Jury instructions, also known as charges or directions, are a set of legal guidelines given by a judge to a jury in a court of law. They are an important procedural step in a trial by jury, and as such are a cornerstone of criminal process in many common law countries.
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 all but one of this amendment's protections 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 regardless of whether they believe a defendant has 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 right to return any verdict it chooses.
First adopted in 1975, the Federal Rules of Evidence codify the evidence law that applies in United States federal courts. In addition, many states in the United States have either adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence, with or without local variations, or have revised their own evidence rules or codes to at least partially follow the federal rules.
In the law of evidence in the United States, public policy doctrines for the exclusion of relevant evidence encompass several types of evidence that would be relevant to prove facts at issue in a legal proceeding, but which are nonetheless excluded because of public policy concerns. There are five major areas of exclusion that arise out of the Federal Rules of Evidence ("FRE"): subsequent remedial measures, ownership of liability insurance, offers to plead guilty to a crime, offers to settle a claim, and offers to pay medical expenses. Many states have modified versions of the FRE under their own state evidence codes which widen or narrow the public policy exclusions in state courts.
R v Pan; R v Sawyer, [2001] 2 S.C.R. 344 is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on the criminal jury trial system. The Court held that rules against admitting evidence indicating the decision-making process of a jury were constitutional.
United States criminal procedure derives from several sources of law: the baseline protections of the United States Constitution, federal and state statutes; federal and state rules of criminal procedure ; and state and federal case law. Criminal procedures are distinct from civil procedures in the US.
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.
A citizen’s right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution. It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system.
Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that juror testimony could not be used to impeach a jury verdict even when the jury had been consuming copious amounts of alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during the course of the trial.
The representation of women on United States juries drastically increased during the last hundred years because of legislation and court rulings. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, women were routinely excluded from jury service. The push for women's jury rights sparked a debate similar to that surrounding the women's suffrage movement. It permeated the media with arguments for and against. Federal and state court case rulings increased women's participation on juries. Some states allowed women to serve on juries much earlier than others, while also differing on whether women's suffrage also implied women's jury service.
Corey Miller, better known by his stage name C-Murder, is an American rapper. He initially gained fame in the mid-1990s as a part of his brother Master P's label No Limit Records, primarily as a member of the label's supergroup, TRU. Miller went on to release several solo albums of his own through the label, including 1998's platinum Life or Death. C-Murder has released nine albums altogether on six different labels, No Limit Records, TRU Records, Koch Records, Asylum Records, RBC Records, and Venti Uno.
Dietz v. Bouldin, 579 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a federal district court may rescind a discharge order and recall jurors for further service in the same case.
Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. ___ (2017), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that the Sixth Amendment requires a racial bias exception to the no-impeachment rule. According to two jurors, a third juror made a number of biased statements about the defendant's Mexican ethnicity, stating, "I think he did it because he’s Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want." In a 5–3 vote, the Court held that, notwithstanding a state evidentiary rule, the trial court must be permitted to consider the two jurors' testimony.
The no-impeachment rule is a part of U.S. evidence law that generally prohibits jurors from testifying about their deliberations in an attempt to discredit a verdict. Arising in British common law, the rule has come to be implemented in Federal Rule of Evidence (FRE) 606(b) and in each state.
Blueford v. Arkansas, 566 U.S. 599 (2012), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that clarified the limits of the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Supreme Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar retrial of counts that a jury had previously unanimously voted to acquit on, when a mistrial is declared after the jury deadlocked on a lesser included offense.
Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Court's prior decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), which had ruled that jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Ramos did not apply retroactively to earlier cases prior to their verdict in Ramos.
Johnson v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356 (1972), was a court case in the U.S. Supreme Court involving the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana law that allowed less-than unanimous jury verdicts to convict persons charged with a felony, does not violate the Due Process clause. This case was argued on a similar basis as Apodaca v. Oregon.
