Warger v. Shauers
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal evidence rule barring jurors from testifying about jury-room deliberations also blocks a losing party from using another juror's account of deliberations to prove a juror lied during jury selection.
The unanimous decision closes off a route some courts had allowed for challenging suspect verdicts, meaning that even strong evidence a juror was dishonest about her impartiality generally cannot come from what she said behind closed doors during deliberations.
“The Rule does not focus on the means by which deliberations evidence might be used to invalidate a verdict.”
Explaining why the rule bars deliberations evidence regardless of how it would be used to challenge a verdict.
How it got here: A federal trial court denied a new trial, the Eighth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to resolve a circuit split over the rule's scope.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Gregory Warger was badly injured, losing a leg, when a truck driven by Randy Shauers struck his motorcycle. Warger sued Shauers for negligence, and after trial the jury sided with Shauers. A juror then told Warger's lawyer that the jury foreperson, Regina Whipple, had described during deliberations a personal experience with a fatal car accident involving her daughter, suggesting Whipple had misrepresented her impartiality during jury selection.
The question before the Court
After a jury ruled against him, could a motorcyclist use one juror's account of what another juror said in deliberations to prove that juror lied during jury selection?
Why it matters
Litigants who suspect a juror concealed bias during jury selection can no longer rely on a fellow juror's account of deliberations-room statements to prove it and win a new trial. They must instead find evidence from outside the jury room, such as public records or the juror's own statements before the verdict, making this kind of misconduct much harder to prove after a trial ends.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving a split among the federal appeals courts, so the Eighth Circuit's ruling for Shauers stands and Warger does not get a new trial. Going forward, parties challenging a verdict on grounds of juror dishonesty during jury selection must rely on evidence from outside jury deliberations, since Rule 606(b) as construed here blocks the use of deliberations testimony for that purpose nationwide.
What this does not decide
The Court noted, without deciding, that there could be cases of juror bias so extreme that the jury trial right itself is violated, in which the usual safeguards might not be enough. It expressly left that question for another case, since it was not presented 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 text: a motion for a new trial based on a juror's dishonesty during jury selection necessarily asks whether the verdict can stand, so it counts as such an inquiry.
- The Court traced the rule's common-law roots, explaining that some states (the 'Iowa' approach) had allowed deliberations evidence to expose voir dire dishonesty, while others (the 'federal' approach) barred it except for narrow exceptions; Congress's chosen wording matched the stricter federal approach.
- The Court noted that Congress had considered and rejected an earlier, narrower draft of the rule that would have permitted exactly the kind of evidence Warger sought to use, showing the broader bar was intentional rather than an oversight.
- The Court rejected Warger's argument that the inquiry only concerns voir dire and not the verdict itself, explaining that the rule asks whether an inquiry could invalidate the verdict, which a successful dishonesty claim would do.
- The Court declined to apply the rule of interpreting statutes to avoid constitutional problems, because the text and history left no genuine ambiguity, and it found the right to an impartial jury still protected through voir dire itself and other non-juror evidence.
- The Court held the affidavit also failed the rule's 'extraneous information' exception because the juror's personal experience with her daughter's accident was an internal matter she brought with her, not outside information about this specific case.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms McDonald v. Pless (238 U.S. 264)
The Court relied on this earlier ruling barring juror affidavits about deliberations as still controlling.
Reaffirms Tanner v. United States (483 U.S. 107)
The Court applied this case's reasoning that a juror's personal traits are 'internal' matters barred from evidence.
Distinguishes Clark v. United States (289 U.S. 1)
The Court said this case did not undermine the anti-impeachment rule because the earlier verdict was not at issue there.