Jury instructions, directions to the jury, or judge's charge are legal rules that jurors should follow when deciding a case. They are a type of jury control procedure to support a fair trial.
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the United States Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has applied the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment.
Jury nullification (US/UK), jury equity (UK), or a perverse verdict (UK) occurs when the jury in a criminal trial gives a not guilty verdict despite a defendant having clearly broken the law. The jury's reasons may include the belief that the law itself is unjust, that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant's case, that the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system. Some juries have also refused to convict due to their own prejudices in favor of the defendant. Such verdicts are possible because a jury has an absolute and unqualified right to reach any verdict it chooses, although they are usually not told of this right in the process of a trial.
Terry Lynn Nichols is an American domestic terrorist who was convicted of being an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. Prior to his incarceration, he held a variety of short-term jobs, working as a farmer, grain elevator manager, real estate salesman, and ranch hand. He met his future co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, during a brief stint in the U.S. Army, which ended in 1989 when he requested a hardship discharge after less than one year of service. In 1994 and 1995, he conspired with McVeigh in the planning and preparation of the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995. The bombing killed 168 people.
Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States about racial discrimination and United States constitutional criminal procedure. Strauder was the first instance where the Supreme Court reversed a state court decision denying a defendant's motion to remove his criminal trial to federal court pursuant to Section 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) is a United States national jury education organization, incorporated in the state of Montana as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. It works to educate citizens on their authority when they serve as jurors. FIJA's stated aims are to educate the public, provide commentary on current jury-related cases, and assist defendants with jury authority strategies — including the right to veto bad laws and the misapplication of laws by refusing to convict the defendant. The organization was formed in 1989 by Larry Dodge, a Montana businessman, and his friend Don Doig. It was formed following discussions about forming such a group at the National Libertarian Party convention in Philadelphia in 1989.
In American and Australian law, the right of peremptory challenge is a right in jury selection for the attorneys to reject a certain number of potential jurors without stating a reason. Other potential jurors may be challenged for cause, i.e. by giving a good reason why they might be unable to reach a fair verdict, but the challenge will be considered by the presiding judge and may be denied. A peremptory challenge can be a major part of voir dire. A peremptory challenge also allows attorneys to veto a potential juror on a "hunch".
Salim Ahmed Hamdan is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008. He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.
Stephen Jones, is an attorney who took on a series of high-profile civil rights cases beginning with his defense of a Vietnam War protester. Jones later represented Timothy McVeigh, and then the fraternity involved in the 2015 University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racism incident.
Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial group are legal in the United States and other countries. While the racial composition of juries is not dictated by law, racial discrimination in the selection of jurors is specifically prohibited. Depending on context, the phrases "all-white jury" or "all-black jury" can raise a host of expectations – among them, as MIT social neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe notes, "the expectation that deliberations may be less than fair."
The Capital Jury Project (CJP) is a consortium of university-based research studies on the decision-making of jurors in death penalty cases in the United States. It was founded in 1991 and is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goal of the CJP is to determine whether jurors' sentencing decisions conform to the constitution and do not reflect the arbitrary decisions the United States Supreme Court found when it ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia. That 1972 Supreme Court decision eliminated the death penalty, which was not reinstated until Gregg v. Georgia in 1976.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, also known as Sami Al-Hussayen, is a teacher at a technical college in Riyadh. As a Ph.D. graduate student in computer science at the University of Idaho in the United States, he was arrested and charged in 2003 by the United States with running websites as a webmaster that were linked to organizations that support terrorism. Al-Hussayen is one of the few people at the time to have been charged under a provision that has been described as "overly broad and vague." He was also charged with immigration violations.
In the United States, jury nullification occurs when a jury in a criminal case reaches a verdict contrary to the weight of evidence, sometimes because of a disagreement with the relevant law. It has its origins in colonial America under British law. The American jury draws its power of nullification from its right to render a general verdict in criminal trials, the inability of criminal courts to direct a verdict no matter how strong the evidence, the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause, which prohibits the appeal of an acquittal, and the fact that jurors cannot be punished for the verdict they return.
United States v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606, was a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that a juror could not be removed from a jury on the ground that the juror was acting in purposeful disregard of the court's instructions on the law, when the record evidence raises a possibility that the juror was simply unpersuaded by the Government's case against the defendants. The case had important implications for secrecy of the jury deliberation process outweighs the ability to dismiss a juror for nullification.
The silent witness rule is the use of "substitutions" when referring to sensitive information in the United States open courtroom jury trial system. An example of a substitution method is the use of code-words on a "key card", to which witnesses and the jury would refer during the trial, but which the public would not have access to. The rule is an evidentiary doctrine that tries to balance the state secrets privilege with the bill of rights. In practice the rule has been rarely used and was often challenged by judges and civil rights advocates. Its use remains controversial.
Grand juries in the United States are groups of citizens empowered by United States federal or state law to conduct legal proceedings, chiefly investigating potential criminal conduct and determining whether criminal charges should be brought. The grand jury originated under the law of England and spread through colonization to other jurisdictions as part of the common law. Today, however, the United States is one of only two jurisdictions, along with Liberia, that continues to use the grand jury to screen criminal indictments.
Don Doig is the co-founder of the non-profit group Fully Informed Jury Association in Montana, which was set up to inform Americans about their rights as jurors as well as personal liberties. He was the national coordinator for the organization. He is associated with the Jefferson River Coalition. He is also a former Libertarian Party candidate. He also wrote He Who Pays the Piper: Federal Funding Of Research, and was an associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
United States v. Susan B. Anthony was the criminal trial of Susan B. Anthony in a U.S. federal court in 1873. The defendant was a leader of the women's suffrage movement who was arrested for voting in Rochester, New York in the 1872 elections in violation of state laws that allowed only men to vote. Anthony argued that she had the right to vote because of the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of which reads, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
