AIBU to not know how jury is supposed to weigh up evidence?

[JetTail]

I'm thinking specifically about JD's defamation trial. I've seen some of AH's testimony and if true, he's a c u next tuesday.
My question is, what if you don't believe her?
Are you supposed to come to a decision based on the assumption that everything you hear from a witness is true (as they are under oath) or are you supposed to consider credibility?
And what if there are conflicting accounts from opposing sides and you believe both accounts?
Mind a bit boggled today lol

It's a civil trial so it will be weighed up on the balance of probability rather than beyond all reasonable doubt, as in a criminal trial.

I don't want to comment on this specific case because the vitriol, misogyny and hatred towards Amber Heard is truly shocking, a lot of it from women. I have no horse in this race and don't particularly care for either of them, but the level of abuse towards her is awful

Are you seriously asking. Don't you know. You consider the evidence. Not what anyone said, but what can be proved, the burden of proof.

I sat on the jury for a sexual assault trial and I wish our judge had said this to us The claimant sobbed throughout her testimony, the defendant was cool as a cucumber. We couldn't come to even a majority decision, so couldn't convict

This is a US civil case, and therefore although I used to be a lawyer and have sat on a jury in the UK, I have no idea how it works. Assume most people on here won’t either.

I expect there are some useful articles / podcasts in the US.

@Oblomov22 But in cases like this, there often is no evidence. In a criminal case it would not go to court if not enough evidence but this is about he said/she said and the jury will have to decide who they believe is telling the truth or mostly the truth

And by that - I mean things like the burden of proof, evidential value of witnesses, role of the judge etc. It will all be different.

And yes this is the USA so who knows. I am amazed that the lawyers are allowed to reject a number of jurors after looking at their backgrounds/lifestyle.

Is a juror instructed to take all sworn testimony as fact?

Surely nobody thinks this is remotely how things work in court

As a PP has stated, its balance of probability. The focus is not beyond reasonable doubt; the balance of probability test is whether there is enough evidence that you can tip the balance from 50/50. In other words, after hearing everything are you 51% sure one way or the other?
JD has raised the suit, therefore it is on him to prove his case. In a he said/she said trial, with little to no physical / written evidence and witnesses that are not impartial,
a civil case is always likely to lose as there's nothing to tip the balance.
It'll be interesting to see what the judge directs.
In any case, no-one is coming out of this the victor.

The jury have to decide whether on balance there is enough evidence to support Johnny's claim. If Amber's only supporting evidence is her own testimony which you feel has been shown to be unreliable and not much of the body of other evidence suports her account, then yes, you take all that into account in terms of how much weight you apply to her testimony...but crucially, when answering the specific question you need to answer.

Yes but in the US system the barrier to libel is very high. He needs to prove (on balance of probablility) that she deliberately lied to cause him hardship, not just that she made unsubstantiated claims.

If it was just he said/she said there would be no chance of success. Even with evidence she hasn't always been truthful it's very hard to prove he was never physically abusive at all when they were alone; especially when he's clearly got a massive drug problem.

The truth is that no-one can know exacly what happened and they were almost certainly both pretty awful so, I suspect, he's likely to lose. Possibly he never expected to win and feels that poking holes in her story might be enough to rescue his career.

Just a reminder that this is a civil case, not a criminal one, in a US court and so we can't go applying UK expectations to it. Civil courts are used to sort out disputes where no crime has been committed. Here in the UK it's said that levels of proof required are lower but I don't know if that's true in the US.

As for how you reach a decision, you listen as carefully as you can and try to use your head to work out whether there are holes in one side's argument or the other. At the end of the evidence you listen carefully to what the judge has to say and then you discuss things with your fellow jurors and (hopefully) try to make a decision based on the facts, discarding as many prejudices and as much emotion as you can. You try to come to an agreement and if you can't you call for guidance from the court officials or the judge.

We work on the basis of ‘ innocent until proven guilty’. Guilt has to be proven. It comes down to who you believe the most. If you are not sure, you have to give a ‘not guilty’ verdict. Both cases I have been involved in resulted in a retrial. In the first, I would have convicted but the judge stopped it as the accused changed his story and started saying things which the prosecution had no knowledge of. In the second, we deliberated. We were one jury member down at the last minute due to personal circumstances, so there were only 11 of us. As it was a serious case, the judge wanted a unanimous verdict. We very quickly decided 9-2 ‘not guilty’. We asked the judge for guidance, and he came back with 10-1. Nobody wanted to change their minds; the foreman, who thought something ‘may’ have happened wanted to convict, as did another member who was under the impression that it was ‘guilty until proven innocent’. The rest of us did not believe the ‘victim’ or any of his witnesses, and found the accused more believable, so could not give a guilty verdict. As in England we don’t have the third option the Scots have of ‘not proven’, we had to vote innocent. The judge would not accept 9-2, so we were discharged and it went to another trial.

Here in the UK it's said that levels of proof required are lower but I don't know if that's true in the US.

It's not the level of proof that's lower, it's what constitutes libel. US free speech protection is very high so anything that is opinion, even if forseeably causing harm, is likely to be protected.

If they feel that she just has a different view of events to him, or they believe parts of her story, then he loses.

@donquixotedelamancha that’s really interesting- I thought it would be US specific.

Lawyers are there to specifically guide you through the process. You aren't supposed to consider anything outside of what is presented to you. Say you hear testimony, you are initially to assume the witness is telling the truth. However, lawyers can cross examine or provide additional evidence that calls the witness credibility into question, which you are then allowed to sway your opinion towards them and then decide you don't believe.

If you believe both, then you only consider whether the person on trial is guilty of what they are guilty of. If the other person's guilt means that the dependent isn't responsible in law for their actions, a judge would guide you on this, likewise if it's irrelevant. If the other person is also guilty creating mitigating circumstances, then that is for the judge to consider when sentencing.

This is a civil case, so it goes on balance of probabilities vs reasonable doubt, which is why character witnesses etc are being used a lot more, and evidence that doesn't definitely prove anything. E.g. 'Johnny Depp is an alcoholic and sent awful messages to his wife'. OK, that doesn't prove he hit her, but it makes it more likely. 'Amber Heard sent messages saying she would ruin his career', ok, also doesn't prove he didn't hit her, but calls her credibility into question.

This is a civil case not a criminal trial. In the UK at least , in civil cases the standard of proof isn’t “beyond all reasonable doubt”, it’s “on the balance of probability”, though in the US it may be a higher standard of proof.

that’s really interesting- I thought it would be US specific.

I should qualify that IANAL, let alone a US one; but that is my understanding from reading around US libel. I haven't followed this case but I'm pretty sure such a case would not commonly get this far, simply because it's not usually worth it.

As I said above, given that two years ago he was perceived as a one sidedly abusive partner and that the PR battle seems to be going more his way now, I wonder whether this is as lose-lose a situation as it looks like from the outside?

Hollywood has a very high tolerance for unpleasent people- perhaps he only needs to detoxify himself a bit for this to be a victory?

Also worth noting that jurors can discuss trials, after the event, in the US; so losing on the law but making the narative that she was lying might be enough.

You can't safely assume that everything a witness says is true just because the witness is on oath. People can and do lie on oath.

The jury needs to assess the credibility of the witnesses individually but also the evidence as a whole i.e. are witnesses on the same side of the case consistent with each other? Minor inconsistencies are common, but if a party calls several witnesses and they all give very different accounts of the same event, it undermines that party's credibility.

However, if witnesses on different sides of a case give different accounts, that is what you would expect, because if there is a trial, the facts are usually in dispute.

Oh gosh. My brain is not capable of understanding your answers!
He is suing for defamation.
I am not sure that some of you understand that?
For defamation to be proven, as far as I know, it has to be untrue and it has to have caused damage to a reputation (financially).
It's clear that he has suffered financial damage and reputational damage. What is not clear is whether what she wrote in the article was true.

I am very swayed by his demeanour and testimony. Her? No. I actually do not believe a word she says.

I'm not a body language expert but she juts her chin out a lot. I can't think of a better way to describe it. It's like she is in fight mode. Here - take me on muddafuccka! I'm gonna fuckin kill you!!!
Then she cries apparently. Every move and facial expression is fake imo. Mind you, HE, sticks on sunglasses a lot. Probably to hide the rolling eyes.

I don't believe her at all. I simply don't believe a word out of her mouth.
He suffered financial damage and it was as a result of her claims in that article.
BTW why do all of the fucking witnesses sound like they're on weed or something? Or chill pills?

Oh. So you weren't really asking?!?!

Op, if you ever do jury service I pity the poor buggar on trial. You would convict if someone juts out their chin. What if their eyes are too close together?

Of course not. If that was the case, all an accused would ever have to do was swear he was innocent and the jury would have to acquit him!

The juries have to weigh up all the evidence and form their own opinions as to who's lying.

I don't believe her at all. I simply don't believe a word out of her mouth.
He suffered financial damage and it was as a result of her claims in that article.

You would be terrible on a jury because you've made up your mind before you've heard all the evidence, nevermind waiting for deliberations to begin!

As people have said, you have to use your judgement purely based on the evidence before you and accept that others may reach a different conclusion. I was the foreman on a case which was, like this, one person's word against another's. We could not reach a big enough majority so were a hung jury.