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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 25 2012 @ 09:45 PM EDT |
It seems the answer is as always : It depends.
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1460&context=lawfaculty
People v. Maragh, a New York ruling, is one leading
example of the
regulated approach. In Maragh, the defendant was charged
with killing his
girlfriend by repeatedly striking her in the abdomen,
resulting in substantial
blood loss. The defendant's theory of the case was that
the victim's death
resulted from natural causes brought on by an embolism,
and he introduced
expert testimony to that effect.'" Two of the jurors were
nurses. Together they
concluded that, contrary to the views of the defendant's
expert, the victim's death could have been caused by
beatings. The nurses then shared their theory
with the jury panel. The jury convicted.
In a unanimous opinion, the New York Court of Appeals
overturned the
conviction. The court was troubled by two aspects of the
nurses' conduct. First,
the court found that, by giving their professional opinions
to fellow jurors, the
nurses became unsworn witnesses-witnesses the defendant
was unable to
confront or cross-examine. Second, the court suggested that
"[olther jurors
are likely to defer to the gratuitous injection of
expertise and evaluations by
fellow professional jurors, over and above their own
everyday experiences,
judgment and the adduced proofs at trial.
The Maragh court made clear that the conviction-reversing
error was not a
result of the presence of professional jurors on the panel.
Indeed, the court went
out of its way to make clear that this holding did not mean
that professionals
should be excluded from jury service on cases that contain
factual issues within
their areas of expertise. The court praised the jury reform
movement that led
to the influx of professionals to juries and underscored
that the jury reform
process "plainly contemplates that a class of
professional jurors should
contribute their 'wisdom and life experiences to the
deliberative process."'105
According to the Maragh court, the fatal blunder
occurred not when the
nurses were empaneled, bui when they shared their opinion
with the rest of the
jury.lo6 The court identified three factors that, taken
collectively, constituted
reversible error: the nurse-jurors (1) conducted "personal
specialized assessments
not within the common ken of juror experience and knowledge"
(2) "concerning
a material issue in the case," and (3) communicated that
expert opinion to the rest
of the jury panel "with the force of private, untested
truth as though it were
e~idence."'~' Such conduct by any professional juror, the
court found, would
amount to juror misconduct and provide grounds for
reversible error.
Courts following the unregulated approach generally allow a
professional
juror to share expertise with the rest of the jury so
long as she does not
otherwise engage in misconduct-i.e., by conducting an
unauthorized
investigation or targeted research about the case while it
is sub judice. Under
the unregulated approach, jurors are given no instruction
concerning whether or
not they are permitted to use or share professional
knowledge in deliberating a
case. Moreover, if they do use or share such expertise, the
resulting verdict is
not subject to attack on that ground.
A representative case for this approach is State v. Mann.'28
In Mann, the
defendant was accused of murdering his six-year-old son
with a screwdriver.
The defendant father argued that the boy had impaled himself
when he tripped
in the bathroom late at night.'29 At trial, the defendant
called a physicist as an
expert witness who testified in support of defendant's
contention, concluding
that the death was a "freakish a~cident."'~~ One of the
jurors who possessed a
background in engineering and physics, performed a
"fairly simple five-step
probability cal~ulation,"'~' and based on that
calculation, informed his fellow
jurors there was only a one-in-twenty-million chance that
the event transpired
in the manner described by defendant's expert.'32 After
conviction, the
defendant moved for a new trial, arguing that this
professional juror had
improperly injected his expertise into de1iberati0ns. The
Supreme Court of New Mexico upheld the conviction, ruling
that the
professional juror did not engage in misconduct by making
these calculations
or sharing them with fellow jurors. The court noted that
"jurors may properly
rely on their background, including professional and
educational experience, in
order to inform their deliberation^."'^^ The court further
suggested it would be
"inordinately bad policy" to single out for criticism a
juror who had
"thoughtfully and conscientiously engaged in deliberation,"
simply because he
used his professional knowledge in doing so.'35 Finally, the
court observed that
if jury verdicts were subject to impeachment based on
the grounds that a
professional juror had improperly used his expertise in
deliberations, courts
would be improperly intruding on the privacy of jury
de1iberati0ns.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Saturday, August 25 2012 @ 10:18 PM EDT |
Absolutely not. Witnesses have to be
available for cross examination.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: JamesK on Sunday, August 26 2012 @ 12:00 PM EDT |
Given he has his own patent that he wants to protect, he might be considered
biased.
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The following program contains immature subject matter. Viewer discretion is
advised.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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