The jury is not informed of the statue(s) the defendant is being charged with having violated except the most petty one for each category that the state is charging them with. For each applicable "petty" charge the jury finds the defendant guilty of then and only then is the jury then asked and tasked with determining if the defendant violated the next offense. So we still have one trial for numerous charges but the jury is focused on only one at a time and working on them in an escalating order.
I have this feeling that juries tend to start at the top most severe charge and whittle themselves done and if enough charges were made they may psychologically believe the defendant must be guilty of something. Working from the bottom up that pressure and psychology would be absent from the jury.
So the jury is informed the State believes a man is guilty of 1st degree murder and burglary. Judge tasks the jury with determining if the man broke into someones home, if yes, then the man took something of $xxx in value which determines the level of the burglary charge for sentencing purpuses. Next the judges asks about the killing charges, starting with manslaughter. Jury believes that defendant did in fact unlawfully kill another man. Then judge instructs them to determine if defendant premeditated the murder, etc... on up from manslaughter to 3rd degree homicide, 2nd degree homicide, first degree...
I realize that some laws may need to be rewritten to make this progressive application work.
EDIT: What I'm trying to say or do is: Don't provide biasing information ahead of time. Just like when doing software estimates you don't want a manager going to the dev team saying: hey we NEED these features can you give us an estimate, and oh we need it by the end of the month.
It may take longer for the jury to deliberate the entire case in this manner but it would prevent the "well the state thinks this man committed 40 crimes... he's got to be guilty of one so which one(s) should we pick" problem.
The jury is not informed of the statue(s) the defendant is being charged with having violated except the most petty one for each category that the state is charging them with. For each applicable "petty" charge the jury finds the defendant guilty of then and only then is the jury then asked and tasked with determining if the defendant violated the next offense. So we still have one trial for numerous charges but the jury is focused on only one at a time and working on them in an escalating order.
I have this feeling that juries tend to start at the top most severe charge and whittle themselves done and if enough charges were made they may psychologically believe the defendant must be guilty of something. Working from the bottom up that pressure and psychology would be absent from the jury.
So the jury is informed the State believes a man is guilty of 1st degree murder and burglary. Judge tasks the jury with determining if the man broke into someones home, if yes, then the man took something of $xxx in value which determines the level of the burglary charge for sentencing purpuses. Next the judges asks about the killing charges, starting with manslaughter. Jury believes that defendant did in fact unlawfully kill another man. Then judge instructs them to determine if defendant premeditated the murder, etc... on up from manslaughter to 3rd degree homicide, 2nd degree homicide, first degree...
I realize that some laws may need to be rewritten to make this progressive application work.
EDIT: What I'm trying to say or do is: Don't provide biasing information ahead of time. Just like when doing software estimates you don't want a manager going to the dev team saying: hey we NEED these features can you give us an estimate, and oh we need it by the end of the month.