Warger v. Shauers
The Supreme Court ruled that a longstanding evidence rule barring jurors from testifying about what happened during deliberations also blocks such testimony when it's used to prove that a juror lied during jury selection.
The unanimous decision keeps jury deliberations confidential even when a party suspects a juror hid bias, reinforcing the trade-off Congress struck between protecting frank jury discussions and policing juror honesty.
How it got here: A federal trial court denied a new trial based on the barred juror affidavit; the Eighth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Gregory Warger was badly injured, losing his leg, in a motorcycle-truck collision with Randy Shauers. After a jury ruled against Warger, another juror told Warger's lawyer that the jury foreperson had described during deliberations a family car accident involving her daughter, suggesting she had lied when asked during jury selection whether she could be impartial and award damages fairly.
The question before the Court
If a losing party learns after trial that a juror lied during jury selection, can the party use another juror's account of what was said in deliberations to prove it?
Why it matters
Losing parties in civil and criminal trials who suspect a juror was dishonest during jury selection generally cannot use fellow jurors' accounts of deliberations to challenge the verdict. They must instead rely on evidence from outside the jury room or catch problems during jury selection itself, making it harder to overturn a verdict after the fact based on what was said behind closed doors.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving a split among the federal appeals courts. The Eighth Circuit's ruling affirming denial of Warger's new-trial motion stands, and the verdict for Shauers remains in place. Going forward, litigants nationwide seeking new trials over suspected juror dishonesty during jury selection cannot rely on fellow jurors' accounts of deliberations, and must instead use evidence from outside the jury room or issues caught during questioning of jurors.
What this does not decide
The Court noted, without deciding, that there might be cases of juror bias so extreme that the jury trial right itself is violated, leaving open whether the usual safeguards would be enough to protect fairness in such an extreme case. It did not decide that question here.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b), which bars juror testimony 'during an inquiry into the validity of a verdict,' according to its plain terms: a motion for a new trial based on a juror's dishonesty during jury selection is exactly this kind of inquiry, because if the lie was proven, the verdict itself would have to be thrown out.
- The Court traced the rule's roots to English and American common law, noting that most courts followed a broad 'federal' version barring deliberations evidence for any purpose except outside influences, rather than a narrower 'Iowa' version that allowed such evidence to expose juror dishonesty.
- Congress's own drafting history showed lawmakers considered and rejected the narrower Iowa-style language, confirming that the broad exclusion Congress ultimately wrote into Rule 606(b) was deliberate rather than accidental.
- The Court rejected the argument that the rule only applies when a court must examine how deliberations affected the verdict, explaining that the rule instead applies whenever the verdict's validity is at stake, regardless of the type of error alleged.
- The Court found no ambiguity that would trigger the practice of preferring a reading that avoids constitutional problems, and held that a party's right to an impartial jury is still protected by jury selection questioning, courtroom observation, and evidence from outside the jury room, so excluding this deliberations testimony did not violate that right.
- Turning to Rule 606(b)'s exception for outside ('extraneous') information, the Court held the juror's account was still inadmissible because the foreperson's account of her daughter's own accident came from her personal life experience, an 'internal' matter, not from an outside source connected to this case.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Tanner v. United States (483 U. S. 107)
Relied on to confirm that claims a juror was unfit to serve are 'internal' matters excluded from evidence, extending that logic to bias.