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87 Judicature 54 (2003-2004)
Inside the Jury Room - Evaluating Juror Discussions during Trial

handle is hein.journals/judica87 and id is 56 raw text is: InsideI the jury room Evaluating juror discussions during trial by Shari Seidman Diamond, Neil Vidmar, Mary Rose, Leslie Ellis, and Beth Murphy illustration by Mary Chaney Arizona's rule permitting juror discussions during civil trials promised multiple benefits and raised multiple concerns, but a novel study involving videotaping actual discussions and deliberations showed modest effects. nnovation is a hallmark of jury trials in Arizona.1 It was the first state in the nation to instruct civil trial jurors that they were permitted to discuss the evi- dence among themselves during breaks in the trial. That instruction replaced the traditional admonition to delay any case discussion until the end of the trial. Along with the discussion innovation, the Pima County Superior Court in Arizona took another unprecedented step. The court decided to permit an evaluation of the innovation in which the researchers were able to examine what jurors actually do when they are permitted to discuss the case during trial.' The Pima County Superior Court, with the endorse- ment and support of the Arizona Supreme Court, approved a novel method of evaluation. The Arizona Filming Project was an experiment that included the videotaping of jury discussions and deliberations. The analysis from the experiment reveals that juror discus- sions have some of the anticipated benefits, but also have some drawbacks. This article will discuss several recom- mended changes to enhance the positive outcomes of discussions and minimize the negative ones. A controversial rule Acting on a recommendation issued by a committee of the Arizona State Supreme Court in 1994,s Arizona amended its Rules of Civil Procedure by adopting Rule 39 (f). Under The research on which this article is based was supported by grants from the State Justice Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation. Additional funding was provided by Northwestern University and Duke University. Any opinions, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. We are grateful to Anne Tatalovich, an editor/writer at the American Bar Foundation, whose summary of the Final Report of the Discussions Project for Researching Law, the newsletter of the American Bar Foundation (2002), we relied on in this article. 1. The range of innovations proposed and enacted by Arizona is described in Dann and Logan, Jury Reform: The Arizona Experience, 79 JUDICATURE 280 (1996). 2. The full report of the project research is described in greater detail in Diamond, Vidma, Rose, Ellis and Murphy, Juror Discussions During Civil 7i- als: Studying an Arizona Innovation, 45 ARIZONA L. REV 1 (2003); see also, Dia- mond and Vidmar, Jury Room Ruminations on Forbidden Topics, 87 VIRGINIA L. REv. 1857 (2001). 54 JUDICATURE Volume 87, Number 2 September-October 2003

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