Brief: UNITED STATES v. RICHARDSON Summary of Essential Facts  Phyllis Richardson (defendant) was charged with embezzlement, money laundering, and mail fraud.  Throughout the trial, after the parties were done questioning witnesses, jurors wrote down questions for the trial judge to ask the witnesses.  The trial judge allowed the parties to object to juror questions privately and did not read each of the juror questions submitted. In addition, the trial judge instructed the jury that the questions were for clarification purposes only and that they should not reach conclusions before they heard all of the evidence.  About halfway through the trial Richardson objected to any further juror questions because she thought they were becoming adversarial. The trial court overruled her objection. The jury convicted Richardson. She appealed. Summarize the Procedural History  United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Identify the legal issue in the form of a question  Does a federal taxpayer have standing to force the government to disclose expenditures of the CIA? State the rule, the holding, and the vote  The Court held that Richardson did not have standing to sue. Using the twopronged standing test of Flast v. Cohen (1968), Chief Justice Burger found that there was no "logical nexus between the status asserted [by Richardson as a taxpayer] and the claim sought to be adjudicated."  It was clear to Burger that Richardson was not "a proper and appropriate party to invoke federal judicial power" on this issue.  5-4 decision for the United States; majority opinion by Warren E. Burger Explain the Court’s reasoning  Trial judges have discretion to allow juror questioning of witnesses. When doing so, however, the trial judge must take precautions to ensure that the jurors remain neutral fact finders. Questions testing legal theories or filling in holes in a party’s case must be disallowed. Overall, in making a determination of whether to allow juror questions, the trial court must “weigh the potential benefit to the jurors against the potential harm to the parties, especially when one of those parties is a criminal defendant.” In this case, the court determines that the trial judge did not commit error by allowing juror questions. The trial judge took all of the proper precautions with regards to the juror questions. He properly instructed the jury on the questions’ limited role; he allowed parties to object out of the presence of the jury; and he omitted prejudicial questions and instructed the jury that they should not read anything into certain questions not being asked. Moreover, this was an extremely complicated case and juror questions were often necessary to clarify the record. Finally, Richardson was unable to produce any specific evidence of prejudice as a result of the juror questions. Consequently, the trial committed no error in its handling of juror questions. The trial court is affirmed. Briefly summarize the dissenting opinions  Juror questions have the potential to turn jurors into “partial advocates.” Such questions should only be permitted in the rarest of cases when the complexity of the case is so great that the questions are absolutely necessary to clarify the record. This case was sufficiently complex that no reversible error occurred in allowing juror questions.