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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Courts - "Judicial Reform: How to Cut Down on Hung Juries"
A long story dated Aug. 31, 2010 on the Time website quotes Chief Justice Shepard extensively on hung juries, such as in the federal Blagojevich trial, including:
Mistrials are rare in federal court, but some argue they might be rarer still if the federal courts had adopted a string of reforms that have revamped state court juries in the past 20 years, upending centuries of tradition. By some counts, the reforms have halved the hung jury rates in state criminal trials. The aim, said one of the nation's leading reformers, is to prevent the kind of outcome that happened in Chicago: a mistrial that leaves no one happy. "Much of the elements of jury reform has reflected on the phenomenon of hung juries," says Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard of the Indiana Supreme Court, a former trial judge in Evansville."And what happened [in Chicago] is akin to what would have happened in most state courts 15 years ago — but wouldn't happen in a great many places today.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 1, 2010 08:46 AM
Posted to Courts in general