Juror Privacy Via Anonymity

Abstract

Anonymous juries delivered verdicts in the hush-money criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, as well as both of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation cases against him. After the defamation cases concluded, the judge cautioned the jurors against ever publicly revealing their identities. This was sound advice, as recent doxing, threats of violence, and online posts filled with hatred and vitriol illustrate the dangers facing American jurors. The scholarly literature analyzing anonymous juries focuses primarily on the propriety of their use in criminal cases to protect jurors from physical harm. Missing from the conversation, however, is an examination of anonymity’s role in protecting jurors—in both criminal and civil cases—from privacy harm. Privacy harms can impose significant costs not only on the over thirty million citizens called to jury duty annually, but on the jury system itself. This Article fills the gap in the literature by assessing the institution of anonymous juries through the lens of juror privacy. It examines concerns regarding citizen participation in the jury process, faith in the judicial system, juror truthfulness, trial fairness, and public access. As a procedural reform to counter the effects that rapid advances in social media and technology have on juror privacy, the author of this Article argues that anonymous juries should become the default practice in most criminal and civil trials. This Article explains how routinely impaneling anonymous juries can meet the challenge of protecting juror privacy in the twenty-first century while safeguarding fair trials and protecting public access to the judicial process.