When I served on a jury, the judge had us leave the courtroom multiple times. Once the trial was over, the judge told us what was being discussed when we left the room, and the reason the information had been excluded from testimony during the trial.
Had the DA tried to introduce this information while the jury was in the room it probably would have made it more difficult for us to come to the same verdict. I imagine that if the DA tried to do this often enough, it could lead to a mistrial and possible disciplinary action.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You are 100% that at some point they would have been reprimanded by the judge and other counsel would have at least asked for a mistrial, although disciplinary action is very much more rare, as the bar reserves it for the more outrageous ethical misconduct like with Tom Girardi or Alex Murdough (not sure about spelling).
It actually happens a lot that counsel does improper stuff, but usually they keep it to a minimum. But it also heavily depends on how strict the judge is.
In the end, every trial is a new constellation with different dynamics and you never know what will happen, as is custom with juries as well.
But yeah to get back to get on topic, the jury is the one deciding and the judge is trying to make sure the jury only decides on the facts. Deciding what facts is trying to keep the trial fair to both parties. And making jurors disregard testimony is done in the hopes the jury will try to ignore it or at least not consider it for their decision.
And what you are saying makes it clear that it definitely works to some degree. I would love to know how well it works, but that is a different question, although we can assume it works reasonably well considering we’re still doing it and these things are researched in the form of jury experiments every once in a while.