What Can You NOT say to Jurors

The Texas Supreme Court has taken a renewed interest in what kinds of lawyer arguments are improper. The basic premise behind the law relating to improper jury argument is that silver-tongued lawyers are able to appeal to the prejudices or sympathies of jurors to such an extent that the reasoning of the jurors is overwhelmed and the final verdict cannot be trusted.

With the general populace as skeptical about lawyers as they are today, I'm not sure that this premise can be voiced with a straight face. If the talk radio people can call the President a Nazi, is there really a belief that jurors can't separate vitriolic hyperbole from the role they are asked to undertake.

Recently, the Court said that lawyers can't refer to Nazis in their closing arguments to jurors. And, the lawyer in the Nazi case clearly went over the line of good taste and decorum. However, I want to believe that you can pick 12 people at random, and still be reasonably assured that they are not going to believe what the lawyer said just because he or she is so mesmerizing. The next case up involves these nefarious statements:

For years, in this conservative community, juries have been very liberal with the doctors, very liberal. What I mean is, their verdicts didn't send much of a message at all....physicians in this community have been able to count on the fact that juries are going to be liberal with them, and where has that gotten us? How do you send a message in this kind of case? It is with the amount of the verdict. And that is what I am talking about when I say the juries in Lubbock have been very liberal with doctors in the past, because juries' verdict haven't gotten anybody's attention, and that is what we are asking for here.

I'm not much persuaded that this case turns out differently if these words, or anything like it is said or is not said. But, I wouldn't bet money that the doctors don't get a reversal.