Requests for exclusion of witnesses should be made before examination of the first witness and preferably before opening statements. Although the rule does not prevent talking with excluded witnesses during recesses about their expected testimony, counsel must not disclose courtroom testimony given by other witnesses or permit other witnesses to disclose their testimony. Witnesses should be released from further attendance as soon as they are no longer needed. After testifying, a witness is deemed released unless counsel or the court promptly indicates that the witness is not so excused.
Cooperative witnesses not immediately needed may be placed "on call" but counsel remains responsible for having sufficiently available witnesses so that the trial may proceed without early adjournments or lengthy recesses. The government's counsel should keep defense counsel advised of the progress of the government's case so that the defense may be ready to proceed promptly following the conclusion of the government's case in chief. Exhibits are in the custody of the courtroom deputy clerk and must be returned to the clerk once examination is completed.
Objections All objections and other remarks to the court must be made while standing. Objections must be succinct, without argument or other comment. If argument is needed, Judge Sargent will so indicate. Side bar or bench conferences are discouraged and argument outside of the presence of the jury will normally take place only during regular recesses or before or after court sessions.
Accordingly, counsel should anticipate any evidentiary questions or disputes and bring them to the attention of the Judge ahead of time. Multiple Defendant Cross-Examination When there are mulltiple defendants, counsel are responsible for coordination of cross-examination. Judge Sargent will not permit repetitive cross-examination. Trial Schedule Normally, trial begin promptly at 9 a.
Matters to be taken up outside of the presence of the jury should be scheduled before or after the trial day or during the recesses. If there are such matters to be taken up, a request should be made to the courtroom deputy clerk or the baliff, and notice given to opposing counsel. And the next, and the next, before my time was up. By the end of my voir dire , I had an animated group discussion underway, and the information coming from the group went from a trickle to a torrent.
The key to getting jurors talking is to work on them one at a time, on a gradient, slowly building rapport, using charm and slowly growing doses of controversy, to stimulate candid responses. Many attorneys are blinded by a primordial desire to pull out into the lead in a popularity contest on the first morning of trial.
They work hard to say or do nothing that will illicit a negative response of any kind. They think that if an attorney says something in response to which one or more prospective jurors express this agreement, that attorney will lose ground that can never be regained.
Such attorneys believe that if everyone likes and agrees with everything they say before they even given opening statement, the trial is off to a good start. Like most aspects of voir dire , the truth is counterintuitive. Finding out exactly what triggers the rejection response is crucial, but the key is to make that discovery before you exercise your peremptory challenges rather than during or after the trial itself.
Another example: at the commencement of the trial involving the allegedly wrongful discharge of an executive based upon her religious beliefs she was a practicing Buddhist , I asked the potential jurors as a group how they felt about the practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school, at sporting events, or other public gatherings. Of course the majority of those who responded were patriotically in favor of the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, truth justice and the American way.
This question flushed out two prospective jurors who believed that anyone not a member of their particular branch of their particular church deserved any and all maladies God chose to send their way, including plague, pestilence, the loss of their first-born son and — you guessed it! No force on this planet would bring these two jurors to award damages to my client. Of nearly equal importance, I learned that there were several other jurors who struggled with the issue of how to protect freedom of religion and freedom of speech while at the same time honoring the tenets of religious faith that Mainstream America is built upon.
Jurors who struggle with contradictions are jurors who can be persuaded by evidence and well-constructed argument. The answer to this last question is yes.
The biases that help you are best left hidden. There are two kinds of baggage: the kind that people are aware they have and the kind that they do not know about. Both are important, but it may surprise you to learn that the baggage people do not know they have is actually more important to you than the baggage they know about.
With a little explanation and a few thought experiments, the reasons for this become clear. Trial lawyers do well when they understand the mechanics of human sympathy, bias and prejudice. Understanding the theory of jury selection is often easier if extreme examples are used for the sake of underscoring principles, so we tend to discuss the simpler, more obvious extremes in human belief systems.
Racial bias is usually the first to come to mind, followed by political ideology, gender-based stereotypes, religious beliefs, military or industrial indoctrination and a nearly unlimited ocean of subconscious reactions to associative thought processes.
A simple example would be asking, when representing a defendant in an action, whether any person including their family and close friends have ever brought suit or made a claim for compensation of any kind. Ask whether they have ever been injured, whether they have ever made a workers compensation claim, whether they have ever been denied medical care, whether they have ever wanted to sue someone.
If they have, that may make them much more likely to identify with your defendant client and it is typically though subject to many exceptions better if that fact does not come out. A tough judgment call, but in this extremely simple example, one that is not that hard to make. Of course, other indicators and indicia of bias or emotional makeup might lead to a departure from this strategy, for nothing in voir dire is cast in stone.
There are few absolute rules, and good judgment and instinct are your best assets. Until recently, most federal courts did not permit attorneys to conduct voir dire. A lawyer had to make decisions based upon purely neutral questioning. There was no ability to deliberately evoke responses on tough issues, and the questions judges posed were typically so plain vanilla that they created little in the way of useful responses from jurors, who are much more guarded when responding to a judge who questions them from the bench than they would have been answering questions put to them by affable lawyers from the much lower, closer podium.
Judges err in favor of keeping questionable jurors on the panel so that one must utilize peremptory challenges to strike them. Judges rarely develop their own challenges for cause. This is because they like to keep the process moving at a specific pace and do not want to appear biased in favor of the party they would be assisting if they developed and executed a dismissal for cause sua sponte. Federal courts that permit no attorney-conducted voir dire universally permit counsel to submit proposed voir dire questions.
Examples of such questions are:. The list goes on and on. There are many books and articles filled with such questions, so it is not necessary for this article to list them all. This author once met a lawyer who specialized in defending asbestos claims, in which laborers typically blue-collar workers from mills, plants, mines and shipyards, etc. She had developed a strategy that was based on bringing jurors to understand that money would do nothing to change the situation, for asbestos has been rendered all but illegal in a nearly all applications, the companies that put it into the stream of commerce are mostly bankrupt, and the plaintiff is already deceased or soon will be.
These cases are different from other kinds of catastrophic injury cases because the life care plans for such plaintiffs, which project future medical care costs against a rampant level of medical inflation, are typically much lower than they would be in a case involving brain damage or paralysis of a younger person. All of us pass, and what matters is how we live our lives, rather than whether a company was forced to give money to our heirs.
From such a platform, she would then go on to dignify both the plaintiff and the defendant corporation. She would talk about how corporations create jobs, and jobs are sometimes hazardous, especially when the risks of certain materials are not fully understood.
When a juror raised a hand, she would sympathize, promising occasional breaks for the purpose of grabbing a nicotine fix, and then she would ask whether the fact that smoking invariably shortens life stands in the way of that juror lighting up.
If she could get another juror to display disdain for the smoker, she would then ask, in the most innocent manner, whether any of the jurors would be bothered by the fact that the plaintiff, who died of lung cancer, smoked for most of his life. Devereaux and his wife knew that, but they smoked anyway. Trials are based upon polarization of jurors in the face of dichotomies. Dichotomies are opposites, such as black and white, good and evil, smooth and rough, and so on.
Good and evil, responsible and irresponsible, fair and unfair — these are the typical dichotomies that lie at the core of a well-designed trial presentation.
One of the most powerful tools a trial lawyer has is the ability to re-craft the issues in a favorable way. Instead of litigating whether asbestos is dangerous, this lawyer litigated whether cigarettes are dangerous and whether anyone should be rewarded for smoking, or at a higher and more subtle level, whether they should be given special treatment merely for being mortal.
A man who hates his fellow man for having darker skin may or may not be ashamed of that prejudice. Some neo-Nazi skinheads go to great lengths to advertise their shockingly abhorrent beliefs.
Others have learned to keep such sentiments secret. Outright racial hatred, however, is such a dramatic and obvious example that its utility begins to break down, for spotting it is easier than detecting other, equally harmful but more insidious attitudes.
Some people will go so far in defending an extreme belief that they will polarize others against them. This author once listened patiently while a juror explained, in a weak and unconvincing manner, how good, benevolent and kind members of the police are as a rule. That case turned out well for my client, even though the policeman did a good job on the stand.
During the trial, as the officer testified, I saw the same frown on the same faces that I had seen earlier. On cross-examination, I pointed out a few simple flaws in his accident reconstruction and the scantiness of the information contained in his notes. I did not eliminate him as a credible witness, but I gave the jurors who were already biased against police something on which to hang their hats, so to speak.
Once a lawyer has gained some jury experience, it becomes clear that placing a person under oath is not an effective truth serum. A person inclined or motivated to lie will do so whether under oath or not; the penalty for perjury is not an effective deterrent.
Yet, how often does one hear about the witness being prosecuted for perjury? Does the wife go to jail? Of course not. A plaintiff denies having pre-existing injuries, but is forced to admit when confronted with earlier medical records that this is not so. The plaintiff may lose his case, but it is extremely unlikely he will be prosecuted for perjury. Prosecutors have neither the interest nor the resources to prosecute that crime in volume. It is difficult at times to tell when someone is lying as opposed to simply being mistaken.
There is a certain kind of sociopath who can tell a lie with utter conviction, for such persons lack the social programming that allows them to tell right from wrong.
Further, high-level covert operatives and members of the special forces a routinely trained to lie convincingly. To them, lying is neither immoral nor dishonest if done for the sake of national security or survival in hostile territory.
Most people, on the other hand, experience a certain degree of stress when they lie. Whether motivated by natural inhibition, fear of being caught or a guilty conscience, most of us experience physiological reactions to telling lies, and some of these are visible to a careful observer. The series is entertaining because the hero, possessed as she is with an abnormal ability to detect lies, possesses an enviable capability that all of us wish we had.
Interestingly, the ability to detect deception is not difficult to learn. It is, however, inherently unreliable, because many of the physiological manifestations of dissembly or concealment of the truth can be caused by other fears or sources of stress.
A person confessing to an embarrassing truth will blush, look away and employ unusual or uncharacteristic speech patterns and mannerisms. For this reason, the special forces teach operatives to conceal their lies in admissions and confessions of benign but embarrassing items that make the telltale signs of untruthfulness appear natural, thus diffusing suspicion. It is unlikely that an attorney will become so skilled in detecting untruthful answers from potential jurors if those persons are skilled liars because the attorney has no baseline behavior patterns to use as a basis of comparison.
With a mixture of close observation, trust in instinct and common sense, however, it is often possible to spot concealment or untruthfulness in most people. The unusual situation is that of the prospective juror who lies to get onto the jury. Most lies are told to avoid humiliation or embarrassment, for the sake of self-aggrandizement, to avoid punishment, or to escape responsibility.
While these goals are less malignant and less dangerous to a trial lawyer and those of a dishonest potential juror who is lying to get on to a jury invariably a very dangerous proposition for the trial lawyer who is being lied to lies told to protect biases and prejudices the potential juror knows are scorned by society must be detected. Reverting once again to our overly simplistic example of strong racial bias, a juror who professes to believe in equal rights regardless of skin color but who in fact harbors sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan is a juror that must be detected and ejected by an attorney representing an African-American.
A juror who lies and conceals the fact that she is illiterate would not be appropriate to serve on a jury in a complex commercial case involving a substantial amount of documentary evidence. A juror who has filed a string of lawsuits in the past but who claims to sympathize with the interests of tort reform is a person who must be stricken from the panel by the defense attorney in a personal injury case.
Past experiences that are embarrassing enough to conceal tend to be emotionally charged, making them perfect sources of skewed perception.
A woman who was molested by her doctor as a young girl may be too ashamed to speak of that experience in a court room full of strangers, but if she despises physicians on the whole as a result of her past experience, she would not be an appropriate juror, at least from the standpoint of the defense, in a medical malpractice action or a claim involving the assertion that a physician or any other person in a position of trust took inappropriate physical liberties with the patient.
The physical indicators of dishonesty are usually relatively easy to spot if the trial attorney is alert and attentive to subtle cues. Some questions have a greater tendency than others to elicit untruthful responses.
Asking a person whether or not they have ever mowed a lawn is likely to lead to a truthful response even from a sociopath or an antisocial personality. Asking a basically honest man whether he has ever cheated on his wife is a different matter. If he has done so, he is not likely to confess to the same in a court room full of strangers, particularly if he is confident that there is no way to verify the truthfulness of his responses. Of course, if a man is willing to cheat on his wife, lying about it seems like a smaller, less consequential sin.
Another interesting example arises if you ask a juror whether or not they have ever used illegal drugs or have been physically dependent upon any drug.
While societal values appear to be in a state of flux, as evidenced by the gradual legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of other drug offenses in any states, the stigma of drug use and drug addiction including alcoholism are common motives to lie.
Persons go through life concealing a drug problem live in a constant state of fear of detection, and they become unable to appreciate the inherent importance of truth. People of similar ethical levels or unethical levels, as the case may be tend to resonate with one another.
Individuals who see the world as you do tend to be more real to you. Furthermore, for people who live in a constantly dishonest mode, a justification mechanism tends to run unremittingly in the back of their minds.
In order to make that true and acceptable, they tend to accept lies from other people even though they know better, for that is the structure of the fabric of the world in which they have chosen to live. Returning again to biases pertaining to police officers, it has been said that the police are the interconnecting link between the honest, law-abiding citizen and the criminal, and so they carry a plague. Is this true? I believe that it is, at least to an extent, and while I may not be correct, this is an example of a belief system that could influence how I would judge the credibility of a testifying police officer if I were a juror.
This principle is likely to be true part of the time but not all of the time, yet if I were to fail to recognize that fact and instead treat the concept as a universal truth, I would tend to operate on the basis of a bias that could lead me to inappropriate conclusions and findings.
Were that the case, it would then be incumbent upon you, as a trial lawyer, to spot and understand those mental mechanics during voir dire and take appropriate action before allowing me to sit on your jury.
At the very least, it would be necessary for you to identify my belief system and tailor your presentation around it, at least to some degree, unless I were stricken as a potential juror. From this we see that learning how the minds of your sitting jurors work is nearly as important as identifying the jurors who must be stricken for you to have a fighting chance at success.
Some judges operate on the basis of soundbites. Others look for deeper truths. When a prospective juror admits to possessing a bias, fixed opinion or controversial viewpoint, or even admits that he or she is likely to have difficulty being fair in light of the specific facts of a given case, grounds for a challenge for cause become evident in the record.
If a juror has made an admission to a bias or prejudice that operates in your favor, it may be tactically advantageous to resist a challenge for cause, if for no other reason than to force your opponent to expend one of his challenges for cause. Doing so could prevent your opponent from being able to strike yet another juror who may be equally favorable to your side without having confessed to a bias or belief that would support a challenge for cause.
Discussion of that question will typically earn you an hour of ethics credit at a CLE, but it will probably not be worth your time and attention in the heat of battle. The adversarial system requires you to fight for your client as an advocate. Americans enjoy not only the right to a jury trial, but the right to sit on a jury if they are so qualified.
I may stipulate to the excusing of a juror for simply mathematical reasons. I may also stipulate in order to appear reasonable if I believe that dismissal is inevitable. Lawyers are always trying to maintain credibility in the eyes of jurors, and I am no exception, but I am at least honest enough to admit that sometimes my tactics and artifices are less than noble in their origins. Candor of this kind is essential if one is to teach effective litigation tactics.
Deliberately facilitating a miscarriage of justice is inconsistent with the duty of candor owed by an officer of the court. When it comes to jury selection, however, it is usually better to trust in the judgment of the court and to continue to wear your hat as an advocate, rather than to abandon your post and usurp the function of the judge. In the American system of justice, each participant plays a vitally important role and these roles differ.
If a juror feels compelled to advocate for a particular side on some basis other than the evidence and the law, bad things will happen. It is not for the juror to try to assume the role of lawyer or judge.
Similarly, the trial lawyer must be an advocate, rather than judge or juror, for the system to operate as it has been designed. The duty lawyers owe the court is higher, at least in the eyes of many scholars, than the duty owed to the client, and the duty owed to the client is sacrosanct.
How does one resolve such a philosophical dilemma? It is often easy to reconcile conflicts in these duties by recognizing that the duty owed to the court is often exactly the same as the duty owed to the client: to act effectively, ethically and honestly while fighting as hard as possible for your client.
That is your job. So make the other side use his peremptory challenges by fighting to rehabilitate a juror who is favorable to your side but who is in danger of being challenged for cause. The best way to do this is to question the juror in a fashion to elicit a promise that the juror will be fair and impartial. Get the juror to agree that he or she can set aside any biases or pre-existing beliefs and follow the law as it is given by the court, while diligently weighing the evidence.
Get the juror to admit that there are two sides to every story, and that there may be more than one way to view the evidence as a general proposition. Get the juror to promise that he or she will be attentive and set aside past experiences, realizing that this case is different from any experiences they have had in the past.
Get the juror to agree that every situation is different and that it is his or her job to be fair and impartial, and to promise that they will do so. Finally, get the juror to admit that he or she is confident that they can set aside their biases or opinions derived from past experience. If these things do not work, it is unlikely that any other tactics will, but be aware that it may be in your best interest not to be seen fighting too hard on this point, for it can carry the appearance of slick gamesmanship and shifty maneuvering; these are things to which jurors tend not to respond well.
Most people are unwilling to admit that they are unable to be fair in a given situation, but if you obtain a clear, unequivocal statement from a juror that because of some belief or life experience your client will be coming into court as an underdog, there is a good chance the court will strike that juror for cause.
Obtaining such admissions is done on a gradient, in a stepwise fashion, with each question building on the last. Start with questions about specific past experiences, and move from there to how a juror was adversely affected by specific events. Once that has been developed through a series of gradually more poignant questions and answers, move to questions of how the juror felt afterward.
Timing can be delicate during such an examination, for when a person reaches a form of reverie re-experiencing a memory as though it were taking place in present time , they are susceptible to penetrating questions asked without preamble. In the defense of a claim of sexual assault on a patient by a psychotherapist, an examination very close to the one scripted below took place after a potential juror admitted that he had had bad experiences with doctors in the past.
The juror admitted that his sister had been physically handled in an inappropriate manner by a family practitioner when she was twelve. It would have been easy to challenge that juror for cause, but doing so prematurely would open the door for an easy rehabilitation using the above techniques by my opponent. She stopped eating for a while. We are peeling away the skin of an onion and getting to the raw truth, which requires an ability to discuss uncomfortable subject matter with strangers in a public setting.
Skills such as this are part of why people hate lawyers. Smith, is there any objection to the dismissal of Mr. Carrying forward from the scenario developed above, Mr. Jones should know better than to even try to rehabilitate that juror.
There is no chance of success and he is likely to suffer a loss of credibility in the eyes of the other jurors if he even makes the attempt. He has to let this one go. Therefore, as described above, the three primary instances when it would make sense to consent to a challenge for cause are a when something about that juror is unusual and renders him or her so unpredictable that your client, as far as you can tell, might very well be better off without that person on the jury; b when your credibility would be ill-served by your resistance to such a challenge; or c when the record is so clearly made that keeping the juror on the panel has the effect of introducing error in a case you believe you have a reasonable possibility of winning.
The provided above demonstrate how it is possible to develop and amplify upon concessions made by potential jurors with respect to their bias, partiality, interest in the outcome of the proceedings directly or indirectly or other bases by which they are unable to serve fairly and impartially. The prosecutor may make an opening statement limited to the facts the prosecutor expects to prove. The defendant may make an opening statement after the prosecutor's opening statement, or make an opening statement at the beginning of the defendant's case.
The defendant's statement must be limited to the defense and the facts the defendant expects to offer supporting that defense. The prosecutor may rebut the defense evidence, and, the defense may rebut the prosecutor's evidence. In the interests of justice, the court may allow any party to reopen that party's case to offer additional evidence. The prosecutor may make a rebuttal argument limited to a direct response to the defendant's closing argument.
On motion, the court may allow a defense rebuttal if the court finds the prosecution has made a misstatement of law or fact or an inflammatory or prejudicial statement in rebuttal. Rebuttal must be limited to a direct response to the misstatement of law or fact or the inflammatory or prejudicial statement. Outside the jury's presence, the court must allow the parties to object to the other party's argument and request curative instructions. The parties may also object and seek curative instructions before or during argument.
Jurors may take notes during the presentation of evidence and use them during deliberation. If a judge is unable to preside over pretrial or trial proceedings due to death, illness, or other disability, any other judge in the district, once familiar with the record, may finish the proceedings or trial.
If a judge is unable to preside due to death, illness or other disability after verdict or finding of guilt, any other judge in the district may finish the proceedings. If the subsequent judge determines the proceedings cannot be finished because the judge did not preside at the trial, the judge may order a new trial.
A judge must not preside at a trial or other proceeding if disqualified under the Code of Judicial Conduct. A request to disqualify a judge for cause must be heard and determined by the chief judge of the district or by the assistant chief judge if the chief judge is the subject of the request. A party may remove a judge assigned to preside at a trial or hearing as follows:.
If a judge is unavailable for any reason under this rule, the chief judge of the judicial district must assign another judge within the district to hear the matter. If no other judge in the district is available, the chief judge must notify the chief justice. The chief justice must assign a judge of another district to preside over the matter.
An objection to a court order or ruling is preserved for appeal if the party indicates on the record its objection or position. If no opportunity existed to object or indicate a position, the absence of an objection or stated position does not prejudice the party. At trial, witness testimony must be taken in open court, unless these rules provide otherwise. Jurors may not submit questions to a witness directly or through the judge or attorneys. If either party offers an audio or video recording, that party must not be required by the court to offer or provide a transcript of the recording as a prerequisite to admissibility.
If the party provides a transcript of the evidence, and the court admits the transcript as an illustrative exhibit, the transcript becomes part of the record, used for illustrative purposes with the exhibit only.
The court reporter must not transcribe video or audio evidence. The court must appoint and compensate interpreters as provided under Minn. Interpreters may be appointed and be present during deliberations for a juror with a sensory disability. At the close of evidence for either party, the defendant may move for, or the court on its own may order, a judgment of acquittal on one or more of the charges if the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.
The defendant may move for, or the court on its own may order, that any aggravating factors be withdrawn from consideration by the jury if the evidence is insufficient to prove them.
If the defendant's motion is made at the close of the prosecution's case, the court must rule on the motion. If the defendant's motion is made at the close of the defendant's case, the court may reserve ruling on the motion, submit the case to the jury, and rule before or after verdict.
If the court grants the defendant's motion after a verdict of guilty, the court must make a written finding stating the reason for the order. If no finding of an aggravating factor is made, the court may enter a finding of insufficient evidence to support an aggravated sentence. Any party may request specific jury instructions at or before the close of evidence. The request must be provided to all parties. The court may, and on request must, tell the parties on the record before the arguments to the jury what instructions will be given to the jury including a ruling on the requests made by any party.
The court may instruct the jury before or after argument. Preliminary instructions need not be repeated. The instructions may be in writing and may be taken into the jury room during deliberations. The court must instruct the jury on all matters of law necessary to render a verdict and must instruct the jury that they are the exclusive judges of the facts.
The court must not comment on evidence or witness credibility, but may state the respective claims of the parties. The court must submit appropriate verdict forms to the jury. An aggravated sentence form must be in the form of a special interrogatory.
The court must permit received exhibits or copies, except depositions and audio or video material, into the jury room. The court may permit a copy of jury instructions into the jury room. The court may allow the jury to review specific evidence. The court must instruct the jury to suspend deliberations during the review. If the jury asks for additional instruction on the law during deliberation, the court must give notice to the parties.
The court's response must be given in the courtroom. The court must give notice to the parties of its intent to give additional instructions. The jury may be discharged without a verdict if the court finds there is no reasonable probability of agreement. The court must poll the jury on request. The court may poll the jury on its own initiative. Each juror must be asked individually whether the announced verdict or finding is that juror's verdict or finding. A defendant may move the court for a hearing to impeach the verdict.
Juror affidavits are not admissible to impeach a verdict. At an impeachment hearing, jurors must be examined under oath and their testimony recorded. The court may accept a partial verdict if the jury has reached a verdict on fewer than all of the charges and is unable to reach a verdict on the rest.
Amended effective September 1, ; amended effective August 1, ; amended effective March 1, The court may - on written motion of a defendant - grant a new trial on the issue of guilt or the existence of facts to support an aggravated sentence, or both, on any of the following grounds:.
Irregularity in the proceedings, or any order or abuse of discretion that deprived the defendant of a fair trial;. Newly discovered material evidence, which with reasonable diligence could not have been found and produced at the trial;. Errors of law at trial, and objected to at the time unless no objection is required by these rules;. A verdict or finding of guilty that is not justified by the evidence, or is contrary to law.
A motion for new trial must be based on the record. Pertinent facts that are not in the record may be submitted by affidavit, or statements signed under penalty of perjury pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, section A full or partial transcript or other verbatim recording of the testimony taken at trial may be used during the motion hearing. Notice of a motion for a new trial must be served within 15 days after a verdict or finding of guilty.
The motion must be heard within 30 days after the verdict or finding of guilty, unless the time for hearing is extended by the court for good cause within the day period. If a motion for a new trial is based on affidavits or signed statements, the documents must be served with the notice of motion. The opposing party will then have ten days to serve supporting documents.
The ten-day period may be extended by the court for good cause. The court may permit reply documents. The court may - on its own initiative and with the consent of the defendant - order a new trial on any of the grounds specified in subdivision 1 1 within 15 days after a verdict or finding of guilty. The court must - on motion of a defendant - vacate judgment, if entered, and dismiss the case if the charging document does not charge an offense, or if the court did not have jurisdiction over the offense charged.
The motion must be made within 15 days after a verdict or finding of guilty, after a plea of guilty, or within a time set by the court during the day period. If the motion is granted, the court must make written findings specifying its reasons for vacating the judgment and dismissing the case.
Rule In cases of felonies and gross misdemeanors, the defendant has the right to a jury trial under Minnesota Constitution, article I, section 6, which guarantees the right to jury trial in "all criminal prosecutions. See Peterson v.
Peterson, Minn. Ketterer, Minn. The defendant's right to jury trial for offenses punishable by more than six months imprisonment is also guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Duncan v. Louisiana, U. New York, U. Since misdemeanors in Minnesota are punishable by no more than 90 days of incarceration or a fine or both, Minnesota Statutes, section However, a state constitutional right to a jury trial exists in any prosecution for the violation of a misdemeanor statute punishable by incarceration.
See Minnesota Constitution, article I, section 6, as interpreted in State v. Hoben, Minn. A jury waiver must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. State v. Ross, N. The Minnesota Supreme Court has recommended the following guidelines: "the defendant should be told that a [felony] jury See generally Blakely v. Washington, U. Shattuck, N. Also, see Rules 1. Whether a defendant has waived or demanded a jury trial on the issue of guilt, that defendant may still have a jury trial on the issue of an aggravated sentence, and a valid waiver under Rule The requirements for a valid jury waiver are discussed in the comment regarding Rule Trial begins when jeopardy attaches.
In Dereje v. State, N. A defendant who agrees to a court trial on stipulated facts, stipulated evidence, or both, must acknowledge and personally waive the rights listed in Rule The rules do not permit conditional pleas of guilty by which the defendant reserves the right to appeal the denial of a motion to suppress evidence or other pretrial order.
Make sure the trial process proceeds in a proper manner. Instruct the jury on the applicable law. Decide the punishment in most criminal cases.
How are jurors selected? What is voir dire? Who is eligible to serve? What happens if I ignore my summons for jury services? A jury summons is a court order. If you ignore it, you are subject to arrest and prosecution. May I call the court and schedule a more convenient time to serve? Will I be paid for serving as a juror? What if my employer doesn't allow me to serve?
Is my employer required to pay me while I serve as a juror? Is it possible to appear for jury services and not sit on a jury? How long will I serve? May I go home at the end of the day?
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