After a jury trial, there is often an opportunity to talk with jurors and learn the things they thought were important and often to answer questions that they had about the case or about the evidence. One of the most common questions asked after a case, no matter what the decision was, is whether the defendant had done this sort of thing before. This is especially true in sexual abuse cases. Jurors want to know this information. As I wrote about last week, the proposed new court rule would make it an ethical violation for an attorney to truthfully answer these and other questions.

Before a trial, jurors are seldom allowed to know the defendant’s previous criminal convictions. This is because there is concern that a jury might convict a person based on what they had done in the past rather than the present evidence. There is an exception that allows jurors to learn of past crimes of dishonesty because it has bearing on whether the defendant is honest and therefore his testimony worthy of belief, but the general rule is that such evidence is not allowed during a trial.

Not all states follow this rule or concept. Many states allow jurors to know all the criminal record of any witness. The theory is that unless the jury knows what a witness has been up to in the past, the jurors don’t know whether or not to believe the witness. This is logical, but it is not the rule in Washington. We have our own special brand of thinking. We choose not to look at what a person has done in the past when it comes to whether or not they should be believed.

There is no reason why jurors should not be able to get the answers to the questions that they have. Anyone sitting in the audience of the trial would know the answers to the questions, and there would not be any restriction on them talking to jurors, just the attorneys. This makes no sense at all. This is directly contrary to the spirit of our justice system that has its root in the Constitutional provision that the justice system should operate openly.

Once again, our leaders have wondered far away from what our founders proposed and what they intended to guarantee by what they wrote. Our leaders have forgotten that we got this far by sticking with the ideas and concepts that our founding fathers developed. It is time we got back to the basic ideas of our heritage; A free society, with a government of the people by the people, and for the people.