When jurors can testify about their verdict

Delaval, 1 T.R. 11, 99 Eng. Rep. 944 (K.B. 1785). "The values sought to be promoted," according to the Advisory Committee's Note to the original proposal for federal Rule 606(b), "include freedom of deliberation, stability and finality of verdicts, and protection of jurors against annoyance and embarrassment." However, the blanket prohibition also bars testimony relevant to misconduct, irregularities, and improper influences external to the process of deliberation. The intent of this subsection is to strike a proper balance by excluding testimony relating to the internal deliberative process and allowing testimony about objective misconduct and irregularities. No attempt is made to specify substantive grounds for setting aside verdicts. The Advisory Committee's Note to the original federal proposal, upon which subsection (b) is modeled, said: "The trend has been to draw the dividing line between testimony as to mental processes, on the one hand, and as to the existence of conditions or occurrences of events calculated improperly to influence the verdict, on the other hand, without regard to whether the happening is within or without the jury room.... The jurors are the persons who know what really happened. Allowing them to testify as to matters other than their own reactions involves no particular hazard to the values sought to be protected. The rule is based upon this conclusion." For example, under this rule jurors would be competent to testify to the consumption of alcoholic beverages by deliberating jurors, a matter which under some circumstances may be cause for setting aside a verdict, see Kealoha v. Tanaka, 45 H. 457, 370 P.2d 468 (1962). A similar rule is found in Cal. Evid. Code §1150.