{"id":503,"date":"2009-07-08T05:50:08","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T11:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookcountypd.org\/blog\/?p=503"},"modified":"2009-07-08T05:51:04","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T11:51:04","slug":"how-not-to-answer-a-jurys-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/07\/08\/how-not-to-answer-a-jurys-question\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW NOT TO ANSWER A JURY&#8217;S QUESTION"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Justice Gordon joined by Justices Cahill and McBride, reverses and remands defendant&#8217;s murder conviction and natural life sentence, because the trial court abused her discretion and abandoned her role as a neutral referee where she answered a question from the jury on a\u00a0<span id=\"lw_1247053102_0\" class=\"yshortcuts\">question of fact<\/span>, thus providing unsworn testimony to the jurors on a critical factual issue.\u00a0 During the jury&#8217;s second day of deliberations, in a case where the defense attempted to discredit the defendant&#8217;s confession, the\u00a0jury sent out a note asking, in effect, if the detectives had coerced the confession by taking\u00a0the death penalty off the table\u00a0during defendant&#8217;s\u00a0interrogation.\u00a0 This issue had not been mentioned during trial testimony or argument.\u00a0 Over defense objection, the trial court answered\u00a0 &#8220;No, please continue your deliberations, jurors.&#8221;\u00a0 This, Justice Gordon finds was an abuse of discretion, &#8220;as well-intentioned as she\u00a0 [Judge Dianne Cannon] may have been.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>This is\u00a0a clear and\u00a0thorough opinion on the subject of answering jury questions worth putting in one&#8217;s trial book.<\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.il.us\/court\/OPINIONS\/AppellateCourt\/2009\/1stDistrict\/June\/1063748.pdf\">People \u00a0v. Timothy Davis\u00a0 No. 1-06-3748\u00a0\u00a0 Sixth Division 6\/26\/09. <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justice Gordon joined by Justices Cahill and McBride, reverses and remands defendant&#8217;s murder conviction and natural life sentence, because the trial court abused her discretion and abandoned her role as a neutral referee where she answered a question from the jury on a\u00a0question of fact, thus providing unsworn testimony to the jurors on a critical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}