Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Jury Trial vs. Bench Trial

Having conducted both a jury trial and a bench trial, there are advantages and disadvantages of both.  With a bench trial, the court tends to be a lot more lenient on evidentiary issues since it is just them hearing the evidence.  However, the disadvantage is that you have one person sitting as fact finder who has a legal background.   This can result in a different decision than the average juror would make.

With a jury trial, the court is a lot less likely to let close evidence in.  The trial is much more expensive for everyone.  However, cases that are terrible on the law can often times be overcome with a good equity argument.  This is since I have many time juries ignore the law if they do not feel it is right. 

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