Court Opinion

ID: 9486256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:42:19.590286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:36.361409
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join without reluctance in the opinion of Chief Judge Posner. I write only because I believe that more should be said about the jury system itself and the testing methods of the late Professor Zeisel.
The jury system continues to be the backbone of the American judicial program. Our faith in the jury is based on our national belief, quite correct in my opinion, that the collective wisdom of twelve people (at least in Illinois and the federal system in criminal cases) produces a far better result in the search for fairness and truth than any individual opinion or even .a consensus of several individual opinions. The hallmark of the jury system is that the jurors do not answer individual questions, the jury itself answers the question (or, in case of special interrogatories, questions) as a group.
Together, the jurors consider the credibility of the witnesses, the meaning and import of the testimony and exhibits, and the meaning and import of the judge’s instructions. They discuss, they argue, they rely on various memories. The group of jurors, from different walks of life, from different life experiences, from different educational levels and frequently from divergent cultural backgrounds, put all their knowledge, memory and intelligence to blend together and answer the ultimate, or penultimate questions. The “examination” questions, the test of the sum of their knowledge, is the verdict or verdicts. It is an open book test with a free exchange of ideas and opinions not only allowed, but required.
With all this in mind, I cannot believe that an accurate test of any jury’s (as opposed to juror’s) understanding of facts or instruction can be measured unless the interchange of ideas among potential jurors is permitted before answering the questions. That is how the jury system works, that is how it should be tested.
And even this system of testing “jury comprehension” leaves out an important step in jury selection: voir dire examination. Here, among other things, the judge and the attorneys are able to evaluate the ability of the jurors to reason, .to comprehend, to understand questions put to them and how they respond. Many jurors are .excused simply because the voir dire demonstrates that they are easily confused or easily swayed by non-significant matters.
All in all, whatever Professor Zeisel’s survey demonstrated about the comprehension of people called for jury service to interpret judicial instructions, it proved little or nothing about the collective ability of a jury to arrive at an intelligent conclusion of fact and interpretation of legal instructions.