The week was full of interest for jury watchers and trial lawyers:
1. Helping jurors with sad facts. In courtrooms all over the country at any given time, jurors struggle with nightmarish evidence. This week alone, in addition to the "typical" shootings and graft (which ought to be sad enough), jurors heard about, and saw pictures of:
- Not one but two killings where the victim was dismembered. Tearful jurors returned a guilty verdict in the Daphne Wright trial in South Dakota, while jury selection began in the Wisconsin trial of Brendan Dassey, Steven Avery's alleged accomplice in the killing of Teresa Halbach.
- A high school senior who was gang raped and killed, and her boyfriend who was stabbed and left to die.
- A 4-year-old boy who died tortured and abused by a couple who abandoned his body behind a dirt pile.
And on and on. In this week's Jur-E Bulletin, Anne Skove lists services some state courts offer to help jurors after the trauma of these trials, and notes a bill pending in Texas (discussed here in TIME magazine) to require and fund jury counseling. Skove's list is "an entirely unscientific survey," but it may help you get counseling for jurors in an individual case.
2. Phrasing "reasonable doubt." A different TIME magazine article, "The Benefit of Doubt," discusses how different phrasing of the reasonable doubt standard in jury instructions can change the jury's understanding of their task. "[T]he way most courts define "beyond a reasonable doubt" seems to place the burden on the defendant to show a weakness in the prosecution's arguments," says the article, and continues:
Probably the best option would be to shift the inquiry from whether the prosecution's case evokes doubt to whether it is persuasive. [Brooklyn Law professor Lawrence] Solan suggests that jurors be "firmly convinced" of guilt, a phrase that focuses on the government's task (to persuade) rather than a defendant's (to create doubt). Several states and federal circuits have adopted similar wording.
3. Lots of good stuff. Evan Schaeffer's Illinois Trial Practice Weblog is as usual full of resources and thoughts for trial lawyers this week:
- An essay on using body language and inflection in cross-examination. You can "ask" questions you wouldn't be allowed to ask in words, Schaeffer explains.
- A plug for using legal wikis. If you don't know what they are, read the post and get one. After a kind tip from Boston IP lawyer Brandy Karl (who has her own blog too), I'm using a wiki to manage planned links and posts for this site, and it has saved my life.
- Thoughts on resources to be found for both criminal and civil lawyers at the Center for Criminal Justice Advocacy's Criminal Pretrial and Trial Practice website.
4. Memories or inspiration, depending on your year of graduation. The anonymous new lawyer at The Imbroglio had his/her first jury trial, and tells the story: "The good thing is that I no longer have to wonder if I can get through a trial without throwing up on my shoes."
5. A superb live blog. Finishing where I started, with the Daphne Wright dismemberment trial, I hope Chuck Baldwin of the Argus Leader is getting the praise he deserves for his superb trial live blog. The trial was intensely followed -- by the deaf community (both Ms. Wright and the victim, Darlene VanderGiesen, were deaf), by the gay and black communities (Ms. Wright is both), and by a shaken South Dakota region. Every day, through the most horrible evidence, Mr. Baldwin was their resource, bringing curiosity, sensitivity, and (when appropriate) welcome humor to his task. Now that there are so many trial live blogs out there, it's obvious that live blogging is not easy work; they're not all good. This was a great one.
(Photo by Ho John Lee at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hjl/101443399/; license details there.)