What Is a Verdict? A Decision With No Reasons Attached
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
A jury returns a single word and gives no explanation, which is unlike almost every other consequential decision a public body makes. That absence of reasons is deliberate, it is defended on serious grounds and it creates problems that have no clean solution.
Why no reasons are given
The tradition of an unexplained verdict rests on several arguments. Requiring reasons would require the jury to agree on them, which is a far higher bar than agreeing on an outcome, since jurors reaching the same conclusion by different routes is common and would produce deadlock if the route had to be shared. It protects the deliberation from scrutiny, which is intended to let jurors speak freely and to prevent a verdict being unpicked by examining how it was reached. It permits a jury to acquit against the evidence without saying so, which is a residual power some regard as an important safeguard and others as lawlessness. And it reflects the jury's role as a finder of fact rather than as a body declaring law, since reasons would function as precedent and the jury is not meant to make any.
How the decision is constrained
The absence of reasons is balanced by controls on how the decision is reached:
- •Judicial directions on the law, which the jury must follow and which are given formally and generally in writing
- •Rules of evidence determining what the jury hears at all, which does far more work than any instruction
- •The standard of proof, which in criminal cases requires being sure rather than merely persuaded
- •Requirements about the number agreeing, whether unanimity or a specified majority
- •The judge's power to withdraw a case where no reasonable jury could convict on the evidence
- •Appeal on the conduct of the trial, though not on the verdict itself as such
The problems it creates
Several difficulties follow directly and are recognised. A wrongful conviction cannot be examined by reading the reasoning, since none exists, which makes appeals on factual grounds extremely difficult and has been a central obstacle in miscarriage of justice cases. Whether a jury applied the law correctly is unknowable, so an incorrect application is invisible unless something else reveals it. Discrimination in decision-making cannot be detected from the verdict. Research into how juries actually decide is restricted in several jurisdictions, with contempt rules prohibiting inquiry into deliberations, which means the institution is defended on assumptions about its operation that cannot be tested locally. Studies using simulated juries and jurisdictions permitting research have found results that raise genuine concerns, including effects of defendant appearance and of extraneous information.
When a jury refuses
The absence of reasons permits a jury to acquit in defiance of the evidence and the law, which is a power nobody granted deliberately and which cannot be removed without changing the whole arrangement. Historical cases are cited on both sides, including acquittals of people prosecuted for publishing and for religious meeting where the jury plainly disagreed with the law being applied, which are remembered as vindications. Comparable acquittals have also protected defendants who were plainly guilty of serious offences against people the jury did not care about, which is the same power producing the opposite result. Courts in most jurisdictions decline to tell juries the power exists while being unable to prevent its use, which is an uncomfortable position defended on the grounds that advertising it would invite its use in every case.
The alternatives in use
Other systems handle the same function differently and the comparison is instructive. Many civil law jurisdictions use professional judges or mixed panels of judges and lay assessors who deliberate together and produce a reasoned judgment, which makes the decision reviewable and removes the black box, at the cost of the lay element being led by professionals. Several countries have abolished or restricted jury trial entirely for most offences. Some require reasons from lay panels. Scotland retained a third verdict of not proven, which acquits without declaring innocence and which has been argued about for centuries and was legislated to be abolished recently. The general trade is between a decision that can be scrutinised and a decision insulated from scrutiny, and each arrangement buys one by giving up the other.
The takeaway
No reasons are given because agreeing on reasons is far harder than agreeing on an outcome, because deliberation is protected and because reasons would function as precedent. That makes wrongful convictions extremely hard to examine on appeal and makes incorrect application of the law invisible. Civil law systems produce reasoned judgments from professional or mixed panels instead.