The Jury Revisited
Last week we considered the huge gulf between practice here in the United States about speaking out from the jury room. However the gulf goes much wider than that. In particular the amount of information which is known about the composition of the jury and the personal circumstances of jurors.
Here nothing or next to nothing would be known about the jurors. In the United States there is extensive publicity about all sorts of aspects of the jurors, their questionnaires (part of the more detailed examination of jurors in United States which in particular concentrates on matters which may be relevant to the particular trial) and personal details arising from those. US practice is one way or another to ask jurors about matters which might affect their decision making. So in the Spector trial, a case of alleged murder with a handgun where the defence was suggesting suicide, in circumstances where drinking alcohol and drug taking, and views of celebrities were relevant, attitudes to all aspects of those matters were dealt with in questionnaires.
The level of detail that was obtained and then available through new services is difficult to comprehend from a British perspective. Occupations of the jurors. Details of their personal position, or that of their relatives. For example one had a distant cousin who was convicted of being a hired hitman, another had married a convicted murderer. All sorts of details about their experiences of guns (whether for self defence, leisure or in relation to crime: a surprising number had relatives or friends the victims of crime, one had a cousin killed in a drive-by shooting, one had a neighbour who was recently shot, one had a nephew who was shot at some years before, one had two female friends who were raped, one was the victim of an attempted robbery at gunpoint, one had an uncle in another state who was shot whilst apprehending a bank robber). Details of whether they or relatives had been arrested for drink related incidents. Also available were details of their views of celebrities and celebrity trials, and whether defendants should give evidence.
Perhaps the most surprising detail available was that one of the jurors was a journalist who had been detailed to cover the Spector trial as such, before he found himself as one of the jurors. He acknowledged having immersed himself in everything available about the shooting, including information ruled or likely to be ruled inadmissible at the trial. His words about that were that it would be "hard to 'unring the bell.'..... Hard, but not impossible". I cannot conceive that in this country a journalist assigned to a case could then be allowed to serve as a juror.
It is all of course a question of perspective. The US viewpoint would be that their system forces jurors to confront any preconceptions or prejudices, and then allows a realistic view to be taken as to whether they can get a just verdict or not. They would no doubt say that this is far better for all concerned, and avoids any risk of jurors keeping strong views to themselves which would undoubtedly influence their deliberations. Also it would be thought that forcing jurors to confront what they think about the relevant issues would actually assist them to reach a fairer verdict.
Whether this is so or not, the only certainty is that the approach to jurors and publicity between the two jurisdictions seems rather wider than the Atlantic itself.