Rule 2:606.JUROR’S COMPETENCY AS A WITNESS

Rule 2:606 addresses two distinct moments when a juror might be asked to testify. Subdivision (a) deals with trial itself: a juror may not testify as a witness before the other jurors during the trial, and if a juror is called to testify for any reason, the court must give the parties an opportunity to object outside the jury’s presence.

Subdivision (b) deals with a later inquiry into whether a verdict or indictment is valid. The general rule there is restrictive: a juror may not testify about any statement made or incident occurring during deliberations, about the effect anything had on that juror’s or another juror’s vote, or about any juror’s mental processes concerning the verdict or indictment. The court may not even receive a juror’s affidavit or other evidence about those matters — the deliberative process stays sealed from later scrutiny.

The rule carves out four narrow exceptions where a juror may testify and a juror’s affidavit may be considered: whether extraneous prejudicial information improperly reached the jury, whether an outside influence improperly acted on a juror, whether a mistake was made in entering the verdict onto the verdict form, and whether a juror made a statement during trial exhibiting overt racial or national-origin bias — one tending to show that stereotype or animus significantly motivated the juror’s vote and casting serious doubt on the deliberations’ fairness. These exceptions target problems that come from outside the deliberative process, or a fairness breakdown so serious that shielding it would undermine confidence in the verdict, rather than opening up the substance of the jury’s reasoning to challenge.