There are some cases when the jury cannot come to the conclusion about a verdict even after a long period of discussion. It happens when they reach some irreconcilable differences in their opinion. Such a jury is usually called a hung jury.
In criminal cases, juries are required to arrive at a unanimous verdict. As for civil cases, juries have to reach some level of consensus. A hung jury is usually regarded as the best way to an acquittal, so the greater the number of juries is the more chances of dissension are. One of the difficulties which are associated with hung juries is the supermajority verdicts. It allows jurors to convict a defendant even if there is no unanimous agreement amongst them. The arguments around the majority of verdicts usually involve ‘rogue jurors’ who impede the court session for no reason. Opponents of the invention of majority verdicts state that they undermine public confidence in justice systems. In its turn, it results in the conviction of a higher number of people for crimes that they did not commit.
In the United States of America, a case can be retried as the result of a mistrial. Sometimes the court is permitted to give the jurors an Allen charge. This means that the dissenting jurors are invited to meet again in order to re-examine their opinions; it is made in an attempt to prevent the hung jury from hanging.
In Ethan J. Leib’s article, we find that hung juries are not widely spread. It is important that for juries it must be made easier to acquit. “We hear about them frequently because they seem to happen most often in high-profile cases, perhaps when their cost to the justice system is highest. But the elimination of hung juries is not the only reason to rethink our jury decision rules.” (Leib) He states that convictions and acquittals must be unanimous. The defendant fails to get a clear outcome even if eleven jurors find that he is innocent or the government fails to prove his case.
If the supermajoritarian conviction rule is adopted, the abnormality will be removed. In such a way jury decision rule will be in harmony with those of constitutional and political life in general.
“We don’t expect our Supreme Court justices or our appellate judges to agree unanimously to render a decision, so the idea that citizens are expected to come to a complete agreement is rather bizarre.”
In our society, it is difficult to avoid using jury service. When the jury arrives at a verdict an individual’s liberty and sometimes his life are at stake. But unanimity shouldn’t be treated as a certainty. Most empirical evidence shows that the verdicts that are reached under different decision rules prove not to vary dramatically. That means that unanimity requirements produce approximately the same number of people that are convicted as supermajority requirements do. It is proved that jurors that keep to a unanimous decision rule usually agree to take decisions by a supermajority. It means that there is no difference between these rules. It is also known that some individuals want to falsify their preferences by means of changing their vote.
Jurors are supposed to presume the innocence of the defendants, but when a unanimous agreement is required in order to acquit an individual, it may undermine the fact that our society is free.
Reference
Leib, Ethan. The problem of Hung Juries – and how to solve it. Web.