By Ginny McKibben, Staff Writer
Denver Post
May 26, 1997
Feedback: letters@denverpost.com
Colorado jurors would get far more active in the courtroom under a reform proposal that seeks to radically change the way trials are conducted across the state.
Jurors would be allowed to take notes ask questions and talk among themselves about the case during trials under the plan, which is being spearheaded by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis.
Members of the Supreme Court committee that authored the proposal say they want to win back the confidence of the thousands of Colorado citizens called for jury service every week.
The emphasis will be on ways to make jury service more satisfying and worth the inconvenience, said Miles Cortez, president of the Colorado Bar Association.
"We need to make jury service more
palatable to the citizens, more convenient to do their CiViC duty,"
Cortez said. "And I think there are things we need to do to ensure
preservation of the jury
system itself."
The Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Anthony Vollack, has given initial approval to the proposed reforms and assigned a 15-member implementation committee to decide how to put new policies into effect.
Included are proposals to:
Allow jurors to pose written questions to witnesses during trial. The questions would be screened by the judge and the lawyers in the case.
Permit jurors to talk about the case during trial and before formal deliberations. Currently, jurors are admonished not to discuss the case until lawyers have presented all the evidence.
Provide jurors a trial "textbook" that sets out jury instructions, a glossary of legal terms and details specific to the particular case. Jurors also could write notes in the books as the trial progresses. Jurors currently are permitted to take notes in many cases, but the textbooks would be far more extensive.
Speed Up jury selection and protect jurors' privacy.
Limit sequestration of juries to extraordinary cases. The proposals face resistance from many in the legal profession, which is steeped in tradition and generally distrustful of change.
Defense attorney Mike Root, for instance, fears the proposals will muddy the waters in a criminal trial.
"Is the case now won or lost by who has the best notebook?" Root said. "It takes away from the jury deciding the case based on what is presented in court."
Root said the system has "worked well based on how jurors observe evidence."
"They are tinkering with a system that has worked -- not always -- but one that has been a longtime successful system," he said.
But Cortez, a member of the jury reform committee, said he believes the Supreme Court is headed in the right direction, particularly in light of a seeming trend toward "nullification," in which defiant juries refuse to follow the law.
Kourlis said the Supreme Court's implementation committee begins meeting June 1, and she hopes that some of the reforms will be in place by September. The court may hold public hearings on some of the proposals but the final decision will rest with the justices
About 15,000 Coloradans receive summonses for jury duty every week. But in many counties, up to 65 percent of those called do not apppear.
Jefferson County District Judge William Demoulin, a member of the reform committee, said one reason is that confidence in the legal system has eroded in recent years.
The jurors come in thinking it is a waste of time," Demoulin said. "I hate to say it, but the O.J. case really soured a lot of people on the judicial system. They come in feeling they are being belittled and their time is wasted waiting for a trial to start."
Allowing jurors to pose questions and discuss the case before deliberations makes good sense, Demoulin said. It's unnatural to expect jurors to spend weeks locked in a trial without addressing the main issue on their minds.
Kourlis said the proposed changes reflect adult learning theory, which indicates people do not process information well when subjected only to lectures. Adults learn better if they can ask questions.
"If you come out of the courtroom and say, `Did that person say green or blue?' then that is resolved and you can move on to more substantive issues," Kourlis said.
Root argues that the juries will begin to jump to conclusions long before the case is completed.
"The problem is that you cannot keep people from making decisions in their mind on the basis of `I promise I won't,' " he said. "They are already in the process of decision making."
But backers of the reforms note that many of them have already been successfully adopted in Arizona and California.
"It is purely a question of trusting juries and I do trust juries," Kourlis said. "I am not as concerned about holding on to rules that try to protect the jury from itself."
For copies of the jury reform proposal, contact:
Rebecca Virtue
Colorado Judicial Branch
(303) 837-3658
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