The practice of allowing jurors to ask witnesses questions during criminal cases doesn’t violate a defendant’s right to a fair trial and, in fact, has many benefits, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday.
Juror questioning facilitates the search for the truth, clarifies facts in complex cases, allows the jury to fulfill its role as the finder of facts and increases juror attentiveness and satisfaction, the court said.
“While a defendant does have the right to an unbiased jury, he is not entitled to have his case presented to a jury that sits as a passive receptacle of information,” Justice Michael Bender wrote in the opinion.
The state public defender’s office had appealed convictions in two cases – those of Yvonne Medina and Phillip Moses – in which the office objected to juror questions.
The defense argued that allowing questions from the jury encourages jurors to decide facts and form opinions before all the evidence is presented; allows the prosecution to restructure its case according to the questions; and risks offending jurors if a lawyer should object to the question.
“What it’s doing is making a juror an investigator – and that’s not their role,” said Guss Guarino, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. “The role of a juror is to answer one question and one question only, and that is, ‘Has the prosecution proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt?”‘
In the Medina case, the high court said a juror-posed question was improper because it called for irrelevant expert testimony but that it didn’t impair the fairness of the trial. Medina was convicted of second-degree assault and menacing.
In the Moses case, no improprieties were found. Moses was convicted of felony menacing and reckless driving.
Juror questions were first allowed in Colorado in 2000 as part of a study that involved 239 trials.
Results from that study prompted the court to authorize juror questions across the state last July.
Bender said several studies concluded that the purported harmful consequences of jury questioning are unsupported by the data.
The ruling also noted that there are safeguards designed to prevent inappropriate juror questions.
Questions for witnesses are presented to the judge and screened with the lawyers to determine whether they are proper.
As an additional safeguard, the court said, defense lawyers can always challenge the juror-asked questions at the appellate level.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
