Verdict on how juries work revealed

The inner workings of the jury room have been revealed in a ground-breaking West Australian study that has produced some worrying findings, including one case of a juror agreeing to convict a person because he wanted to go home.

Post-trial interviews and surveys of 969 jurors by academic Judith Fordham also found evidence of jurors being intimidated in some trials by either the accused and their supporters or the victim and their supporters.

The criminal barrister and now Associate Professor in Forensic Science at Murdoch University produced the study after being granted unprecedented access to jurors by the West Australian government. Jury room deliberations are usually a closely guarded secret, with laws across the nation making it illegal for the media to procure information from jurors.

Associate Professor Fordham said that although the study was restricted to West Australian juries, she expected her findings would apply in other states.

The study, Bad Press: Does the Jury Deserve It, found there were several reports of jurors and juries "in real difficulty" because people wanted to go home, and some jurors regretted how they had voted.

"Clearly different verdicts may have been arrived at, had a jury not experienced this problem," the paper says.

In one case not identified, a surveyed juror said the forewoman essentially brokered a deal on the last night of deliberations because another jury member wanted to go home to his child.

According to the surveyed juror, the forewoman told the father that if he wanted to see his child he would have to vote guilty.

"It still brings a shiver down my spine, and to this day I don't know if that guy was guilty or not really, but that's the way it ended up. He was convicted," the surveyed juror said.

Associate Professor Fordham told Legal Affairs it was a real concern that some juries rushed their decisions. "A rushed decision cannot be a just decision," she said. "Jurors should be able to take all the time they need."

Associate Professor Fordham said the issue could be reasonably easy to solve through strategies such as judges not sending juries out on a Friday afternoon, and keeping strict 9am to 5pm hours, regardless of what stage deliberations were at.

She has also suggested having a professional facilitator to help structure discussions. She said this would ensure that all jurors were heard, minimise inappropriate pressure, and help juries reach a consensus.

A separate report specifically on jury intimidation has also been produced but the results cannot be revealed until released by state Attorney-General Christian Porter later this year.

Associate Professor Fordham reveals in the current paper that there has been juror intimidation, although this was not a common finding and the type of intimidation is not detailed.

"In most instances, jurors were not influenced by the intimidation into voting a different way from that which their dispassionate consideration of the evidence would dictate," Associate Professor Fordham said.

The research found "almost no evidence" of the media influencing the verdict.

But it did find that some jurors, ignoring instructions from the judge, do their own investigating. In one case a juror created a model of a scene involving a car, and in another case a juror went to the scene of the crime.

Associate Professor Fordham stressed that although occasionally things went wrong, juries overall did a very good job.

She said claims that juries allowed emotions to influence decisions, and that they struggled to understand the evidence, were justified in only a minority of cases.

Most jurors could identify prejudice in themselves, and took very seriously judicial directions to put this aside.

The overwhelming majority of jurors surveyed said their verdict was the right one because it was based on evidence.

It was also revealed that juries were not able to ask the questions they desperately wanted answered by witnesses, and Associate Professor Fordham said it was worth considering whether juries should be allowed to do this in writing via the judge.

"This would ensure the jury understood that evidence as well as possible," she said.

New laws reforming the jury system in Western Australia are currently being drafted, and Mr Porter said these would clamp down on the number of people excused from jury duty and restrict lawyer challenges to potential jurors.

He said Associate Professor Fordham's research and a paper released this week by the state's Law Reform Commission would be considered before the changes were introduced.

The commission's recommendations include raising the age of eligible jurors to 75 and removing the automatic right of exemption for emergency service workers and health professionals.

Article courtesy of Debbie Guest, The Australian.