Essay Response: A Jury of our Fears
In A Jury of Our Fears, Judge Harold J. Rothwax argues convincingly that the American jury system is plagued with several serious problems. Chief among them, compulsory jury service enforcement, the incomprehensible requirement in almost every state and the federal court system for unanimous jury verdicts, despite not being required by the Constitution; and the corruption of peremptory challenges in jury selection through Rothwax explains that compulsory jury service is not a particularly effective means of establishing jury pools, partly because the juror summons is largely unenforced and partly because it relies on methods that ignore large segments of the population. Since most jurisdictions rely on voting registration lists to establish their jury pools, it automatically ignores most nonvoters, which may be a very substantial percentage in The fact that compliance with juror summonses are almost entirely unenforced means that many of the most intelligent and educated potential jurors eliminate themselves from consideration by ignoring the summons, while a much higher percentage of the less educated and politically savv
Rothwax argues that nothing is gained by coercing the lone holdout by the power of intimidation and social pressure where those factors do result in a unanimous verdict. y respond out of fear of the illusory consequences of shirking their civic responsibility. More importantly, much is lost every time a single irrational holdout refuses to reverse himself and causes a mistrial against the strong weight of evidence. Allowing psychological experts into the process changes everything; instead of eliminating jurors predisposed to specific verdicts before trial in favor of those able to consider evidence objectively, the system now enables lawyers to eliminate jurors able to consider evidence objectively for jurors purposely selected because everything about them indicates to a psychological expert, precisely, that they are predisposed before trial to render a specific verdict. One of the solutions suggested by Rothwax is to expand the pool of potential jurors by adding drivers license registration to include many nonvoters. The introduction of highly paid psychologists and sociologists into the process as jury consultants undermines the very purpose of requiring a representative cross section of society in the first place. One of the author's most insightful criticisms is that the inclusion of extensive questionnaires and expert jury consultants incorporated into the process of voir dire. As is the case with many other social concepts and legal evolution that the Framers could never have envisioned, the modern incarnation of the voir dire system has changed the very nature of those proceeding from a mechanism designed to prevent bias to a mechanism that sometimes ensures bias for the party likely to benefit from it. Another possible solution to that would solve many of the individual problems highlighted by the author would be replacing compulsory jury duty with a system of professional juries. Professional juries could all be qualified by voir dire-type proceedings of a general nature, well in advance of any trial, as part of the process of evaluating their candidacy for the position. Now, over a decade after Rothwax wrote the essay, the integration of computers into society would make it even easier than the author envisioned to implement that particular method of addressing this criticism. Rothwax is entirely correct: the voir dire system with its peremptory challenges was intended to eliminate jurors who were already predisposed to one verdict or the other before hearing any evidence by virtue of their prior beliefs or prejudices. As Rothwax points out, the original intent behind the voir dire phase of trials and peremptory challenges was to ensure that cases would be heard, evidence would be considered, and verdicts would be issued by unbiased juries. Rothwax is absolutely right, and the simplest way to incorporate his suggestion would be to do away with this requirement.
Common topics in this essay:
Harold Rothwax,
voir dire,
jury consultants,
peremptory challenges,
expert jury consultants,
compulsory jury,
expert jury,
consider evidence,
compulsory jury service,
unanimous jury verdicts,
voir dire system,
consider evidence objectively,
dire system,
juries qualified,
requiring unanimity,
professional juries,
|
Acceptance Essays
