Juries the Judges of Fact, Credibility, and Culpability in a Jury Trial.
By: Ian L. Courts¹
In America, one of the fundamental rights an accused person has is the right to a jury trial or a bench trial. See U.S. Const. VI Amend. ("In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”)
Juries are made up of laypersons, generally selected from the county's registered voters, landowners, and residents. This means juries are made up of people with their own biases, experiences, prejudices, fears, influences, and views about justice.
Attorneys and judges try their best in voir dire to weed out those with blatant bias and unfavorable characteristics to their theory of the case, but at the end of the day, people are people and are unpredictable.
In the American Criminal System, juries are the sole finders of fact and judges of the credibility of evidence in a jury trial. This means a jury has the legal authority to believe or not any witness from both the defense and prosecution and determine what evidence they find credible or not.
Moreover, juries have the authority to believe or not any of the evidence inter alia fact witnesses, physical evidence, or statements that either party presents at trial unless it has been previously excluded by a judge or is determined in the trial to be inadmissible.
Furthermore, if there is a conflict in either party's testimonies, statements, or evidence, the jury judges its credibility and believability.
Thus what evidence the jury believes are the facts of a trial, and what evidence they do not believe, is excluded.
Finally, after reviewing the evidence before them, the jury reaches a legal and factual conclusion of guilt or innocence via the verdict.
The purpose of a jury of one's peers in the American legal system is because the founders believed this process would yield fairer results. In some cases, that is true, and in other cases, not so much. However, at the end of the day, whoever prevails in a jury trial is the side that persuades the jury the most.
[1]: About the Author: Ian Courts is a young millennial attorney with expertise and a passion in American and international law and politics. Ian received his BA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2017, in 2020 he received his J.D. from North Carolina Central University School of Law, and in 2022 Ian received his LLM in International Criminal Law and Justice from the University of New Hampshire School of Law. Ian lives in Philadelphia where he is an appellate lawyer and the proud fur-dad of two American Cocker Spaniels.
