§ 8.01-381.What jury may carry out.

Once a jury retires to deliberate, what goes with it into the jury room matters. Section 8.01-381 draws a clean line: pleadings never go, exhibits can. The pleadings — the formal papers stating claims and defenses — stay behind because they are arguments about the case, not evidence of it, and letting the jury pore back over one side’s phrasing could tilt deliberations toward advocacy rather than fact-finding.

Exhibits are different. With the court’s leave, physical and documentary exhibits admitted at trial can go with the jury, and the section goes further than just permitting it. If any party asks, the court has to instruct the jury that it may request exhibits for use during deliberations, and whatever exhibits the jury asks for get sent to the jury room, or otherwise made available, so the jury is not stuck trying to remember details of evidence it already saw once at trial.

The practical effect is to keep deliberations anchored in the evidence rather than the pleadings, while making sure jurors know they can ask for the exhibits they need instead of guessing whether that is allowed.