Try to imagine defense counsel's dilemma as a plaintiff's expert, answering jurors' questions, takes over the trial. The witness proceeds to expound, lecture and even stride the courtroom floor -- sometimes even straying from his area of expertise. Does the defense keep silent? Or object and thereby risk alienating the jurors? It's a quandary posed by the practice -- as seen in the latest New Jersey Vioxx trial -- of allowing juror questions, and there seem to be few guidelines to resolve it.
Details here from the New Jersey Law Journal via Law.com.
Comments
Too many attorneys imagine jurors to be like China dolls, fragile and easily broken by a single gesture. It's easy to think that way because jurors and juries are such a black box. But jurors are not as fragile as you might think.
The proper response, when a witness responds inappropriately to a juror's question, is to defend one's client's interests in a vigorous and appropriate way. Object if the expert is straying outside of his or her proper area -- object in a way that explains the objection as best as possible in language that the jury can understand. Jurors understand that this is an advocacy process. They respect lawyers who do a good job for their clients, as long as those lawyers also treat the jurors and other trial participants with respect. Some jurors might even be savvy enough to be critical of an expert who took advantage of a juror's question to go on a soapbox.
A question from a juror should not be treated any differently than a question from counsel.
I've conducted and/or read a few thousand post-trial interviews and analyzed data from dozens of mock trial deliberations. What consistently makes jurors give high ratings to an attorney are the following:
Well organized case presentation
Respectful of the jurors and their time
Treats all parties well
Competence
It is true, however, that if jurors with strong biases towards one side make it onto the jury, such jurors' perceptions of attorney performance tend to be skewed by their biases (i.e., they believe that the attorney for the side they do not favor is not doing a very good job, regardless of how a more objective person might evaluate the attorney's performance). Which just gives you one more reason to want to eliminate such folks during voir dire.
Posted by: Sarah E Murray | April 4, 2006 5:52 PM