• To protect venirepersons/jurors from possible threats, bribes, other unlawful attempts at influence, or retaliation from an especially dangerous or powerful criminal defendant. Prototypically, such a defendant is one who is believed by the prosecution to be a member of a violent gang whose other members are willing to corrupt the judicial process to protect the defendant.
• To protect jurors in high-publicity cases from being hounded during the trial by members of the media or the general public  who seek to gain or impart information that the jurors are not supposed to give or receive, or from being harassed by the media or the public after the case has ended. (Note that when anonymity is granted under either of these rationales as to matters that might occur during trial, it is essentially a less burdensome alternative to sequestration.)

By contrast, some supporters of anonymous juries believe they should be the norm rather than the exception in criminal cases because:

• Citizens would be more apt to respond to summonses if they felt their identities were protected.
• Venirepersons would be more likely to be truthful about embarrassing facts during the jury selection process if they were anonymous.
• Jurors have real fears about harassment or retaliation from the defendant or his/her associates after an unfavorable verdict in most criminal cases (although these fears are usually more imagined than real). Note: In keeping with these rationales, a few jurisdictions have made juror anonymity standard procedure.

Nonetheless, there are powerful arguments against anonymous juries:

• In criminal cases, making a jury anonymous probably sends a signal to the jurors that the defendant is a very dangerous person, thereby undermining the presumption of innocence; it is speculative whether this impression can be cured by a jury instruction.
• A litigant may be hampered in the voir dire process by not knowing basic identifying information about the venirepersons.
• Anonymity undercuts the important general public interest in fully open court proceedings, and the specific interest of the media fully reporting.

It should be noted that to make anonymity fully effective, sometimes extraordinary additional steps must be taken:

• The trial judge ordering the court records containing the jurors’ identifying information sealed at the end of the trial.
• The jurors being transported by court authorities to and from a central gathering point to make it more difficult for anyone to follow the jurors to their homes and thereby learn their identities.

Reading list concerning anonymous juries

Babak A. Rastgoufard, Note, Pay Attention to that Green Curtain: Anonymity and the Courts, 53 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 1009 (2003).

Barry Tarlow, RICO Report [Anonymous Juries], 27 Champion 52 (2003).

Steven D. Zansberg, The Public’s Right of Access to Juror Information Loses More Ground, 17 Commun. Lawyer 11 (2000).

Abraham Abramovsky & Jonathan I. Edelstein, Anonymous Juries: In Exigent Circumstances Only, 13 St. John’s J. Leg. Commentary 457 (1999).

Nancy J. King, Nameless Justice: The Case for the Routine Use of Anonymous Juries in Criminal Trials, 49 Vand. L. Rev. 123 (1996).

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