Runaway jury: legal system and jury manipulation

¶ … Runaway Jury

The movie the Runaway Jury tells the story of a lawsuit for wrongful death made against a gun manufacturer. As the story unfolds, the viewer sees that both the defense attorney team and two people not directly related to this lawsuit are trying to manipulate the legal process in order to get the outcomes they prefer to see. The movie suggests that our jury selection process, and hence our legal system, can be corrupted in a variety of ways.

The movie illustrates potential ways to corrupt the trial process in several ways. While the efforts of the jury expert hired by the plaintiff's lawyers seem to work within the guidelines of the law, the viewer is given many indications that he cares little for staying within legal boundaries. He has a list of potential jurors before the jury selection process has begun, and he and his subordinates put tremendous effort into finding out all they can about them prior to jury selection. While this may not be illegal, the character, Mr. Finch, says, "Trials are too important to be left up to juries," and "Everybody has a secret they don't want you to find." After the jury has been selected, his team begins to dig to try to find personal secrets they can use against the jurors to influence their votes.

However, there are two other important influences on the trial: the plaintiff's attorney and two outsiders who are apparently willing to throw the jury's decision either way, offering to sell the jury decision to the highest bidder. The male in this team, Nicholas Easter, gets himself placed on the jury while his female partner works on the outside, negotiating with both attorney teams. After demonstrating several times that she does have the power to influence some jury actions, she offers up the verdict to the first legal team ready to pay her $10 million price.

Everyone is corrupted, at least temporarily, in this story. The defense jury consultant openly accepts money from the gun manufacturer being sued. Easter takes actions that communicate to both lawyers that this jury is up for grabs, although they don't know at first who on the jury is working with the woman who repeatedly contacts them. The defense attorney carefully considers Easter and his friend's offer to throw the case for $10 million, and acquires the money from his firm.

Some of the actions Easter and his partner take seem innocuous. He leads the jury to suddenly stand up in the courtroom and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. However, this was a pre-arranged communication to both attorneys that someone was able to control what the jurors did. There were more serious instances: Easter managed to get one woman removed from the jury, and another woman took an overdose of pills after realizing that her personal secret might be revealed. Finch's team had no compunctions about breaking laws in the process of their jury tampering: they broke into Easter's apartment twice, stealing computer data the first time, and the second time stealing more information and then setting the apartment on fire.

Viewers might want to see some of the characters as individuals taking important moral stances and fighting corruption, but by the end of the movie all the major characters have been corrupted in some way. It could be argued that the defense attorney was not corrupted because he ultimately decides to not pay the price to purchase the jury decision he wants. However, he goes so far as to discuss the situation with others in his firm and to collect the $10 million made. However temporarily, he seriously considers going along with the jury-tampering.