Under US law, what happens if it is not possible to gather an impartial jury? In 2017, Martin Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to prison. The transcripts of his jury selection show that there was some difficulty in finding jurors who would admit to being able to judge the case fairly. Here are some examples of the jury selection interviews. So, my question is: Under US law, what happens if it is practically impossible to assemble a jury, either because no-one will admit to being impartial, or for any other reason?
In the U.S., in a criminal case, there is a right to a speedy trial, and if a jury cannot be assembled by that deadline (as extended by available extensions) for reasons that are not the defendant's fault, than the charges must be dismissed. Usually, the issue is not finding enough impartial jurors in high profile cases, which takes time but can be done, but in not finding enough jurors at all, where response rates to jury summonses are low and the municipality is a small one.
There is no answer to the question, as presented. The criminal law differs in various respects in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland: one cannot speak of 'UK law', because criminal procedure is really very different in the three separate jurisdictions. In England and Wales, the rules of criminal procedure are what govern the issue raised in the question, rather than the substantive laws relating to the various charges which might be brought; and while the substantive laws in England and Scotland are often fairly similar, the procedures are usually very dissimilar. In a trial at the Old Bailey, in London, a Jury has no role in the criminal procedure: once empanelled it performs its usual function of deciding the facts of the case, based upon the evidence presented, but it has no role in determining what charges are preferred against the accused (this is decided by a different court at a much earlier procedural stage), and the jury has no power to alter the charges on the indictment. Only the prosecution can decide what charges are made against an accused person. And if an amendment to the indictment is thought to be appropriate, only the prosecuting barrister can make such a change. If the case has come-on for trial, the permission of the Judge must usually be obtained to any alteration in the charges. The Judge might object to an attempt to add a charge carrying a more severe penalty at a late stage in the proceedings (as the case may of course have already taken many months to reach the Old Bailey). He will often be more accommodating to an application to reduce the charges, to a lesser offence, particularly if accompanied by an undertaking not to proceed on a more serious charge - e.g. due to a lack of evidence supporting it. Where several charges are brought in the alternative, then the jury has a function, since it can then convict of a lesser charge if the evidence on a more serious one does not satisfy it. But it cannot ask for the charges to be altered: the jury represents the layman, and jurymen are inevitably not legally qualified (at one time, being legally qualified was an automatic disqualification from serving on a jury). So the jury is assumed to be incapable of understanding the fine distinctions between different offences, and has no role whatsoever in deciding which offences shall be included on the indictment. Even the Barrister representing the accused has no role in determining which charges his client will face: that is purely a function of the Crown Prosecutor's office, and once the trial has come-on at the Bailey only the prosecuting Barrister and the Judge truly have a role in making any necessary amendments. The function of defending Counsel is to strike a plea-bargain, if he can, and where the opportunity arises: which is to say, if he can persuade his client to plead guilty to a minor charge (whether or not on the indictment), and can also persuade the prosecutor not to proceed on the more serious charge(s) on the indictment. A Judge will not usually object to a legally-represented defendant applying, by consent (i.e. through the prosecutor), to amend the indictment in order to enter a plea of guilty. He might refuse, if the accused has no legal representation, but not otherwise. The short answer, therefore, is that in England and Wales a defendant cannot be convicted on a charge that is not listed on the indictment, but a jury can convict of any charge on the indictment if the judge asks the jury to retire and consider a verdict - but the case may not get so far as that, if a plea-bargain is struck. There are rare occasions where a judge might withdraw a charge, if he desires, by directing the jury to acquit on that particular charge, but this only occurs if he considers that any conviction on that charge would be positively unsafe in all the circumstances of the case.
You asked, &quot;could that guy as defendant claim self defense and win?&quot; First let's try to make it clear what is meant by &quot;win&quot;. In the Rittenhouse trial, the defendant was charged of the following crimes: First-degree reckless homicide First-degree recklessly endangering safety (x2) First-degree intentional homicide Attempted first-degree intentional homicide Possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 (dismissed) Failure to comply with an emergency order from state or local government (dismissed) Rather than thinking of the defendant as a &quot;winner&quot;, it might be more appropriate to say that he was &quot;acquitted&quot; of these charges. If someone that was involved in the conflict fired first, as you described here: &quot;They encounter each other when each is leaning or reaching or tripping, or whatever it would take for them to unintentionally point their gun at your head. You react and you raise your gun in defense, he spots your move and points his at you. You both fire. You shoot each other and you both are gravely injured. Like, paralyzed&quot;, then would they also be acquitted of all of the non-dismissed charges listed above? If everything was as you described (&quot;unintentional&quot;, &quot;reactionary&quot;, and &quot;in defense&quot;), then likely they would also not be found guilty of those crimes. It's not like they would &quot;win&quot;, it's more like they will not be found guilty of committing one of those crimes. The precise outcome will depend on all the facts involved in the case, and the jury's decision based on those facts. So there is no single answer that always applies to every situation, but it sounds like you're wondering about some hypothetical situation that appears to be paradoxical because in this case only one person was charged with crimes: if someone else was the first shooter, the sequence of following events would first of all depend on whether or not they got charged with a crime, and I wouldn't characterize the outcome as a &quot;win&quot; or &quot;lose&quot; but as an &quot;acquittal&quot; or &quot;conviction&quot;, and yes it is possible to be acquitted if everything is &quot;accidental&quot; as you described, and presumably not &quot;reckless&quot; (often meaning that a reasonable person in the same situation would have done the same thing). About your more broad question: &quot;Is mutual self defense a thing?&quot; It depends on what crime is being charged against the defendant. In the Rittenhouse case there was only one person that was charged. If you're asking about a hypothetical situation in which two people involved in a 1-on-1 conflict both claim self-defense, I hope I can assume that they were both charged with a crime against which to defend themselves in court in the first place. It is indeed possible for a State to prosecute both parties of a 1-on-1 physical conflict, and for both of them to successfully claim self-defense in order to eventually be both acquitted. It wouldn't be called &quot;mutual self-defense&quot;, but each defendant would make their own self-defense case individually.
Is this normal? Pretty much. Witnesses lie in court all the time (in my experience, defendants, law enforcement officers and medical doctors are the most likely to lie). Dealing with a witness who lies in court under oath effectively is one of the most challenging tasks lawyers face. It is an inherently challenging hurdle to proving or defending a case. The facts as presented in court often differ in some material way from reality. It is a pretty tough thing to accurately measure, but my gut estimate would be that this happens in a least 30%-40% of cases that produce contested trials, although not infrequently, a judge or jury will not find the false testimony to be credible. On the other hand, it isn't at all uncommon (probably at least 10% of the time) for a judge or jury to believe the liars to be telling the truth, and to find the people who are telling the truth to be less credible. There is absolute immunity from civil liability for lying in court testimony, although it could, in theory, give rise to contempt of court sanctions from the judge in some circumstances, or to a prosecution for perjury. But, perjury prosecutions are, in practice, very rare, and a good share of them arise from false statements made in documents under oath, rather than from courtroom testimony. There is probably less than 1 perjury prosecution per 1000 provable lies made under oath in courtroom testimony on material issues that end up influencing the outcome in a case. I totally sympathize with how frustrating this situation is having been there in cases that I am litigating many, many times. But, in short, life isn't fair.
Historically (long, long ago to the point that there is no leading case establishing this rule), you could challenge a verdict based upon a failure of a judge to dismiss a juror for cause (or for improperly dismissing a juror for cause) when this was an abuse of discretion. Race is an improper reason to dismiss a juror for cause. Political views often mandate dismissal of a juror for cause if they prevent a juror from being impartial or create an appearance of bias in the jury. More recently, race or sex (but not political opinion) based exercise of peremptory challenges (which are otherwise not for cause) was a ground upon which a verdict could be challenged. The leading case is Batson v. Kentucky (1986). Just last year (2017), in a case out of Colorado, Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a verdict to be overturned because of racially discriminatory (and again, not political) motives a juror expressed for convicting a defendant in the course of jury deliberations. Jury deliberations themselves had previously been sacrosanct and not subject to investigation in the absence of an outsider interference (e.g. a third party bribe presented to a juror).
See jury-nullification. I'm not a legal historian, so I can't say for sure what the laws on jury acquittals were at that time in that jurisdiction. However, when a jury has final discretion to acquit a defendant of a crime that's it: They can effectively ignore laws if they want to acquit someone. Such acquittals do not set a precedent or have any bearing outside of the trial in which they issue their verdict.
Some of the documents are here. As document 61 of the trial, the government motion for bench trial, argues, There is no constitutional right to a jury trial for criminal contempt charges resulting in a sentence of imprisonment of six months or less. Arpaio responds in document 62 that Defendant Arpaio acknowledges that there is no constitutional right to a jury trial for defendants charged with “petty” offenses where the maximum sentence does not exceed six months imprisonment, but continues the argument (the point being that there is no question that there is no absolute right to a jury trial, esp. in the instant case). He argues Many of the actions of the referring judge will become an issue in the case, calling into question the objectives and motives of Judge Snow. A public official’s actions and motives should and must be decided by an impartial jury of the elected official’s peers. The court order is document 83. There, The Court finds that this case is appropriate for a bench trial. This case focuses on the application of facts to the law to determine if Defendant intentionally violated a court order. Essentially, since there is no right to a jury trial and no compelling reason to grant a jury trial (e.g. the court found no merit to his argument that there would be the appearance of impropriety), the motion for a bench trial was granted. The order cites case law regarding the "not longer that 6 months" rule from Muniz v. Hoffman, 422 U.S. 454; United States v. Rylander, 714 F.2d 996; Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U.S. 488; United States v. Aldridge, 995 F.2d 233; United States v. Berry, 232 F.3d 897.
The only thing which has a name and sounds somewhat like what you're talking about is &quot;jury nullification&quot;. This generally refers to the situation where a jury deliberately sets aside the judges instructions about the law and supplies their own interpretation. For example, Peter Zenger was technically guilty of seditious libel because as a matter of law the material was sedition libel and the only legal question was whether he had published it. The jury found him not guilty, on the grounds that the statements were true, but truth was not an element of the crime. It is the general pattern in the US that the judge is the only person empowered to say to the jury what the law is. By selecting specific instructions (phrased as &quot;If you conclude X, you must find the defendant guilt&quot;, that is, stating the &quot;finding-to-verdict&quot; equation), the jury is given a formula for figuring out what the law says. Trial judges are not the ones who decide what the &quot;framers&quot; of the law intended, that comes from higher appeals courts who may study the legislative history. It can happen that a law uses an unclear phrase like &quot;irreconcilable differences&quot; and the jury doesn't know exactly what that means: then the judge may tell them to decide on their own, or give them a dictionary (however, there probably is an instruction for divorce law, and it's unlikely that a jury would be involved in a simple marital dissolution). It is entirely possible that jurors will end up misinterpreting what the law says in some instance, but I doubt that it happens very often. It is more likely that jurors will deviate somewhat, compared to judges in a bench trial, in matters of judgment such as whether an action is &quot;reasonable&quot;.