Source: https://jurylaw.typepad.com/deliberations/jury_instructions/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 16:19:05+00:00

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I often find myself writing about cases where jury trials were messed up, from badly to horribly, and appellate courts forgave -- or didn't see -- the problem.
"This case must be retried on facts"
State v. Stanley on December 12, a drunk driving case where the deliberating jury asked whether it was still "operating" if the defendant got into a car when the motor was already running. Quoting a prior case, State v. Proegler, the trial court told them that "operation" meant “either when a defendant starts the motor and/or leaves it running.” The court of appeals said that facts mattered, and that Mr. Proegler in the prior case had admittedly driven to the place where police found him. Stanley's case was different: "We do not read the statute or the Proegler case to include as operators passengers who slide into the driver’s seat of a running vehicle and fall asleep."
State v. Champlain on December 5, where the defendant had to sit through trial -- and write notes to his lawyer -- wearing a visible "armband taser device." The court held that it was not only ineffective assistance for his lawyer not to object, but that the trial court should have determined whether the armband was necessary even without an objection.
State v. Cooper on December 4, where the state used a "show-up" identification that should have been suppressed under the Wisconsin Supreme Court's 2005 State v. Dubose case. Dubose was decided after Cooper's trial judge had ruled that the identification would be admitted, but before Cooper's trial. The court of appeals held that Cooper's counsel was ineffective for not asking for reconsideration of that ruling after Dubose came down, and that anyway the trial court should have granted postconviction motions based on Dubose.
The expert's testimony insinuated, without any basis, that Burton was a part of the gang culture, if not actually a member of a gang. It recast the case as being about gang retaliation or gang culture, anathema to the reasonable citizen, when there was no evidence that the shootings were gang crimes. Not only that, the testimony also purported to explain away the inconsistencies of witnesses simply because gangs infested the neighborhood in which the witnesses lived. If this had any probative value, which we doubt, it was far outweighed by prejudice. Ascribing the purported motivations or truth-telling tendencies of an entire neighborhood to one of its residents is not an acceptable form of impeachment. This case must be retried based on facts, rather than insinuation or stereotyping.
Another court in another state -- or here, on another day -- might have steered these cases toward a finding of harmless error, waiver, or some other way to salvage the trial, citing the burden on society when trials have to be done twice. There's a place for those arguments sometimes, but they're overused. I can personally report that life is going on as usual in Wisconsin even though these trials will be repeated. And a different burden on society -- the one we bear when nobody cares what juries see and hear -- is lifted.
How Do You Say Fifth Amendment?
You are instructed that our law provides that the failure of the defendant to testify shall not be taken as a circumstance against him, and during your deliberations you must not allude to, comment on, or discuss the failure of the defendant to testify in this cause, nor will you refer to or discuss any matter not before you in evidence.
Mark says, what failure? "How is it even conceivable that we should allow a court, when talking to jurors, to describe a defendant's election not to testify -- the exercise of one of the rights that we, as defenders, hold sacred -- as a 'failure'?" Jamie asks what other states do: "Any of you out of staters have better jury instructions for this?" The comments to Mark's post offer variations used in a few other states.
"The absolute constitutional right not to testify."
A defendant in a criminal case has the absolute constitutional right not to testify.
The defendant's decision not to testify must not be considered by you in any way and must not influence your verdict in any manner.
The [A] defendant has an absolute right not to testify. The fact that the [a] defendant did not testify should not be considered by you in any way in arriving at your verdict.
You'd like to see something in there about why the right is in the Constitution and why we hold it sacred, but of course defense lawyers are free to argue that.
Does it make a difference, that little word "failure"? I don't know of specific research. But if the human mind is so susceptible to vocabulary that simply hearing words like Florida, gray, wrinkle, lonely, and bingo can make us suddenly feel so old that we walk more slowly than normal, you can't rule it out.
The jurors found zero dollars in lost sales or lost good will, but they decided to award attorney fees. To calculate attorney fees, they each estimated what they thought the plaintiffs had spent based on their own experience, and they averaged the number to reach a verdict of $19,250,000.
So sayeth the three jurors who filed affidavits after last month's big verdict for Procter & Gamble against Amway distributors who spread a rumor that P&G's logo was a satanic symbol.
The affidavits are attached to the defendants' brief asking for an "immediate inquiry into possible jury misconduct." The jurors shouldn't have awarded attorney fees, the defendants argue, and they shouldn't have averaged their individual damage figures -- an impermissible "quotient verdict" -- for any purpose. Law.com picked up the story, including the defendants' allegation (unsupported by the affidavits so far as I can tell) that the jurors had counted the lawyers at counsel table in calculating fees.
Since it came out, I've heard skilled lawyers talking about the case as an example of the jury system gone wrong. To me it's a better example of how thoroughly lawyers forget how our brains used to work before we were lawyers.
If you've seen ten mock juries deliberate, I bet you've seen some form of a quotient or compromise verdict. Why do they do it? Why wouldn't they?
Think about it. Outside the courtroom, we use "quotient verdicts" every day. When you split the difference with the used car salesman to reach a price, you've averaged your two positions to get a fair result -- a quotient verdict. Every "split the difference" settlement agreement is a quotient verdict. When your kid wants to stay up 20 more minutes, you start at five, and you end up at twelve and a half, you've reached a quotient verdict. We've been taught since childhood that finding a midpoint among different positions is a fair and honorable way to reach agreement.
The verdict must represent the collective judgment of the jury. In order to return a verdict, it is necessary that each juror agree to it. Your verdict must be unanimous.
It is your duty, as jurors, to consult with one another and to deliberate with a view to reaching an agreement if you can do so without violence to individual judgment. Each of you must decide the case for yourself, but do so only after an impartial consideration of the evidence in the case with your fellow jurors. In the course of your deliberations, do not hesitate to re-examine your own views and change your opinion if convinced it is erroneous. But do not surrender your honest conviction as to the weight or effect of evidence solely because of the opinion of your fellow jurors for the mere purpose of returning a unanimous verdict.
You and I read that instruction as prohibiting averaging, majority votes, and so on. But it doesn't say that. A smart, honest juror could easily decide that a time-honored consensus tool like averaging is a fair way to get unanimous agreement "without violence to individual judgment."
Attorney fees are "out of pocket costs," aren't they?
Any other factors that bear on Procter & Gamble’s actual damages.
Any damages you award must have a reasonable basis in the evidence. In determining damages, the difficulty or uncertainty in ascertaining or measuring the precise amount of any damages does not preclude recovery, and the jury should use its best judgment in determining the amount of such damages, if any, based upon the evidence. You may not, however, determine damages by speculation or conjecture.
You are to consider only the evidence in the case. But in your consideration of the evidence you are not limited to what you see and hear as the witnesses testify. You are permitted to draw, from the facts you find have been proved, such reasonable inferences as seem justified in light of your experience.
Inferences are deductions or conclusions which reason and common sense lead the jury to draw from facts which have been established by the evidence in the case.
If you don't believe me, try it yourself. Read those instructions, without emphasis, to any ten smart nonlawyers. Tell them P&G didn't prove lost sales, but that the defendants did spread the rumor, and P&G had been litigating this case for more than a decade in its claimed effort to set the record straight. Give your jurors copies of the instructions, and if they have questions, tell them they need to look at the instructions again. (If you want to add extra realism, wait a couple of hours before you tell them.) I'm guessing you'll find at least three who think they can award attorney fees, rely on their own experience to do it, and average their views on what a fair award should be.
There was a curse in the Utah Procter/Amway case, and it wasn't satanic; it was the Curse of Knowledge. To lawyers and judges, it's obvious that attorney fees aren't usually part of damages, that jurors' own experiences with attorney charges aren't evidence, and that jurors aren't supposed to average verdicts. It's so obvious that we forget to tell the jury.
In 1997 the New York Times ran a good history of the P&G/Amway satanic rumor saga, two decades old even then. It's subscription only.
For an overview of the legal landscape faced by the defendants in this motion, a New York University Law Review note by Benjamin Huebner is a great start. In a nutshell, Federal Rule of Evidence 606 restricts the use of juror affidavits to challenge verdicts except as to "(1) whether extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury's attention, (2) whether any outside influence was improperly brought to bear upon any juror, or (3) whether there was a mistake in entering the verdict onto the verdict form." In 1987, the Supreme Court held in Tanner v. United States that a predecessor rule kept juror affidavits out when they merely impugned juror conduct, even when that conduct extended to the outright bacchanalia described in the affidavits in that case.

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