Last week, I wrote about the defense team in the recent criminal case against Roger Stone, and their post-conviction focus on the alleged bias of the jury foreperson. More recently, I saw news of a parallel tack being taking...more
The idea of a courtroom trial is that it is a sealed system. The fact-finders arrive in a neutral state of mind, they receive and review only what is vetted and presented in court, and then they deliberate to a verdict...more
At the end of a two-week trial last Spring, in the case of Montone v. City of Jersey City, a federal jury awarded nine former city police officers $2.17 million in a dispute over promotions. Three weeks later, counsel for the...more
Add this one to the list of reasons why sequestering the jury can be a problem, and more generally, to the “Juries can do strange things” category. The night before deliberations, at the end of a five-week murder trial, four...more