Definition
Polling the jury is the procedural practice of asking each juror individually, in open court, to declare his or her verdict aloud. Rather than accepting the verdict as announced by the foreperson on behalf of the collective, the court — at the request of a party or, in some jurisdictions, on its own motion — addresses each juror by name or number and requires a personal affirmation or disavowal of the verdict returned.
The purpose is to verify unanimity (where unanimity is required) and to surface any juror who may have acquiesced to the group verdict under pressure but who, when addressed individually before the verdict is formally recorded, would state a different position. A juror who dissents during the poll has not yet been discharged, and the verdict has not yet been entered; the court retains authority to send the jury back for further deliberation or, depending on the circumstances, to declare a mistrial.
Common Confusion
Polling the jury should not be confused with jury selection (voir dire), which is the process of questioning prospective jurors before trial. The two procedures share the structure of direct questioning of jurors, but they occur at opposite ends of the trial: voir dire before deliberation begins, polling after the verdict is announced but before it is recorded. The words are also sometimes confused in older sources with the tally of a grand jury's votes, which is a distinct and generally non-public process.
Why It Matters in Research
Timing is the critical research variable. The right to poll must ordinarily be exercised before the verdict is recorded and the jury discharged. Researchers examining historical case law will find that what constitutes "recorded" has varied by jurisdiction and era — in some older state practice, recording meant physical entry into the docket; in others, the foreperson's oral announcement itself had quasi-final effect. A case turning on whether a polling request came in time requires careful attention to the procedural posture and the specific state's practice at the period in question.
The question of who may demand a poll has also shifted. Rapalje & Lawrence identifies this as a right exercisable by "either party" in some states and a matter of judicial discretion in others — a split that persisted well into the twentieth century. Modern federal practice under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 31(d) codifies a right to poll in criminal cases; civil practice is less uniformly codified. Researchers working in federal courts before the 1946 adoption of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should not assume a uniform federal right existed.
A poll that reveals dissent creates a fork with significant downstream consequences: the jury may be returned for further deliberation, or the result may support a mistrial motion. This connects polling directly to hung jury doctrine. Researchers tracing mistrial grounds in appellate records will often find a polling request (or the denial of one) as a predicate fact.
The right to poll is also a vehicle for claims of juror coercion. Post-verdict affidavits and appeals frequently argue that a juror's "yes" during polling was itself coerced — raising intersecting questions about the finality of verdicts and the limits on juror impeachment of the verdict.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries converge on the core definition: polling the jury requires each juror to individually declare his verdict. The formulations are nearly identical across Black's first and second editions and Rapalje & Lawrence, suggesting the procedural concept was well settled by the late nineteenth century.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most informative of the three for research purposes. It identifies the right as available to either party "at any time before the verdict is recorded" in some states, while noting that in others it lies "in the discretion of the judge." The cited state cases span New York, Illinois, South Carolina, and Georgia — a spread that confirms genuine jurisdictional variation in the nineteenth century, not merely academic hedging.
Black's entries do not address the consequences of a dissenting juror during the poll, nor the timing constraints, nor the procedural mechanism for raising the request. Researchers relying solely on Black's for this term will have the definition but not the operational doctrine. Rapalje & Lawrence's case citations, though dated, are genuine starting points for tracing early American polling practice.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses federal practice specifically, nor the codification that came with modern rules. The common law background these entries describe is the foundation, but researchers in twentieth-century or contemporary federal matters must look beyond these sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal criminal practice is governed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 31(d), which expressly provides that after a verdict is returned but before the jury is discharged, the court must poll the jurors on the request of any party or may do so on its own. State practice varies: some states grant a comparable right by rule or statute, others treat it as discretionary with the trial court, and the consequences of a dissenting poll response differ across jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Mistrial and Hung Jury (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia, criminal_212) — directly relevant to the consequences when a poll reveals juror dissent.