ABA Guidelines Give Roadmap to Juries for 21st Century

The jury was out for about seven hours following a one-month trial in 1999. The verdict came back in favor of the plaintiff: $30 million.

As they shuffled out of the courtroom, each juror went up to the violinist who was severely injured by a rain and gave her a hug. They knew they had done the right thing.

Ten weeks later, I was in the courtroom again to pick a jury for a woman who was left partially paralyzed after a truck driver took his eyes off of the road to pick up a pear he had dropped. His negligence caused a multi-car crash that left the woman permanently disabled.

Following a two-week trial, the verdict came back for $14 million. Again, each juror hugged the plaintiff as they exited, some of them with tears in their eyes as they heard the wheelchair-bound victim tell the drive she felt sorry for him because of the burden he would have to live with the rest of his life. She died last year.

These back-to-back trials gave me a renewed appreciation for the jury process. I saw jurors trying to do what is right as they struggled to understand the facts as well as follow the law, while juggling the prolonged disruption in their personal and professional lives.

Jury research has always been a preeminent concern of the American Bar Association, so much so that ABA President Robert Grey Jr. initiated the American Jury Project, a 23-member group of judges, lawyers and academicians set upon studying how to make the jury a better experience for plaintiffs and defendants, as well as jurors.

Following much debate and comment, the group’s findings were adopted at the February Midyear Meeting of the ABA House of Delegates. The end product was a single set of model jury principles that can serve as a uniform model for courts around the country.

Grey also appointed a 21-member Commission on the American Jury, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor serving as honorary chair. The charge of the second group is to embark on a national campaign to publicize the efforts of the jury project and to gain its acceptance. New York State Chief Judge Judith Kay, Chicago lawyer Manuel Sanchez and Oscar Criner, jury foreman of the Arthur Andersen obstruction of justice trial in 2002, serve as co-chairs of this next important task. In the Jan. 24^th issue of the New York Law Journal, Judge Kaye dubbed 2005 "The Year of the Jury."

Every lawyer should take a moment to read these principles and the annotated standards and best practices that accompany them. www.abanet.org/juryprojectstandards.

The 19 principles deal with nearly every issue impacting jury service and how justice should be dispensed; some are common sense, other are more controversial. From unanimity to privacy, from note-taking to questioning witnesses, the ABA Principles Relating to Juries and Jury Trials is an impressive work and is something that should be considered by jurisdictions coast to coast. It will "move jury service into the 21^st century," as Grey told the press.

In doing so, jurors really are being transformed from passive observers in the trial process to active participants assuring that justice is being carried out.

We, as a profession, need to do everything possible to make jurors more comfortable with the process and with coming to the right decision for the right reasons. This confidence in the system of justice will necessarily spill over into the public’s perception of what we do as lawyers.

With more than 80,000 civil and criminal jury trials in this country every year and nearly a million Americans empaneled to serve on the, serving as a juror is an unparalleled function of participatory democracy. The ABA commissioned a public opinion poll and found that 75 percent of respondents would prefer to have their cases tried by a jury rather than a judge. that same poll indicated that 75 percent do not consider jury service a burden, and 84 percent see it as an important civic duty that should be met even if is inconvenient.

This overwhelming vote of confidence in trial by jury cannot be ignored. The jury system is the very foundation of who we are as a nation. Every person has a constitutional right to have a dispute resolved by a jury of on’s peers. Its function has evolved from a political one to more of an educational one, reflecting the current attitudes on issues confronting the American public in civil and criminal matters. A jury sets the standard of justice, from cases of corporate fraud to negligence in the operating room.

Lawyers must see to it that we are doing all we can as a profession to set an example for jurors. We must take the time to educate and inspire the public on the workings of the justice system. I hope that the work of the American Jury Project sparks lively debate across the country.