What can you do during the COVID-19 pandemic to safeguard our jury rights?






Without Trials by Jury,

There Is No Jury Nullification 

Good afternoon John,

This week I am pleased to introduce to you FIJA's new weekly report, Court in the Time of Corona.

Click Here to Go Straight to the Report ([link removed])

It has been weeks, going on months, since I have been aware of a jury trial successfully proceeding in the United States. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here to say that trials by jury have come to a screeching halt in the United States.

To state the obvious: there is no jury nullification without trials by jury.

It is certainly understandable that courts might need to temporarily pause certain operations to ensure the safety of all participants. But you likewise have every right to expect your Constitutionally-guaranteed jury and other rights to be treated as "essential".

You may be interested to know that my extensive research suggests that the legal processes being treated as "essential" are those that are most easily modified to continue with social distancing. As you might imagine, trial by jury is not one of those.

Almost uniformly, courts seem not to have given a moment's thought to how to fulfill your essential jury rights during a pandemic—despite having ample time to make a plan since the SARS virus was identified in 2002, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and other harbingers of the current situation.

Rather, virtually every court seems to be starting from zero in trying to devise ways to get trials by jury up and running again, in light of safety, fairness, and other concerns.

This may not surprise you. One might suspect that many government officials—who had already almost entirely replaced trial by jury with coerced plea bargains and bench trials—are salivating at this unique opportunity to put the last nail or two in the coffin of trial by jury before burying it completely.

We are not going to let that happen, are we?

In the past few weeks, I've been working on some resources to keep you informed of the status of grand, criminal, and civil juries in your area, along with proposed possible changes to get juries back in action. However, it has been an overwhelming task to sort through constantly changing jury-related orders issued in the fifty states and federal courts.

Rather than wait until that never-ending task is finished to fill you in on the state of trial by jury in the United States, I have put together a quick-and-dirty weekly report to share with you news on the status and future of trial by jury.

FIJA's Court in the Time of Corona is a curated selection including:

reports that access to and function of grand juries and trial by jury are being restored,

news of lengthened suspensions of grand juries and trial by jury and other related due process rights,

discussion of proposed steps being taken to ensure jurors are safe and feel safe enough to pay attention to the trial, deliberate thoroughly, and otherwise ensure a fair trial,

problems occurring in the process of restoring juries,

glimpses of proposed and implemented changes to trial by jury in other countries that may influence policy and practice in the United States, and

other direct and indirect jury-related developments that reflect on the prognosis for the long-term health the American jury system.

The situation is complex. Many of these rapidly developing plans to get juries back in action have both positive and negative implications. I hope you will check it out each week and be ready to raise your voice when you see changes being proposed that will ultimately weaken the protective role of the jury.

Click here for the first issue:

Court in the Time of Corona: Issue 1 ([link removed])

For Liberty, Justice, and Peace in Our Lifetimes,

Kirsten C. Tynan
Fully Informed Jury Association





P.O. Box 5570 | Helena, MT 59858 US

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