Opinion ID: 2590536
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reasons to Prohibit Juror Questioning

Text: The defendants in these cases claim that allowing jurors to ask questions undermines the traditional role of the jury. First, they argue that the practice encourages the jury to decide facts and form opinions about the case before all of the evidence is presented. Second, it allows the prosecution to restructure its case according to the questions asked. Juror questioning also can put counsel in the awkward position of choosing between objecting to a juror's question, and risk antagonizing a juror, or choosing not to object because he wants to keep the juror on his side despite the effect that a failure to object would have on appeal. These arguments were adopted in large part by the Minnesota Supreme Court in State v. Costello . That court reasoned that juror questioning encourages jurors to create a tentative opinion of the case before all the evidence is presented. This creates the risk that jurors will draw conclusions or settle on a given legal theory before the parties have completed their presentations, and before the court has instructed the jury on the law of the case. Costello, 646 N.W.2d at 211 (quoting Morrison, 845 S.W.2d at 887). Second, the court concluded that the practice can upset the burden of production and persuasion in a criminal case. Id. at 212. These concerns, while theoretically plausible, were not verified in the scholarly work which has examined juror questioning. Professors Steven Penrod and Larry Heuer conducted two separate empirical studies where they solicited data from judges, lawyers, and jurors about the impact that juror questioning had on the trial. Steven D. Penrod & Larry Heuer, Tweaking Commonsense Assessing Aids to Jury Decision Making, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 259 (1997) (hereinafter Tweaking Commonsense ); Larry Heuer & Steven Penrod, Increasing Juror Participation in Trials Through Note Taking and Question Asking, 79 Judicature 256 (1996) (hereinafter Increasing Participation ); see also Nicole L. Mott, The Current Debate on Juror Questions:  To Ask Or Not To Ask, That Is The Question , 78 Chi.-Kent L.Rev. 1099 (2003) (discussing, and confirming, results of Heuer and Penrod studies). One of the Heuer and Penrod studies examined the effects of juror questioning in 29 courtrooms in Wisconsin and the other study solicited input from 103 courtrooms in 33 different states around the United States. These studies, based on empirical evidence, concluded that the purported harmful consequences of juror questioning are wholly unsupported by the data and that the effects of [juror questioning are] really rather innocuous. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 280; see also Increasing Participation, 79 Judicature at 261. In addition to these two studies, this court also commissioned a study which followed 239 randomly selected trials in Colorado which participated in the Juror Reform Pilot Project. This study gathered empirical evidence from the selected trials and culminated in a report which found that juror questioning had little negative effect on the impact of trial proceedings and may improve courtroom dynamics. Mary Dodge, Should Jurors Ask Questions in Criminal Cases? A Report Submitted to the Colorado Supreme Court's Jury System Committee (Fall 2002), available at http://www.courts. state.co.u s/supct/ committees/jury reformdocs/dodge report.pdf (hereinafter Dodge Report ). With respect to the assertion that juror questioning encouraged jurors to decide facts and form opinions about the case, the data collected by Heuer and Penrod demonstrated that juror questioning did not impact the verdicts given and that jurors' questions were only modestly helpful come deliberation time. These findings, they concluded, contradicted the general assertion that jurors become advocates rather than remain neutral and that juror questions did not have a prejudicial effect on the trial. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 278-79. This same result was realized in the Dodge Report which also concluded that juror questioning does not influence jury verdicts and that factors other than juror questions ultimately influenced the outcome. Dodge Report at 13. Heuer and Penrod also found that juror questions were not very helpful in getting jurors to the truth and that judges and attorneys both agreed that juror questions did not provide useful information of the jury's thinking. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 275. Nor did questions alert counsel to issues requiring further development. Increasing Participation, 79 Judicature at 260. In Colorado, while the Dodge Report noted that juror questions provided attorneys with information about what evidence may have confused the jurors, the findings also indicated that juror questions did not help either side achieve a particular result. Dodge Report at 26-29. Thus, according to the data accumulated from these empirical studies, jury questions did not cause either party to restructure its case according to the questions asked. These studies also discredit the defendants' arguments that a juror may become antagonistic to one side should counsel object to his question. The majority of the jurors in the Heuer and Penrod studies who asked questions stated that they were not embarrassed or angry when counsel objected and that they typically understood the basis for the objection. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 277; Increasing Participation, 79 Judicature at 260. Nor does the data suggest that attorneys shied away from objecting to questions. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 276-77; Increasing Participation, 79 Judicature at 260. The findings showed that the attorneys and judges did not believe that juror questioning caused the jury to become prejudiced against a particular side. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 278; Increasing Participation, 79 Judicature at 260. Again, the Dodge Report corroborates these findings. Judges and Attorneys did not report unfavorable reactions from jurors when a question was declined. Dodge Report at 24. Furthermore, the majority of jurors reported that they did not have an adverse reaction when their questions were not asked. Id. at 38. These studies all agreed that juror questioning encourages jurors to become more engaged in the trial and attentive to witnesses. It also promotes juror understanding of the facts and issues of the case. Tweaking Commonsense, 3 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. at 274; Dodge Report at 2. In addition, the data shows that the act of asking a question does not necessarily transform an otherwise passive juror into an advocate. [13] As with any empirical analysis, these studies cannot provide a conclusive answer to the issue we confront. However, what we can learn from these studies is that the empirical data does not support the argument that juror questions are per se unconstitutional. We should therefore not wholly dismiss the value of juror questioning. Thus, we agree with the Supreme Court of Vermont which dismissed the assertion that a juror may become biased if allowed to ask a question because this argument trades a speculative increase in neutrality for a likely reduction in juror comprehension of the evidence. Doleszny, 844 A.2d at 785. The rationales which the Minnesota and Texas Courts have used as reasons to disallow jury questions are not supported by the empirical studies. More importantly, those courts which prohibit the practice have based their decisions primarily upon policy reasons and not upon constitutional grounds. See Costello, 646 N.W.2d at 214 n. 14 (Because juror questioning of witnesses is proscribed under our supervisory power, we need not reach Costello's constitutional claims.) These jurisdictions do not provide empirical support for their policy conclusions, but rather base their decisions to prohibit jury questions on possibilities and speculation regarding factual scenarios not present in the cases before them. [14] With this understanding of the history and broad support recognizing that juror questioning of witnesses does not violate a defendant's right to a fair trial and may provide actual benefits to the trial process, we now address whether the Colorado Constitution prohibits juror questioning in all criminal cases.