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The Jury's Out

The Jury's Out...

 

You can help FIJA crowdsource some answers the government would rather not share! 

There are a number of jury-related questions for which we can find no definitive answer or for which the answer may change at any time. For instance, do you know what is the longest time an American citizen has been held in pre-trial detention without being convicted? No? We're not sure either.

The various government systems in the United States generally do not make that kind of data readily available to the public, let alone aggregated across all levels of government. This year, though, we're going to try and put our collective wisdom and observations together to answer some of these kinds of questions. 

Even though we can't definitively answer these questions without an exhaustive inventory of all U.S. trial records, we can at least share with the public the most egregious examples of these types of abuses that we know of by pooling our observations. 

How can you help? If you come across a link to a news story, legal filing, etc. that does a good job of documenting a case that answers one of our questions of interest, send it to us via the form below. We'll be rewarding some of answers by sending you some FIJA swag!

And what specifically are these questions of interest? Check back here from time to time as we will both be updating the question list from time to time and also adding pages where we share with you and the public the crowdsourced findings you and other friends of FIJA have provided. You can also suggest a question via the form below.

Questions of Interest

  • What is the highest number of retrials due to hung juries that someone has been put through in the American criminal legal system?
    (Note: We are looking for retrials due to hung juries only. In the case of Curtis Flowers who was tried six times for the same crime, for example, only two were retrials after hung juries, while the other four were due to prosecutorial misconduct.
     
  • What is the longest time an American citizen has been held in pre-trial detention for the same offense or offenses without being convicted?
    Click here to see the top answers.
     
  • What is the longest continuous period of time a court or court system in the United States has not held any in-person jury trials...

 

Fill out the form below if you have a documented case to submit or would like to suggest another question of interest. We will contact you if we need more information or to get your mailing address to send you some swag if you are the first person to submit a sufficiently documented case we can use on the website. Not everyone will qualify for swag. Please be as thorough as you can in submitting information for the best chance at scoring some! Final determination of what is sufficient documentation is at FIJA's discretion.

Thank you!

 

Submit Answers

Contact information

First Name *
Last Name *

 

Which question do you believe the link you are submitting answers?

 

Case Documentation

In the text box below, please submit any links you have to new stories, legal documents, etc. documenting the case you are submitting.

(Depending on the device and browser you are using, the field may accommodate more characters than it appears when empty. Again, depending on your device and browser, you may be able to click on the diagonal lines in the lower righthand corner of the text box and drag the box to expand it so more of your text is visible at once.)

(Skip this field ONLY if you would like to suggest another question of interest instead of an answer to one of the questions listed above.)

 

Suggest Another Question of Interest

If you wish to suggest a concise question of interest that does not appear above, please enter it here in 250 characters or fewer. While we review all questions submitted, not all will be included in this project.