Opinion ID: 1951964
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Refusal to Sequester Jury

Text: On February 22, 1996, prior to the commencement of the penalty phase, defense counsel moved to sequester the jury. The impetus for this motion was a new direction that the publicity had taken. The February 21, 1996, edition of the Trentonian contained in bold type the bold headline, Guilty, over a picture of Mr. Harris with a caption, So why's this killer smiling? Because he's seen juror No. 7 crying, and he thinks she'll never go for the death penalty. Several days before, while the jury was deliberating defendant's guilt, a cover page headline said, One Juror Stalls Verdict. Defendant describes this as a clear attempt by the media to seek to influence or intimidate this jury, and, more specifically, to intimidate, by personal attack, a single juror who happened to be a black female. In this context, sequestration of jurors means that jurors would not return to their homes at the end of a day of trial and would be housed by the court, take all meals, and receive outside information under the supervision of court officers. See Marcy Strauss, Sequestration, 24 Am. J.Crim. L. 63, 66 (1996). This is not to be confused with the sequestration of witnesses, the practice of not allowing prospective witnesses to hear the testimony of other witnesses, the theory being that the witnesses might shape their testimony to that which they have heard. Defendant emphasizes that under our prior death-penalty practice, sequestration of the jury was required at all times in capital cases. State v. Pontery, 19 N.J. 457, 479, 117 A. 2d 473 (1955) (Heher, J., concurring). It was not until September 5, 1972, that judges were permitted to disperse a criminal jury during deliberations. Pressler, Current N.J. Court Rules, comment 3 on R. 1:8-6 (1998). The Sub-Committee on Jury Deliberations of this Court's Criminal Procedure Committee, which recommended the 1972 rule change, suggested that sequestration after commencement of deliberations be a discretionary decision for the trial court based on such factors as the nature of the case, the identity of the defendant, the length of the trial, and the kind of public interest evidenced on the day and the hour when deliberations begin. More importantly, the Committee recommended that the presumption against sequestration, which applies during the course of the trial, not carry over to the deliberations phase. Ibid. We acknowledge that sequestration was once considered the norm during jury deliberations in criminal cases, where the need to protect jurors from the outside influences of pretrial publicity was a constant. Allen, supra, 73 N.J. at 155, 373 A. 2d 377 (Pashman, J., concurring). Yet, sequestration did not originate as a means of preserving juror impartiality. Rather than to protect the defendant by keeping the deliberating jurors from being improperly influenced by contacts with or communication from outside sources, it appears that the purpose of the ancient common law practice of keeping the jurors locked up without food or drink and sometimes without heat and light until they have reached a verdict was simply to force them to agree. [Strauss, supra, 24 Am. J.Crim. L. at 70-71.] Because trials then generally lasted less than a day, this ancient requirement was less onerous in practice than may appear on first glance. Id. at 71. The trend of modern decisions seems to be constantly tapering off from the ancient idea that the confinement of the jury in a criminal case is a prerequisite to insure an uninfluenced verdict. Id. at 72. The principal reason for the decline in sequestration is the burden it imposes on the judicial system and on jurors themselves. Sequestration has been described as a glorified prison, where [e]very contact to the outside world is censored, and where [e]verything the sequestered jury reads, hears, and sees is monitored. Christo Lassiter, TV or Not TVThat Is The Question, 86 J.Crim. L. & Criminology 928, 986 (1996). Such conditions can cause feuding among jurors and can motivate jurors to rush their deliberations. Id. at 985-86. In addition, even a short sequestration will reduce the number of potential jurors because the prospect of sequestration will deter many potential jurors from serving. Id. at 985. In one highly publicized case, ninety-five percent of the nearly 4500 potential jurors said that sequestration would impose a prohibitive hardship. Mark Hansen, Sequestration: Little Used, Little Liked: Tensions on Simpson Jury Could be Symptom of Record Confinement, 81 A.B.A.J. 16, 17 (Oct. 1995). Sequestration has thus been viewed as a drastic remedy [that] cannot be recommended lightly. United States v. Simon, 664 F.Supp. 780, 794 (S.D.N.Y.1987), aff'd sub nom. In re Application of Dow Jones & Co., 842 F. 2d 603 (2d Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Dow Jones & Co. v. Simon, 488 U.S. 946, 109 S.Ct. 377, 102 L. Ed. 2d 365 (1988). Although the trial court did alert the jurors during orientation that they might be sequestered for several days during deliberations, the court was understandably reluctant to sequester the jury on the basis of the contemporaneous publicity reported in the Trentonian. As near as can be determined from this record, no prejudicial publicity appeared on any of the televised news broadcasts to which the jurors might have been exposed in their homes, nor in any of the other newspapers circulating in the State. The jurors chosen tended not to read the Trentonian. Because the overnight activities of the jurors did not pose a threat of taint and because there is no indication of any actual exposure during the jurors' lunch hours, it was not necessary to sequester the jury.