
Taint on the Jury?
The Minnesota Court of Appeals issued an opinion in State v. Crenshaw on August 20, 2018. Mr. Crenshaw was convicted of several sexual offenses with a minor and received a life sentence. During jury deliberations, as two jurors were leaving for the night, the jurors individually made contact with a man and a woman. The man and the woman asked Juror J.S. if deliberations were complete. She did not respond and continued walking. However, as Juror M.K. passed, the man made eye contact with her and made a “throat-slitting gesture with his hand.” Jurors J.S. and M.K. reported their experiences to the rest of the jury the next morning. The other jurors encouraged them to report it to the court which they did.
The trial judge held a hearing and conducted a colloquy with jurors J.S. and M.K. No other jurors were interviewed. Juror M.K. made some non-committal statements such as, “I’ll try to just put it out of my mind so we can come to an agreement.” She also said, “I will continue. I can’t totally separate that it did happen,” The judge allowed her to continue as a juror and the defendant was ultimately convicted.
Minnesota caselaw requires a trial judge to conduct a hearing and interview all of the jurors when the jury has been exposed to an outside influence. In this case, the contact that M.K. had with the man and the woman was clearly an outside influence. The Minnesota Court of Appeals determined that interviewing two jurors was inadequate to make a determination that there was no outside influence on the jury at large. They remanded the case with instructions to hold a hearing, interview all of the jurors and only leave the convictions to stand if the hearing establishes that all of the jurors were unaffected by the man’s throat slitting gesture.
Take Down Orders
Judge David John Harvey recently published an article online titled Diluting Prejudice. The article addresses motions/orders to temporarily remove information from the internet while a defendant is standing trial. Although the article is based on Australian law and the outcome may be very different in the U.S. due to the First Amendment, this article is applicable in at least one situation. It is applicable when a defendant makes a motion for the court to remove from its own publicly accessible online docketing system information about a defendant’s prior criminal charges and case outcomes. The abstract to the article states:
This paper is about the steps that may be taken to dilute but not totally eliminate the prejudicial effect of on-line material that relates to a defendant about to stand trial. It is posited upon the fact that jurors, despite strong judicial directions, will go on-line to seek out information relevant to the case that they are trying. The solution lies in the use of what could be described as “take-down” orders whereby material is removed from websites during the course of the trial to eliminate or dilute any prejudice that may otherwise arise, along with de-indexing the reference in search engines. The remedy of a “take-down” order restores the qualities of practical and partial obscurity of prejudicial information that was a characteristic of the pre-Digital Paradigm. The paper also discusses the issue of juror contempt in light of proposed changes to the law in the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt) Bill.
Maine Judge Holds Listening Session with Jurors
The Bangor News reported on August 21, 2018 that Somerset County, Maine Superior Court Justice Robert Mullen held a “listening session” with prospective jurors who failed to respond to jury summonses. The purpose of the meeting was not punitive but rather to get a better understanding of the underlying causes of the problem. The judge heard a variety of explanations including issues surrounding residents not receiving mail timely. The article doesn’t say this but from a public relations perspective Judge Mullen’s approach gets the word out to the public that the court takes responding to summonses very seriously.
Well Designed Jury Summonses
The NCSC Center for Jury Studies sometimes has received requests for examples of well-designed jury summonses and qualification questionnaires. If your court has recently redesigned its jury documents to communicate information more clearly and understandably to prospective jurors, please upload an electronic copy here or send samples to Greg Hurley at ghurley@ncsc.org. Many thanks for your assistance.
Cops and Convicts: An Exploratory Field Study of Jurymandering
James M. Binnall, Assistant Professor of Law, Criminology, and Criminal Justice at California State University, Long Beach is publishing an article in a forthcoming edition of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law titled Cops and Convicts: An Exploratory Field Study of Jurymandering. The author did an excellent job at surveying the states to see what the juror exclusion policies are for felons and law enforcement officers. He also does a good job at describing the issues surrounding the current practices and suggesting that corrective measures that should be taken. The abstract to the article states:
Forty-nine states, the federal government, and the District of Colombia statutorily limit convicted felons’ opportunities to serve as jurors. One of the primary justifications for felon juror exclusion alleges that convicted felons harbor an inherent bias in favor of criminal defendants and are adversarial towards prosecutorial agents. The justification presumes that such a bias would undermine the impartiality of the jury. This exploratory field study builds on prior research examining the pre-trial biases of convicted felons and is the first to assess 1) jurisdictional approaches to law enforcement juror eligibility criteria and 2) the pre-trial biases of law enforcement personnel. To do so, this study surveys 211 active law enforcement personnel using the Revised Juror Bias Scale and compares that data to prior studies of convicted felons’ pre-trial biases. Results indicate that law enforcement personnel, as a group, harbor a pro-prosecution pre-trial bias as strong as the pro-defense pre-trial bias exhibited by convicted felons. Still, while the vast majority of jurisdictions exclude convicted felons from jury service, only a handful bar law enforcement personnel from the venire. These results ostensibly call into question the empirical validity of the inherent bias rationale and the true purpose for felon juror exclusion statutes