Do &#39;questions come from the jury after they have retired to consider their verdict, when they can&#39;t be answered&#39;? Source: pp 185-186, The Art of the Advocate (1993) by Richard Du Cann QC (called to the Bar of England and Wales). Juries have no rights on questions of evidence at all, except as the final arbiters of fact. It is one Of the contradictions Of English legal procedure that those who are required to decide questions of fact have no power to require fact to be laid before them. They can, of course, ask questions. But they cannot require witnesses to be called to answer them, or even insist that witnesses Who are called do answer them. (Grand juries had power to do both. They were abolished in 1933.) This may be a shock for layman who believes in the infallibility of the jury system without understanding what a jury undertakes to do. Their oath return a verdict, 'according to the evidence'. Their oath is not to return a verdict, 'according to the evidence which We think should be called'. so, if the question they ask requests information which by the laws of evidence is inadmissible (for instance, in a criminal trial, 'has the defendant done this before?'), then it cannot be answered. Put more shortly, they cannot ask questions which could not be asked by the Judge or either of the advocate. [1.] As a rule questions come from the jury after they have retired to consider their verdict, when they cannot be answered. This may seem harsh. But the line must be drawn somewhere. There must be a point when no further evidence can possibly be called by whatever name it may be known. That point is reached when the Judge finishes his summing-up. Is 1 wrong? Does 1 contradict the jury's option to pose questions in writing only to the Judge per this and this article of 2012 Nov 17 by English barrister Dan Bunting?
As a comment by @DavidSchwartz notes, this is not wrong. Questions of law but not fact are allowed. It is worth noting that the line drawn is arbitrary. In Colorado, where I practice, jurors issue written questions (pre-reviewed by the judge and counsel for all parties before being presented) to witnesses at the close of the testimony of each witness called by a party to testify. This is very helpful to counsel, as it provides indirect evidence of whether the jury understands what they are being told, and often juries will directly ask questions that for tactical reasons, both parties have refrained from asking that go to the heart of the matter. It also frequently clarifies misunderstandings that trained legal professionals assumed were not made about terminology. This is more problematic in criminal trials, where jury questions could provide evidence pushing a case over the threshold of proof needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecution failed to provide, than in civil cases with a preponderance of the evidence standard. Also, as a matter of reality, when jurors ask questions, counsel often loathe to object even when they have valid grounds to do so, for fear of offending the decision-maker, unless it is really critical to keep certain information away from the jury.
We don't have enough facts to know. What Bob said about having violated the injunction, which could expose him to criminal contempt of court liability, was not true. But, the precise details of what he said, to whom he said it, and his relationship to the case, are not clear. Saying something that isn't true isn't always against the law, and even when it is against the law, the consequences depend upon the context. An intentionally false statement of fact to a police officer or to the court under oath would probably be a crime (but, unlike U.S. practice, criminal defendants who testify are not generally required to testify under oath). An unintentionally false statement of fact to the same persons (e.g. because Bob misheard the question or was drunk at the time and assumed that the statement of fact he was making was true or had dementia) would probably not have legal consequences for him. A mere confession - I am guilty of violating the civil injunction - would probably not be perjury or fraud because guilt of a civil injunction includes opinions and legal conclusions which are not actionable, as well as implied statements of fact, which might be actionable. But, if he confessed in the form of a plea, there probably wouldn't have been a trial at all. Once he made his plea, his factual guilty or innocence might be irrelevant in the face of a judicial admission. Courts can sometimes sanction parties to lawsuits for wasting everyone's time under quite specific circumstances, but we don't know precisely what relationship Bob has to the case in which the injunction was entered.
It doesn't really matter exactly what the judge says as long as it's clear whether the judge is sustaining or overruling the objection. With that said, in movies you'll rarely see the person asking the question get to respond to the objection, but you'll notice in the trial that happens in most cases. For example, if one party objects that a question calls for hearsay, the examiner may defend their question by pointing out that the statement is not offered for the truth of the matter asserted, or that it falls into one of the hearsay exceptions. At that point the judge is responding to both parties and someone else or possibly multiple people have spoken since the objection was originally raised, so she might specify that she's &quot;overruling the objection&quot; as opposed to just saying overruled, so it just makes it clearer on the record what she's ruling about. It's worth noting as well that she might need to specify which objection she's sustaining if more than one objection is raised. In this trial both hearsay and relevance objections have been raised at the same time, and the judge might specify that she's sustaining e.g. only relevance. This can tell the examiner whether they are free to keep going down the same line of questioning with different questions, if the objection sustained was hearsay, or to move to another line of questioning, if the objection sustained was relevance.
It has been along-standing principle in the US that names of jurors are publicly known, although there can be exceptions (US v. Barnes, 604 F.2d 121 (1979) is the first case of a fully anonymous jury. Now, except in the 10th Circuit, they are allowed and not extremely rare (I don't know what the percentage is). So it would depend on whether the particular jury list is public. Apart from the situation where a juror is harassed by the press and gets a court order to restrain approaches by a specific member of the press, if you can contact them, you can ask them questions. There cannot be a blanket "do not contact a juror" law / order in the US, which would be contrary to the 1st Amendment.
Maybe I'm reading Walsh wrong, but it seems to me to be saying that Stout might apply in some cases, but it doesn't in that specific case. I think you are indeed reading it wrong. In the Walsh case, the court says: We have not had occasion to decide the question up to this time, but now that it is presented, we not only reiterate the doubt which we expressed in the McAlpin case (supra), but we think that the question of the defendant's negligence was erroneously submitted to the jury in the Stout case, and that we ought not to follow it as a precedent. It's clearly repudiating Stout here, and not just as it applies to that case. It literally says they think it should not be followed as precedent.
How much would I be expected to reveal if not directly connected to the case? For example, if I was asked, &quot;What were you doing in the alley at night?,&quot; would you be required to reveal the information if it is potentially humiliating (e.g. you were having an affair) or illegal (e.g. you were getting illegal drugs)? The latter case seems to violate the protection against self-incrimination. Or what happens if you just lie about something inconsequential? You have to answer any permissible questions (i.e. consistent with the rules of evidence) asked. If you were doing something illegal you can claim the fifth and not testify unless you are given &quot;transaction immunity&quot; that your testimony will not be used against you in a criminal case against you. Usually perjury prosecutions require that the lie be about a material fact. Suppose you receive a death threat (either verbal or in writing) from the person charged with and who committed the crime. Something along the lines of: if you testify against me, then my friends will kill you after the trial. What legal options do you have? Tell the prosecutor on the case and ask the prosecutor to provide protection to you and to go after the people making the threat. The witness protection program was created for these cases.
Most judges went to law school Therefore, my null hypothesis is that they have next to no knowledge of statistics and couldn’t tell a median from a mean on their best, let alone, their average day - mean, median, or mode. Courts turn to experts to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. If they are asking the wrong questions, then it is the expert’s job to, respectfully, tell them so and guide them to the right questions. However, you shouldn’t guess what the right question is. “Excuse me, your honour, the term “statistical significance” can’t be applied to a data set, only to the result of an a priori null-hypothesis tested against that data set.” Feel free to explain p hacking if necessary. Ask the judge to explain, in layman’s term, what they want from you. Feel free to admit that just like you don’t understand their legal jargon, you don’t expect them to understand your statistical jargon; if everyone speaks plain English, you can go and do your statistics thing and they can go and do their law-talking thing.
Is an attorney permitted to ask questions like those in either paragraphs two and three? Yes. That does not mean that they will be considered relevant or even appropriate, though. Is the witness allowed to decline to answer such questions for reason of irrelevance, or other grounds? Yes. In general, though, it would be safer for the witness to state an objection (be it on the basis of irrelevance, confrontational, asked &amp; answered, as to form, etc.) and answer the question nonetheless, rather than simply refusing to answer it. By simply declining to answer a question regardless of the basis for refusal, the witness risks affording a crooked lawyer the opportunity to falsely generalize that the witness was uncooperative. One exception to the idea of "object-and-then-answer" is where some privilege is the alleged basis for the objection, since the substance of the answer could be such that it amounts to waiving the privilege even where that privilege is legitimate. The witness may also opt to answer the lawyer's irrelevant questions even without stating an objection. Some questions are so obviously irrelevant, dull, or stupid that a failure to raise an objection will be inconsequential. In such scenarios, raising objections can only lengthen the deposition transcript and make it harder to read. For a real-life example of deposition with plenty of dull questions, take a look at the transcript (which I split in parts one, two and three) of the 4-hour deposition where I myself was the witness (you can download the case file, almost in its entirety, from this page). You will notice that I did not raise objections during the deposition, the main reason being what I explained above: To avoid giving the opposing counsel an opportunity to falsely accuse me in court of being uncooperative during deposition. Furthermore, addressing the crook's futile questions (1) projects transparency and helps on the witness's part, and (2) precludes a false &amp; misleading impression as if the witness had something to hide. After all, wrongdoers are the ones most interested in eluding testimony in ways very similar to this other deposition. The reason of being of objections is precisely that the law "is aware" that, as a matter of fact, lawyers indulge in all kinds of abusive questions when taking sworn testimony --be it in trial or at deposition-- of a witness.