Shaakirrah Sanders
Deconstructing Juryless Fact-Finding in Civil and Criminal Cases
Abstract:
Legislative measures to cap compensatory damages in certain categories of common law-based tort cases mandate a form of jury-less fact-finding that effectively lessens the jury’s traditional and historic role as injury valuator. This Article explores juryless fact-finding in civil cases by turning to Sixth Amendment Criminal Jury Trial Clause sentencing guidelines jurisprudence. At first blush, compensatory damage caps and criminal sentencing guidelines appear to have little in common. Caps reduce a jury’s damage findings to a fixed amount. Guidelines sentencing designate which facts are necessary to support a particular sentence. Yet, both remove the jury during a significant part of a civil or criminal case: caps remove the jury from the “damages” phase of civil litigation and in a similar way criminal sentencing guidelines removed the jury from the “punishment” phase of the criminal prosecution. As a result, compensatory damage caps and criminal sentencing guidelines both lessen the jury’s role as fact-finder and intrude on the jury’s verdict or decree.
Sixth Amendment Criminal Jury Trial Clause jurisprudence has recently rejected mandatory juryless fact-finding for purposes of fixing punishment at a criminal sentencing hearing. Criminal sentencing guidelines that required reconsideration of a jury’s factual findings were initially allowed on the theory that legislatures has authority to designate certain facts in a criminal case “elements” of the offense that required a jury. Other facts could be designated “enhancements” to the punishment and did not require a jury. This grant of legislative authority was short lived. The Court has recently held that a criminal jury is required to find any fact that increases the maximum and minimum punishment. In other words, a jury is required to make factual findings that determine the high and low end of criminal punishment regardless of whether a fact is designed an element or an enhancement. Moreover, such factual findings are fully enforceable. Seventh Amendment Civil Jury Trial Clause jurisprudence remains undeveloped on the issue of mandatory juryless fact-finding in common law-based claims, but Sixth Amendment
Criminal Jury Trial Clause jurisprudence offers three lessons about common law juries that should apply in the civil context. First, modern procedures cannot significantly alter certain common law characteristics of the jurytrial right. Second, mandatory removal of the jury as the primary fact-finder was not authorized in common law cases. Third, a common law jury’s factual determinations were fully enforceable unless exceptional circumstances were presented. This Article applies these lessons to the application of compensatory damage caps in common law-based tort cases. This Article also urges adoption of cap alternatives that encourage individual review upon necessity. Such alternatives should also advance the States’ dual interests to protect both civilly liable defendants and severely injured plaintiffs.
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