Juror’s Search for Understanding Bumps Her Off Panel

Recently, a juror in the Ronald Woodard murder trial was removed from the panel after she brought to court a glossary of legal terms she found online. Throughout the trial Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain had cautioned jurors not to research or read anything in relation to the case, not even to look up a term in the dictionary.

What is wrong with this picture? Why should the juror be penalized for something that is essentially the lawyers' failing – for whatever reason – to do their job in regards to the jurors? Perhaps the lawyers indeed defined their terms adequately in this case, and the juror was being compulsive, but in truth, I have found repeatedly that lawyers forget how much of their communication is legalese, and how many words have a different meaning in ordinary conversation.

Take negligence, for example. To many lay persons, being negligent has an aspect of deliberateness about it. You know you should put your seat belt on, but you don’t, you’re negligent. So if the surgeon didn’t mean to leave the sponge in the person, it’s probably not negligence. Another example: Lawyers refer to memorializing things. To a lay person, that often means some kind of memorial was created, like a statue or special edict. To opine is frequently confused with “to pine” as in “lament.” I could go on . . .

Bottom line: define your terms, use words your fifteen year old can easily understand and use in a sentence. The jurors will not only thank you for it, they’re more likely to favor your interpretation of the case. After all, it’s the one they understood.

Be Good to Your Jurors: Connect the Dots!

Recently, the foreman of the Blagojevich trial jury, critiqued the U.S. attorneys in the following manner:

“They didn’t impress upon the jury the importance of the different counts and how they related to the six schemes that Rod Blagojevich was charged with. And as a consequence when we went into the deliberation room we were very confused. We didn’t know how to start…it was days before we found the indictment. We didn’t even know that the indictment was in the evidence carts. Once we found that we were elated.” (Chicago Tonight TV show)

The foreperson’s assessment reflects a disturbing comment I hear repeatedly in jury debriefings and in focus groups: the attorneys do not connect their points or evidence to the specifics of the complaint. Furthermore, attorneys rarely fully explain the jury instructions to the jury, tying in those instructions to the attorney’s interpretation of the case.

This leaves jurors in the distress commented on above. They are confused, perturbed, and unable to think in a reasonable manner about the case.

Be good to your jurors. Always make the connection for them, in obvious, preferably visual ways, between the evidence and testimony, and the complaint/cross-complaint. Do the same with the jury instructions.

Experience shows time and again, that the attorney who presents his or her case the most clearly, all else being roughly equal, is the most likely to succeed.