Erin teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in Political Science, Public Policy, and Public Administration and has a PhD in Political Science.
Would you rather have a jury that is composed of people like yourself or, perhaps, a professional jury where the members are highly educated in the law and serve on the jury as their job? On the one hand, a jury where everyone can serve is much more likely to be representative of the defendant, but on the other, a professional jury may be less likely to make mistakes or be biased against certain defendants. In the United States, we value the fairness of a jury selected at random from the public to decide our fate at trial. A jury of our peers, it is often thought, will be more fair to the defendant because he or she is like themselves.
In this painting, Examination of a Witch by by T.H. Matteson (1853), we see an artist's depiction of the Salem witch trials. You can see the members of the court, including the accused, her accusers, and potentially, a jury gathering to test the young woman's likelihood of witchcraft. American trials have since evolved, and today's they are conducted a bit different from this dramatic scene.
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In the United States, a jury trial is any trial where the verdict is issued by a jury of your peers. All criminal cases and many civil cases are jury trials. Civil court has the option, if both parties agree, of a bench trial where a judge will hand down the verdict instead of a jury. In this lesson, we will discuss the process of selecting a jury and then explore the responsibilities of a jury.
The process of choosing a jury is called voir dire. This process begins when a formal request is mailed to a group of citizens to appear in court on a given day. In small groups, they are called before the judge and attorneys of both sides. They are asked many questions about whether or not they can be impartial about the case.
Some potential jurors are dismissed because they are connected to the case somehow. For example, they may know one of the attorneys, witnesses, defendants, victims, or plaintiffs. Other potential jurors are dismissed because they are not suitable for the case; perhaps they feel strongly that all accused murderers should receive the death penalty, or they may have a strong hatred for people from a certain group that could bias their opinion about the case. Attorneys attempt to weed out inappropriate members until there is a panel that fills the jury and includes a few alternates in case someone can no longer serve.
Once a jury has been paneled, they will meet at the courthouse on the appointed day of trial. Many courts do not allow the jury to take anything into the courtroom, even paper to take notes. During the trial, they are expected to listen without reacting or saying anything. They are not permitted to discuss the case at night with other jurors or anyone else. After the trial concludes, they are provided with a copy of the trial transcript and can request to see any evidence again.
When the closing arguments are finished, the judge will issue jury instructions, which explain that the jury must apply the law fairly and impartially. The judge will carefully explain the law and will remind the jury that they are the triers of fact; in other words, through an evaluation of what they were presented at trial, they are the only ones who can decide on guilt or innocent. Occasionally, a person who is found guilty will appeal their case on the grounds that the jury instructions were biased against them.
After jury instructions, the jury retires to a private room where they deliberate the case. They will nominate one member to serve as the foreperson, the individual who helps organize the discussion and will read the verdict to the court. The jury will review evidence and testimony and may take several informal votes to see if they are in agreement. When a jury must take several days to weigh the evidence and deliberate, they are often sequestered, or kept separate from the public by staying in a hotel overnight. This is done so that they are not influenced by anything in their deliberation.
For a criminal trial, the jury must decide unanimously - or all together - to convict or not. For civil cases, the attorneys and judge will have determined in advance if a unanimous verdict is required; if not, they agree on how many members of the jury must agree. It may take many days of deliberation for the jury to reach the number of required votes. When they have retired, they return to the courtroom and formally announce their decision.
If they cannot come to a verdict, and it seems unlikely that they will ever agree, they may return to court and say that they are a hung jury, or one that cannot render a verdict in agreement to the court. Cases with a hung jury may be tried again from the beginning; this is the prosecution's decision. Otherwise, the person accused of a crime will go free, and in civil cases, a verdict will not be issued.
A jury trial, as conducted in the U.S., is one where the decision is made by a jury comprised of people randomly selected from the population. The jury is responsible for listening to the entire trial, retiring in private, deliberating, and coming to a consensus about the case. Criminal cases are always decided unanimously by a jury; and many civil cases also choose to have a jury decide, but a unanimous verdict is not always required.
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