Quotes About Jurors

A criminal trial is not a search for truth. It is much too circumscribed for that. Rather, a trial is a formalized contest for the hearts and minds of a panel of twelve. It is a quest for a verdict in which information is selected and screened (we can almost say "processed") before it is allowed to reach jurors.

According to Schafran, many women, including women judges and jurors, "avoid acknowledging their own vulnerability by blaming the victim. This distancing mechanism operates particularly in non-stranger rape cases, because it is in acknowledging the likelihood of these crimes that women jurors feel most at risk.

Jury instructions are so numerous and complex, it's a wonder jurors ever wade through them. And so it should come as no surprise that they can sometimes get stuck along the way. The instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing even to lawyers. And reasonable doubt? That's the hardest, most elusive one of all.

stepped into the witness box to be examined. The defense wanted jurors who empathized with Muybridge—a married man who had a runaway wife, on the one hand, and a man who confronted a sexual rival, on the other.

Because jurors have an extraordinary amount of power over the situation and of the people and the story in front of them, they tend to pay pretty intense attention to what's happening.

So tell me now. Please. Is there anything you've heard today, or anything in your life, your character, that would prevent you from being the open-minded jurors we need you to be?

He had laid out a highly plausible scenario that included a motive, a weapon, opportunity, and perhaps most important, a seemingly false alibi that would cause the jurors to immediately question what Sloane was about to stand and tell them.

When you sit in a natural courtroom, you hear a variety of voices—witnesses, jurors, the judge, bailiffs, etc. There are voices in the courts of Heaven as well, and eight of those are mentioned in Hebrews 12:22-24. In the spiritual dimension of the courts, the last thing mentioned is "the blood that speaks better things than that of Abel.

The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on the slates. What are they doing? Alice whispered to the Gryphon. They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun. They're putting down their names, the Gryphon whispered in reply, for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.

and straightforward language. The researchers concluded that when the witness spoke simply the jurors could evaluate his argument on its merits. But when he was unintelligible, they had to resort to the mental shortcut of accepting his title and reputation in lieu of comprehensible facts. And so, another paradox: experts are sometimes most convincing when we don't understand what they're talking about.

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.

The prospective jurors in the jury room were talking about the case, although they had been ordered not to discuss it. The judge asked what they were saying. "They say she's guilty.

Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer.

A man's shoes said something about his character. Jennifer looked for jurors who wore comfortable shoes, because they were inclined to be easy-going.

In court, jurors are admonished by the judge at every recess not to discuss the case or form any opinions until the case is given to them for deliberations. Of course, there is no such limitation on the public.

The judge denied requests for a venue change despite the fact that the trial would take place in a city that had been wracked with riots, looting and burning over Floyd's death. One of the alternate jurors admitted, "I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again, and I was concerned about people

I do know that jurors in general don't care for ponytails—on either the defendants or the lawyers who represent them.

If the Senate impeachment trial were a real court, all 100 senators would be removed as jurors for bias for or against the president.

What Harry means is, he has a taste for "felonious voyeurism." It happens. Lawyers, judges, cops, and jurors all find themselves titillated from time to time by the stories of violence, drugs, and sex. The criminal side of the law provides a window on the dark side of life that exists nowhere else.

Jurors want courtroom lawyers to have some compassion and be nice.

The impact on future jurors has been documented by studies confirming that negative publicity contributes to negative results.

Book awards - in America, at least - are not like the Oscars. Awards are not cumulative, and in the case of something like the Pulitzers, the jurors often have another goal in mind: sales. They know that the Pulitzer stamp can sell a book.

The jurors appear vaguely stranded and at loose ends, uprooted from their routines and livelihoods.

When jurors are forced to spend day and night with each other, apart from their families and friends, they become a tribe unto themselves. Because they only have each other for company, and because most people prefer harmony to discord, there's a natural desire to cooperate, to compromise in order to reach agreement.