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Jury Duty

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61–70 of 229 posts

Re: Jury Duty

#61
post #43

"Edith looks up from a game of solitaire and casually mentions that she actually thinks the murder was committed by the accomplice, who was never found and is not on trial. But since the defendant’s lawyer did such a poor job exonerating him, she concludes, she’s going to deliver a guilty verdict. My jaw drops. No one questions her obviously flawed reasoning, because she’s on their side." This, for me, was the most t…

I don't really trust jury/layman to make the correct decision. I mean, you're taking ordinary people, untrained to probe the gobbyspeak of lawyers or matters of science And you're expecting them to render guilty or innocent verdicts?

If you're guilty you want a jury trial. If you're innocent you want a bench trial.

Re: Jury Duty

#62
post #2

> In the end, only two men of color make it to the jury, and I am one of them. The other is Latino. There are two Latina women, one African-American woman, and one Asian woman. The remaining six jurors are white. Thats basically the racial composition of the U.S. Indeed, people of color are over-represented in that jury.

Juries are drawn from local populations, whose demographics can differ radically from the national average. We can't know whether or not people were under-represented or over-represented without knowing where this took place.

Re: Jury Duty

#63

A couple of things stand out for me here - > Perhaps this was the time to mention that having witnessed the murders of Eric Garner and Walter Scott on video made personal experience unnecessary. Eric Garner said "I can't breathe" 11 times. Any person that has experienced a chokehold, knows that if you can't breath, you can't move air in and out of your lungs and throat, you can't say anything, not even "I can't breat…

An underlying health condition would not mean anything. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull

Re: Jury Duty

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delusions of grandeur? He puts himself on quite a pedestal, comparing himself to Fonda like he's the righteous movie star, but I'm no psychologist. It might be hard, but try to understand the minority perspective in viewing the system, you might trust any part of it, and you'll see things like bias and privilege even when they don't exist.

> He puts himself on quite a pedestal, comparing himself to Fonda like he's the righteous movie star From TFA: > I’m no Henry Fonda. Jesus, did you even read the thing?

Ignore that guy. He's a new account that specialises in trolling. I've seen him in other threads where his comments are so downvoted that they're barely readable. I think they're either deleted or removed at this point.

Re: Jury Duty

#65
And of course, even though this jury didn't convict the defendant, seemingly correctly (at least from the author's perspective), it's entirely possible for the prosecutor to move for a retrial, and this time keep all the black men off the jury, and get a conviction. Or if the defendant isn't out on bail, or maybe even if he is, to convince him to take a plea bargain to second degree murder, or manslaughter.

Re: Jury Duty

#66
post #60

"Edith looks up from a game of solitaire and casually mentions that she actually thinks the murder was committed by the accomplice, who was never found and is not on trial. But since the defendant’s lawyer did such a poor job exonerating him, she concludes, she’s going to deliver a guilty verdict. My jaw drops. No one questions her obviously flawed reasoning, because she’s on their side." This, for me, was the most t…

Brings back memories. I served on the jury when Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys was on trial for including a rude poster in one of their albums[1]. Jury deliberation was a circus. One woman hung the poster up (it was pretty rude [2]), looked at it for a while, and said "Kinda makes you horny". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys#Frankenchrist_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Landscape

Haha. And did she vote to convict or aquit?

Re: Jury Duty

#67

A couple of things stand out for me here - > Perhaps this was the time to mention that having witnessed the murders of Eric Garner and Walter Scott on video made personal experience unnecessary. Eric Garner said "I can't breathe" 11 times. Any person that has experienced a chokehold, knows that if you can't breath, you can't move air in and out of your lungs and throat, you can't say anything, not even "I can't breat…

An underlying health condition would not mean anything. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull

I don't understand what you are refuting?

We both know that the narrative was that a white cop choked a black man to death - which was simply not true.

Re: Jury Duty

#68
post #66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brings back memories. I served on the jury when Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys was on trial for including a rude poster in one of their albums[1]. Jury deliberation was a circus. One woman hung the poster up (it was pretty rude [2]), looked at it for a while, and said "Kinda makes you horny". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Kennedys#Frankenchrist_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Landscape

Haha. And did she vote to convict or aquit?

Of course she voted to acquit. So did the old guy who shouted "Nothing is obscene!" the moment he entered the jury deliberation room, despite the fact that Jello was not charged with obscenity. And the girl who said "The defense attorney is pretty cute."

Re: Jury Duty

#69

"Edith looks up from a game of solitaire and casually mentions that she actually thinks the murder was committed by the accomplice, who was never found and is not on trial. But since the defendant’s lawyer did such a poor job exonerating him, she concludes, she’s going to deliver a guilty verdict. My jaw drops. No one questions her obviously flawed reasoning, because she’s on their side." This, for me, was the most t…

This is why I believe women should not be allowed on the jury

Re: Jury Duty

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would you trust to make the right decision? The prosecutor? The defense attorney? Like other aspects of republican democracy, it's not the best system, but it beats all known alternatives.

Trained professional judges who understand these matters. This is called 'Bench Trials'.

Impartiality and expertise are not necessarily correlated. In fact in my experience, experts tend to hold much stronger personal opinions about their area of expertise, than do members of the random general public.
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