reporter Mark Joseph Stern argues that it is quite significant that 10 of the 12 jurors were non-white.
