It’s no secret jury trials are declining across America, even as they are increasing in other parts of the world. What’s less obvious, though, is why that decline is occurring and how alternate means of resolving cases are impacting perceptions of fairness.
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Facing unusual circumstances including a case tried during the pandemic, a team of plaintiff lawyers from Yosha Cook & Tisch secured a multi-million-dollar victory for their personal-injury clients. The total verdict reached $20 million, adjusted by a fault reduction for a net win of $12.2 million.
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“I knew that I was the first trial and that if I screwed up, nobody else would get to go, so I wanted these people to be comfortable,” Lake Superior Judge Bruce Parent said. Parent and others shared their perspectives on the first Indiana jury trial permitted after court proceedings were suspended due to the pandemic.
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As Hoosier trial courts prepare for the return of in-person proceedings with COVID-19 precautions, many unanswered questions remain about the best practices for safely conducting jury trials.
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The longtime host of “The Late Show with David Letterman” found himself answering questions rather than asking them when a federal judge in New York City put the entertainer through an audition of sorts for a possible role as a juror in a criminal trial.
Here are some insights on how well your case plays to jurors and how they understand and interpret case facts to arrive at a verdict.
Judge Sidney H. Stein said jurors were trapped in an elevator for several minutes during what was supposed to be a 10-minute late-afternoon break that lasted almost a half hour.
A trial court must hold an evidentiary hearing to determine how familiar a potential juror in a medical malpractice case was with a doctor who was called an expert for the defense, the Court of Appeals of Indiana has ruled.
An appeals court in South Carolina is allowing Alex Murdaugh to ask a judge to throw out his murder convictions and life sentence and get a new trial after his lawyers accused the court clerk in his trial of influencing the jury.
The two casts of The Point Theater’s “12 Angry Jurors” got the chance to visit a real courtroom and jury deliberation room and learned more about what it’s like to be a real juror in the courtroom.
The Court of Appeals of Indiana relied on controlling precedent to affirm a lower court’s ruling that three prospective Cass County jurors could remain fair and impartial even after they heard prejudicial statements made against a defendant.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a man’s claims of racial bias in jury selection for his felon in possession of a weapon case and affirmed a lower court’s ruling Wednesday.
A bill that would double the pay for people who show up for jury selection and are chosen to serve passed out of the Indiana Senate on Monday.
As it stands now, the pay to show up for jury selection is $15 per day. Those chosen to serve on a jury earn $40 per day, which comes out to $5 an hour for an eight-hour day. Legislation making its way through the Statehouse would double that pay.
Hoosiers haven’t seen a pay increase for jury duty in at least two decades, but that could change — even double — under a bill advancing steadily through the Statehouse.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers proposed legislation making it easier to send convicts to death row by eliminating a unanimous jury requirement in capital punishment sentencing.
A jury for the trial of an Indiana man accused of killing two teenage girls from Delphi nearly six years ago will be selected from a northern Indiana county of over 300,000 people, online court filings on Tuesday showed.
Jurors for the trial of an Indiana man accused of killing two teenage girls from Delphi will be brought from one of two counties north of the location where the murder occurred, attorneys in the case decided Friday.
Jurors at the trial of an Indiana man accused of killing two teenage girls nearly six years ago will be selected from outside the county where the crime took place, a judge said Friday.
An inmate who used a makeshift weapon to fatally attack another inmate did not convince the Court of Appeals of Indiana that his murder conviction should be reversed.
Given that the purpose of voir dire is to determine whether prospective jurors can be fair and impartial, shouldn’t denying a defendant the opportunity to directly question them be recognized as a violation of their rights?
A woman holding more than a decadelong grudge against a former sheriff cannot shake her conviction for felony stalking after she berated the man and followed him around town for years.
The information learned during voir dire will, of course, inform the parties’ actions regarding peremptory and causal challenges. In addition, it provides some insight about individual jurors ultimately seated on the jury, the overall composition of the jury and individuals who have a higher probability of serving as the foreperson.
Prosecutors and judges see no evidence that Capitol rioters can’t get a fair trial in the district and believe the process of weeding out biased jurors is working. Judges presiding over Jan. 6 cases have consistently rejected requests to move trials, saying the capital has plenty of residents who can serve as fair jurors.