No Stupid Questions

First the direct answer: you can't.

Some more context: there's usually ways to deal with this issue. There's voir dire for example, where you can do a practice run of the questions and answers for a specific witness, or the party can profer (idk if it's spelled correctly) the testimony, giving the judge a general idea of the direct or cross-examination.

This usually only happens if something goes wrong. It can be things like the lawyer overstepping a boundary by accident, but it's very frowned upon and they can be admonished and sanctioned by the judge.

For why to do about the "can't put the shit back in the horse", usually the judge gives the jury an admonishment and maybe even a curative instruction right before deliberation, but best case scenario it's been handled in advance and doesn't even happen.

Basically the idea is to keep the jury "as clean as possible in their decision". Best case they only hear the stuff that's relevant, but any other case you try to tell them to disregard things or remind them what to consider, and you hope they feel duty-bound to uphold this.

Generally it is understood that juries take their obligation extremely seriously and most of the time they genuinely make an effort to rule out evidence that shouldn't have come in. Of course there are outliers.

Its more that when deliberating the jurors just consciously disregard that info. However, everyone knows that this is a request at best. What jurors do or do not consider when they are deliberating will vary.

When I was on the hiring team at work, I googled an applicant and discovered that they were arrested in the 90s for filming themself having sex with a cow. That is increadibly offputting but they had a clean record in the 30 years since then and even if they didn't it was in no way applicable to the job in question so I simply disregarded that fact. Obviously I still knew they fucked a cow but I simply didn't consiously factor it into the hiring decision. They did get the job btw.

I imagine it is the same for a jury. Obviously the jury can't literally forget something that was said but they can consiously choose to disregard it when it comes to their final decision. Obviously it's not perfect because any information admissable or otherwise will subconsciously influence someones verdict but if they try to actively ignore that info then it is better than nothing.

Keep in mind that statement is not allowed for a reason. Eg. One time a prosecutor implied that the defendant was in a gang because they were wearing a shirt with the color red. He wasn't in a gang. If he was, the prosecutor would've had actual evidence. It's literally just a manipulation tactic to try to get a conviction, and that's why it was objected to.

If it was a jury of my peers no one would remember much in the first place.

They don’t. But later in deliberations they cannot see it in a transcript. They are supposed to base everything on the evidence they have.

So, if something is said that absolutely incriminates a person, but it’s thrown out on a technicality and little evidence remains… technically they should be not guilty.

Conversely, if someone is being railroaded for a crime and the only evidence placing them half way across the world at the time is somehow thrown out…. They’d have to find them guilty.

Could you? I could not.

I was on a jury for a 3 week trial last winter. In almost every case the attorneys go to a side bar before anything is brought up. The only situation we had where we were asked to ignore something were two incomplete questions regarding a business relationship that later turned out to be completely inconsequential to the questions at hand.

As individuals, they can’t. But as a group making a decision through verbal discussion, they can exclude the information from the deliberative process. At least to their own satisfaction, they need to construct a justification for their verdict that doesn’t rely on the forbidden evidence.

It's not forgotten, that's why lawyers engineer those moments.

But it's supposed to be rationally disregarded.

Well it means that officially, they're not supposed to consider it a factor in their decision making. But you're right that it's not really possible to completely erase the influence on their minds. Even if they try to completely disregard it, it will still have an impact on their thoughts

It's a manipulation tactic by either a judge or a shady lawyer to get the result they want. It's an old trick that was used for centuries.