Picturing Justice, the On-Line Journal of Law and Popular Culture


Paul Bergman
is Professor of Law, UCLA Law School. He is co-author of Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (1996) and wrote "Redemptive Lawyering", in the forthcoming UCLA Law Review symposium on law and popular culture.

 

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What this checklist approach eliminated almost entirely was the "value added" of the lawyers. Any decent trial attorney would package the disparate factual elements into a narrative structure that explained what happened, why it happened and how it happened.


Feature article

Checklist Justice on The Jury

by Paul Bergman

The Jury is an hour-long TV drama that debuted in June 2004. Its interesting premise is to focus on jury deliberations and flash back to events and bits of testimony as jurors refer to them. The opening episode did not stay entirely true to its premise. For example, we see the lawyers plea bargaining even though this of course occurs outside the jurors' presence. And in what to me was the biggest copout, after the verdict is in we see what really happened. Nevertheless, the show is a creative effort to make viewers feel a part of a jury, and it backs the effort up by inviting viewers to cast votes by phone (and perhaps website) before the show ends.

I'll first focus on a couple of the dramatic elements. I was bothered, as I usually am, by the rapid cuts from one juror to another and from a juror to testimony or to a quick glimpse of events. As a result, for me the deliberations consisted too often of exchanges of sound bites and not real opinions. Also, while the judge, court personnel and attorneys will apparently carry over from one episode to the next, I understand that each episode will focus on a different group of jurors. As I watched, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to see how the same jurors would react to entirely different sets of facts. That would enable us as viewers to identify more strongly with particular characters and to see how jurors' experiences and philosophies react in a variety of factual settings.

The case about which the jurors deliberated was carefully constructed so that almost any inference one juror put forward could be countered by an equal and opposite inference. For example, one juror mentions that an argument between the defendant and the shooting victim during a pickup basketball game furnished a motive for the defendant to deliberately shoot the victim. Another juror's quick riposte to the comment is along the lines of "I'd argue all the time when playing sports- that doesn't mean I was going to kill anyone."

The result for me was that the show had a checklist feel to it. Need a motive-- check. Need to be able to undermine the motive-- check. Need the defendant's fingerprints on the gun-- check. Need to show that it was possible that the defendant's two friends might have fired the fatal shot-- check. What this checklist approach eliminated almost entirely was the "value added" of the lawyers. Any decent trial attorney would package the disparate factual elements into a narrative structure that explained what happened, why it happened and how it happened. For example, I don't recall any juror mentioning how long before the shooting the pickup game argument took place, and without that information the jurors cannot formulate or accept a story about the pickup game argument providing a motive for the shooting. This episode of The Jury, perhaps owing to its format, is almost entirely narrative-free. Indeed it's an anti-story, with pieces of testimony and glimpses of events present only to offset each other.

I also don't recall any juror saying the words "reasonable doubt." Can the defense lawyer have done such a bad job during the trial that none of the jurors talked about reasonable doubt during the deliberations? Maybe. The defendant was shown testifying, and given the weaknesses in the prosecution's case I would think any defense attorney would have walked over hot coals in an effort to persuade the defendant not to testify. But this was a reasonable doubt case from the get-go, and the lack of attention to it during the deliberations reflects the anti-narrative weakness of the episode.

The Jury has potential and I wish it well. Let's hope the network doesn't file a Motion to Dismiss.


Posted July 8, 2004

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