Abstract: I. INTRODUCTIONIf any proposition is beyond dispute it is that the jury plays a pivotal role in the American and Tennessee legal systems.1 In 1996, this fundamental principle was recognized by the Commission on the Future of the Tennessee Judicial System which stated that only the jury provides the reassurance of neutral justice rendered by peers, a reassurance that shores up public faith in the judicial system.2In recent years the American jury has been closely scrutinized. While many countries, including Britain, have eliminated or curtailed the use of juries in civil and criminal cases, very few commentators have recommended this drastic change in the United States. Rather, the focus has been on methods of improving, rather than eliminating, the American jury.3This article concerns efforts to improve the jury in one jurisdiction: Tennessee. After generally describing the history of jury reform efforts in the United States, it turns to recent jury reform efforts in Tennessee, including the theory and history of Tennessee jury reform and a pilot project which empirically tested a number of specific proposed changes in Tennessee jury rules. The article then describes and analyzes a number of recent specific changes in Tennessee law designed to make juries more effective and efficient. These reforms include court procedures and scheduling improvements to maximize respect for jurors' time and privacy. The new rules also provide specific guidelines for selecting jurors in ways that maximize their attention to the evidence in the case, that provide lawyers with increased flexibility in exercising peremptory challenges, and that reduce the total number of peremptory challenges in some cases. The article further discusses new procedures that provide better context for the evidence presented to jurors that should assist them in understanding the proof. These include allowing lawyers more freedom in addressing jurors before and during a trial.The reforms also provide jurors needed opportunities to improve the quality of their fact-finding. These changes include giving jurors the right to take notes during a trial, the possibility of asking questions of witnesses, and having access to a notebook to organize trial materials. The new rules described in this article also seek to improve the efficacy of jury instructions, providing jurors with instructions before proof begins, including even the possibility that final jury instructions in civil cases will be given before, rather than after, closing argument and will be in written form. The article closes with a discussion of reforms that were not implemented in Tennessee but have been tried elsewhere and may be worthwhile to consider in future reform efforts.II. JURY REFORM IN THE UNITED STATESIn recent years a number of American commissions have undertaken extensive reviews of the concept of the jury system. Studies have also been conducted on jury systems in particular jurisdictions. Among the most widely discussed studies are those by the American Bar Association,4 the National Center for State Courts,5 California,6 the District of Columbia,7 New York,8 and, Arizona,9 which has proven to be the most influential.The commissions and their conclusions were surprisingly similar. Each commission was comprised of a cross-section of lawyers, judges, and jurors. The lawyers represented both prosecutors and defense lawyers in criminal cases, and plaintiffs' lawyers and defense lawyers in civil cases. In general terms, the reform commissions studied the existing jury system and scholarly evaluations of that system, and then made specific recommendations for improvement. Each commission recommended changes in many facets of jury procedures, but none suggested wholesale changes that would alter the traditional character of the American jury.A common theme in all the American reports is that jurors are too passive.10 This passivity interferes with the quality of their fact-finding and their sense of accomplishment. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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