The John Edwards jury is back today for its ninth day of deliberations. The general feeling seems to be, “what’s taking so long?” This morning, I got to wondering whether nine days is merely really long, or whether it is really, really, spectacularly and historically long. Seems like the former. A few minutes on the web turned up this story, about a 20-day deliberation in the Ruby Ridge trial in Idaho; this story, about a 55-day deliberation after a year-long police corruption trial in Oakland, California; and this story, about a four-and-a-half month deliberation in a Fair Housing Act case. The last seems to be generally recognized as the longest deliberation ever. A few minutes on Westlaw turned up cases such as Salcedo v. Haws, 2009 WL 1247084 (N.D. Cal. May 5, 2009) (nine days after a seven-week multi-defendant felony criminal trial), United States v. Wecht, 541 F.3d 493 (3d Cir. 2008) (“Here, the trial lasted for twenty-three days, and the jury deliberated for a total of 54.5 hours over a period of ten days.”), United States v. Byrski, 854 F.2d 955 (7th Cir. 1988) (“The case was tried for thirty-two days over an eight-week period. . . . [T]he jury deliberated for approximately thirty hours over thirteen days.”), and Densmore v. Manzarek, 2008 WL 2209993 (Cal. Ct. App. 2 Dist. May 29, 2008) (noting that jury deliberations took “nearly a month”). I should add that almost all the cited cases involved a very lengthy trial, typically two months or more, [...]
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