Challenges Faced by a Jury to Maintain Impartiality

During a criminal trial, members of a jury are exposed to arguments given by the defence and prosecution teams. Lawyers from both sides will often use persuasive language to convince the jury to agree with their arguments. To do so indirectly, lawyers might offer an opinion to the jury by telling them their options for consideration but lawyers will often draw the jury's attention back to elements which favour their side. This questions the extent of impartiality being practiced throughout the trial by the jury.

Lawyers' Influence on the Jury

All members of the jury are under oath to provide a true verdict under the Jury Act 1977 (NSW), Section 72A(1). However, given that the jury could be exposed to a variety of influential factors to reach their verdict, it is questionable how "true" this verdict really is.

According to Wood et. al, lawyers have a significant influence on a jury's verdict. The main influential factors are in the presentation of their arguments  including such techniques as communication, trial presentation and delivery,  persuasion tactics and language strategies. However these may not be the only influential factors.

Information Technology's Influence

With the increasing availability of Information Technology, jurors could easily look up past incidents of the defendant and could have formed a verdict before going to trial.

This is illustrated in R v K [2003] NSWCCA 406, where the jury was empanelled to determine whether the defendant was guilty of murdering his first wife. However, some members of jury found information on the internet that the defendant had been acquitted for murdering his second wife. When the case was heard in the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, the judge directed the jury to focus on evidence presented in the trial and ignore the information found on the internet but the defendant was still found guilty. Despite the judicial directions, it is still questionable whether the members of the jury truly ignored the information found on the internet to reach their verdict.

Although jurors are not permitted to discuss the matter on social media during the trial, there is nothing to prevent them from conducting research before the trial. Although the judge may direct them to ignore any information found on the internet,  there is no guarantee that a juror's mind will promptly follow the judge's instruction. This is because assumptions may have been formed when searching information on the internet prior to the trial and that could be another key factor influencing a jury's verdict.

Conclusion

Affecting a jury's impartiality will breach the defendant's right to a fair trial, but the influential factors impacting on a jury's impartiality cannot always be prevented because it can never be truly understood what goes inside an individual juror's mind.

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Jury Service NSW

Criminal Trial Juries and Media Reporting (2004) 85 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 23 by Michael Chesterman

The Influence of Jurors’ Perceptions of Attorneys and Their Performance on Verdict by  Steve M. Wood, Lorie L. Sicafuse, Monica K. Miller and Julianna C. Chomos

Jury Act 1977 (NSW) as consolidated in TimeBase LawOne