Welcome to Jury Instructions!

If you are a listener to Podcasts, you probably have noticed in recent years the rise of a new genre of Podcast content: True Crime

The True Crime genre probably owes much of its initial popularity and growth in public awareness to Serial, a Podcast started in October, 2014, with a story about Adnan Syed who was serving a life sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. (If you have not heard at least the first season of Serial, I encourage you to listen to it, here.)

Serial "birthed" at least two other True Crime Podcasts which started with the Adnan Syed story, and continued through multiple other stories: Undisclosed, which most closely followed the story of Adnan Syed (and the format of Serial) and Truth and Justice, which introduced an entirely new element to the genre: crowd-sourcing investigation.

Since these three Podcasts made their splash appearances, each with a different approach to investigating and telling stories, many other True Crime Podcasts have started. As of October 2018 there are over 500 listed here.

Let me take a step back to define a few terms:

Podcast - a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.(www.google.com)

True Crime Podcast - a podcast that tells the story of an actual crime. While some podcasts review cases that are unsolved (often cold cases that have been unsolved for several years), the incentive for JuryInstructions.info are the many stories of crimes which have been

• investigated
• individual(s) tried
• convicted
• and for which there is evidence to suggest that the wrong person(s) was/were convicted

Crowd-Sourcing Investigation - a call to listeners of the Podcast to aid in locating evidence, witnesses, specialized knowledge (ie, video editing, knowledge of history of crime location, etc.) or other information to aid in the investigation.

Where does 'JuryInstructions.info' fit into the above landscape?

Podcasts come into the story line of the crime years - even decades - after the crime has been "solved" and the convicted person(s) are still in prison, and present information about possible errors that resulted in the wrong person(s) being convicted.

In thinking about all the cases covered by these podcasts, I came to a startling conclusion: The final place for these errors of the criminal justice system to be corrected before the wrong person spends years in prison is in the courtroom during the initial trial.

I wondered if there is a way to make the jury aware of any possible errors in the case being tried to ensure that the wrong person is not convicted. Is it possible to educate a potential juror so that, if impaneled into a jury, the person would have some ideas about what to be aware of so that an innocent person may not be convicted? And is this "education" possible through a blog (or maybe a podcast in its own right) without specific knowledge of the particular crime, the persons being held as defendants, the investigating officers, the defense and prosecution, etc. In other words, can general information about a criminal trial be presented that could make a difference?

I think the answer is 'Yes'.

Who am I? Well, I'm not an attorney. My personal experience with law is a one semester class on business law and a few John Grisham novels. If you are a person with experience in the law who feels the same way I do about the need to educate jurors, I will gladly include you in the endeavor. 

I'm sure everyone has heard from a friend, colleague, neighbor or family member about how they "slipped out" of jury duty. It's a call to civic duty that too many people (in my opinion) give little thought to and make every attempt to avoid if possible. I intend to challenge people who don't feel that jury duty is a civic duty. More about that later.

For now, allow me to leave you with this thought: IF the difference between sending an innocent person to prison or not is the information a juror has about police interrogation practices, how prosecutors present evidence, what follow-up questions are asked (or not asked!), don't you think jurors should have more information and not less? That is the goal of this blog: to uncover some of the information jurors should have so they understand what is happening in the courtroom and what they should be evaluating in the prosecution and defense arguments during the trial.