How do Juries decide?

There are 12 people on a Jury. The defense lawyer can object to individual jurors participating if they believe that they will be biased against their client. At the outset the Judge will usually give the jury a warning that if they know anything about the case or know anyone connected with the case (e.g. they know a witness or police officer) they cannot serve on the jury.
Juries take their responsibilities usually very seriously. Adjudicating on issues like guilt or innocence can mean the difference between acquittal or conviction and in some States, between life or death.
However, juries are made up of people and people are not always rational. Despite the best efforts of lawyers sometimes unsuitable people get to serve on juries and may exert a negative influence on other jurors.
Biased jurors are often “weeded out” during the pre-trial selection process. The reasons for this are clear. For example, if the case before the court involves a bank robbery, it is vital that the defense would seek to exclude any potential juror who works in a bank. Such people might not be very sympathetic to a defendant accused of robbing a bank.
Each jury has a jury “foreperson”. This person is selected from among the jurors themselves. This jury foreperson will eventually be tasked with telling the court what the verdict of the jury is.
Juries must listen to the evidence before the court and only take into account the evidence that they have heard during the trial. They cannot take into account things that may not have been said in evidence and they are prohibited from talking to any non-jury persons if the trial recesses for the day.
Also, they are warned by the Judge that they may not resort to social media, the internet or other media entities to try to find out something about the witnesses in the case, any of the police officers involved or the defendant themselves.
If the defendant has previous convictions the jury is not told about this unless they decide to convict them. The rationale behind this is fairly sensible: if the jury were told that the person before them had quite a few convictions in the past, the jury might be more easily inclined to believe that they committed this offence too, given his previous bad record.



Is going to court scary?

Yes, appearing in court can be very daunting. There are a number of reasons for this but one of them is the portrayal of court by the media over the years.
Court is portrayed on TV and movies as an acrimonious place filled with angry (always angry) lawyers who routinely shout at one another and denounce witnesses.
This is nonsense. While some lawyers do behave foolishly at times (something exacerbated by the presence of TV in courtrooms) most do not engage in this sort of conduct because it is unprofessional and also because the courtroom is seen as the domain of the Judge. The Judge is the one person who runs their court and most will not usually cede this power to any lawyer. Think about Judge Judy, maybe the most famous judge in the world. Do you think she would allow a male lawyer to badger a witness in her court? Exactly.
As the vast majority of people have never picked up so much as a parking ticket in their lives, the thought of having to appear in a place that they have only ever experienced vicariously through unrealistic TV shows is understandably unnerving.

Patrick Horan is an Irish lawyer and is not licensed to practice law anywhere outside of the Republic of Ireland at the moment. The information that he presents here is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be seen as legal advice. If you have queries about legal issues in New York you should speak with a licensed criminal lawyer


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