Court Opinion

ID: 9753915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:35:04.692425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:45.141008
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Boic:
I concur because the Majority has held that the notes made by the jurors during trial were not taken by them to the jury room and hence that there was no prejudicial error. But I must say a word in order to preserve my position in the event a later case may face reversal because such notes were taken out and not surrendered to the court, as here.
I am happy to see that the taking of notes during trial has now been sanctioned by the Majority, or at least left to the discretion of the trial judge, pending a show of prejudice. This is an advance on Thornton v. Weaber, 380 Pa. 590 (1955), 112 A. 2d 344, whose reasons for frowning on the practice are good examples of the twelve-year-old mentality we ascribe in one breath to the average juror. In another breath we expect of him prodigious feats of memory and absorption, *226for in a first degree murder case and in many complex civil cases we douse Mm with a kettleful of law that would make a third-year law student blanch. The juror who makes notes might remember nothing of importance without them, and as for what we are so fearful may occur in the jury room, we should be content to let the curtain of secrecy which we draw around the general verdict include the notes as part of the process; a moment’s reflection should indicate that the use of them during deliberation may or may not have any effect.
In any event, it is my view that jurors should be regarded as the ordinary human beings they are, that they should be allowed to do what is most helpful to them in the effort to do the best they can, and that they should be treated as neither geniuses nor morons.