How Often Are Multiple Misbehaving Jurors Found in Contempt of Court?
In the August 30 issue of Jur-E Bulletin, we reported on the “Ghost Ship” case in which three jurors were dismissed for misconduct during deliberations. Relying on interviews with Professor Laurie L. Levenson at the Loyola University Law School (Los Angeles) and trial lawyer William Cole, the Mercury News provides a brief history of cases in the USA in which multiple jurors have been discharged based upon their misconduct during the trial.
Nine Years After a Guilty Verdict, Juror Misconduct Surfaces to Cause New Trial
In a situation involving a juror “haunted” by her jury service in 2011, two murder convictions in Detroit have been vacated. In an evidentiary hearing before a retired trial judge, former juror Kathleen Byrnes testified she was the lone holdout for not guilty but changed her vote based upon a fellow juror researching a co-defendant’s Facebook page during deliberations. The illicit research yielded information never brought out at trial, including gang codes suggesting the defendant was a gang member who might have ordered the killing.
Judicial Misconduct During Jury Selection Causes Conviction Reversal
According to theLas Vegas Review Journal, during the second day of voir dire in a sexual assault case, a prospective juror stated that she did not think she could be unbiased toward the defendant because of her exposure to child abuse in her work as a nurse. The judge said, “So you didn’t say that yesterday.” When the prospective juror said, “Well I said I had other issues.” The judge responded:
What we’re not going to have in this jury is people coming in overnight and thinking up s*** and try to make s*** up now so they can get out of the jury. . . .
The judge also threw a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution against the wall when yelling at the prospective juror. No subsequent prospective juror expressed any concerns about being impartial.
The defendant moved “to dismiss the entire venire out of concern that the judge’s behavior and language . . . had ‘a chilling effect on the’ rest of the voir dire, such that the remaining jurors would not be comfortable in expressing any bias they might have out of fear of the judge’s reaction.” The judge denied the request as "ludicrous."
While we recognize the frustration that the judge experienced, it was inappropriate to throw a book and curse and yell at the prospective juror. . . .
Because the judge created an atmosphere of intimidation and did nothing to alleviate the impact of his behavior, we cannot be confident that an impartial jury was selected.
Change in Domestic Violence Law Leads to Mushrooming of Jury Trials
The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously concluded that a statute banning gun ownership by persons convicted of domestic violence requires misdemeanor domestic violence charges to be tried by a jury. ABC TV’s affiliate KOLO8 in Reno reports that there were 30,000 DV arrests in the Las Vegas area in 2017.
Research Shows Unreliability of Jurors' "Impartiality" After They Receive Information About a Case
In a mock jury study recently re-published in the Denver Law Review, researchers studied mock jurors who, though exposed to pretrial information about a medical malpractice defendant, asserted they could be fair and impartial. Analysis of their subsequent verdicts showed these jurors were three times more likely to find for the plaintiff than were jurors in the control group. Consequently, at least one trial consultant asserts that the study demonstrates that juror self-diagnosis of impartiality should not be relied upon by courtroom actors during voir dire.
