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Jury Duty

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Re: Jury Duty

#151

Post by TheBeardKing »

RyanZAG wrote: post #118

As a non American, the USA justice system honestly sounds like the worst possible system for justice imaginable. I don't think I could design a worse system if I tried. Do you all just keep the system because it keeps so many people employed following the pointless bureaucracy of it all? The people making the decisions have no training in law at all, yet they have to decide if the law was broken. They get a brief spo…

Have you read into how big a sham our grand juries are? I'm currently serving on a federal grand jury, and several times a month they pay travel and per diem for dozens of people to listen to a one-sided argument by a US Assistant District Attorney to bring a case to trial. No defense is offered, and they can withhold as much evidence as they like. It's a total waste of time, and I'm sure costs the tax payers millions of dollars a year. After witnessing how ridiculous the whole process, I read that in most countries the prosecutor simply offers their evidence to a judge, who determines probable cause.

But the most outrageous stories you've heard recently about grand juries are that even though they'll "indict a ham sandwich," police officers accused of crimes rarely get indicted because it's in the prosecutor's best interest not to aggravate the department from whom they receive most of their work.

Re: Jury Duty

#152

Post by mystikal »

taejo wrote: post #126
mystikal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying a jury will reach the wrong verdict more than 50% of the time, and a bench will reach the right verdict more than 50% of the time? I don't disagree, but are there statistics?

That's not necessary. If we assume that both juries and judges pick the correct verdict with a certain probability independent of what the correct verdict is, then all that is required that the jury has a higher probability of being wrong than the judge.

Yep, makes sense. So is there some kind of data to back up the claim that a jury is wrong more often? Perhaps verdicts are more likely to be overturned for juries?

Re: Jury Duty

#153

Post by d_t_w »

madaxe_again wrote: post #150
d_t_w wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every complex system can be defined in terms of trade-offs, right? Trial by Jury has a fairly extensive history outside of the US, and while not perfect it is a balance against a potentially corrupt establishment. I think if I had to choose trial by a jury of my peers, or by a judge, I'd probably opt for my peers. I think the bigger problem in the US appears to be mandatory minimums, prosecutors driven by win ratios,…

The thing is, "peers" has had its meaning mutated beyond recognition over the ages. A jury of your peers used to mean exactly that - people who were familiar with you, the social circumstances that lead to your being in the dock, who had empathy both for you and for the law. Part of the tradition comes from the Frankpledge and tythings, which required you and your peers to collectively police one another, and endure…

Yes you make a series of perfectly good points, and I learned about the Frankpledge, so thanks for that.

I agree it is not a utopian system by any regard, but I still think a country that has trial by jury is superior to one with bench trials only. Perhaps not in each individual case, but as a means of rebalancing the power of the establishment vs the people.

I've a friend who is a prosecutors assistant in Australia, having quite a dim view of the ability of my peers I asked him just last week how he rated the performance of the trials he had watched and he said he didn't think he had ever seen a jury get it wrong.

Then again he's just a big bag of relatively well educated prejudice and blind-spots like all of us, so there is that.

Re: Jury Duty

#154

Post by ckozlowski »

RyanZAG wrote: post #118

As a non American, the USA justice system honestly sounds like the worst possible system for justice imaginable. I don't think I could design a worse system if I tried. Do you all just keep the system because it keeps so many people employed following the pointless bureaucracy of it all? The people making the decisions have no training in law at all, yet they have to decide if the law was broken. They get a brief spo…

You raise many good points, and I don't disagree with many of the faults you point out. However, there's other considerations at play.

The purpose behind a "trial by one's peers" is to ensure that the people, and not the government, is delivering the verdict. The judge's role is to instruct the jury on the points of law being argued on, because he or she (along with the other lawyers in the room) is the trained expert.

For the trial to have gotten to this point, the judge needs to determine that there's enough evidence to even bring the case. There's already been an expert check prior to the jury stage to determine if there's a case at all.

Of course, as the article points out, many cases aren't exactly "Law and Order". (This has been cited as having an influence on cases), in that there simply aren't the resources on behalf of both the prosecution and the defense to pile together tons of evidence or research every possible defense. I liked the references to 12 Angry Men for this reason, because the case in that story had little to go on.

The jury trial system, while seeming strange in all of the restrictions, are intended to try and obtain an untainted jury pool and find those who are as objective as possible. To the author's point that "all of the people of color had been weeded out", I'd note to the defense that it'd be wise to ask the jury pool if they believed people of color to be more likely to commit a crime, or other question to determine a presumption of guilt (just as the prosecution had weeded out those with a presumption of innocence.)

I can think of far worse systems of justice whereby state-appointed judges hand down judgements and sentences behind closed doors. So I'm skeptical about the USA's system being the worst.

But it's certainly imperfect, and that's because judgements are handed down by imperfect people. And as I'm sure as any African-American will attest, it's hard to feel you're being judged impartially when you're looking at a jury of 12 white men.

But you could switch to any number of systems, and at the end of the day it's simply men judging men. The problem is not solved completely by a system, but by solving ourselves.

I found it heartening though that in this story, the structure of things helped. With everything arrayed against the defendant, there was no conviction. It just takes one person, one doubt, to look and go "I'm not certain" and that's it.

And that's exactly what happened. And exactly the way it should be.

Re: Jury Duty

#155

Post by jvvw »

I did jury service a couple of years ago in the UK - obviously a different system to the US. I came away feeling although in many ways a jury is a terrible way of deciding verdicts, that it is probably better than any of way of making a decision - in the same way that democracy can be considered the worst form of government apart from all the others that have been tried. Our jury did feel like a good cross-section of people (even if many of them had flawed ideas of logic) and that the value of the jury lay in the collective decision-making not in a simple aggregation of the individual decisions.

Re: Jury Duty

#156

Post by michaelt »

madaxe_again wrote: post #150
d_t_w wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every complex system can be defined in terms of trade-offs, right? Trial by Jury has a fairly extensive history outside of the US, and while not perfect it is a balance against a potentially corrupt establishment. I think if I had to choose trial by a jury of my peers, or by a judge, I'd probably opt for my peers. I think the bigger problem in the US appears to be mandatory minimums, prosecutors driven by win ratios,…

The thing is, "peers" has had its meaning mutated beyond recognition over the ages. A jury of your peers used to mean exactly that - people who were familiar with you, the social circumstances that lead to your being in the dock, who had empathy both for you and for the law. Part of the tradition comes from the Frankpledge and tythings, which required you and your peers to collectively police one another, and endure…

If an oil company CEO on trial for a crime got tried by a jury of other oil company CEOs, I agree the conviction rate would drop.

I'm not sure how much it would improve the outcomes for society, though.

Re: Jury Duty

#157

Post by ckozlowski »

madaxe_again wrote: post #150
d_t_w wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every complex system can be defined in terms of trade-offs, right? Trial by Jury has a fairly extensive history outside of the US, and while not perfect it is a balance against a potentially corrupt establishment. I think if I had to choose trial by a jury of my peers, or by a judge, I'd probably opt for my peers. I think the bigger problem in the US appears to be mandatory minimums, prosecutors driven by win ratios,…

The thing is, "peers" has had its meaning mutated beyond recognition over the ages. A jury of your peers used to mean exactly that - people who were familiar with you, the social circumstances that lead to your being in the dock, who had empathy both for you and for the law. Part of the tradition comes from the Frankpledge and tythings, which required you and your peers to collectively police one another, and endure…

"are not allowed to educate themselves about legal facts or the facts of the charges"

Because they're not trained lawyers, and they haven't passed the bar. It's to keep them impartial and prevent them from presuming they know the law better and therefor enter with a conclusion without all of the facts.

That's why the judge (who, depending on the level, is either directly-elected or appointed by the person you elected) is there, not to determine guilt, but to be the impartial legal expert and identify the points of law to be decided on, and act as umpire to respect the rights of the plaintiff and accused. These are tasks that just cannot be given to the jury without establishing some sort of certification on them, which would remove from ordinary people the ability to determine justice.

Re: Jury Duty

#158

Post by matt4077 »

facepalm wrote: post #140

Non-American, don't know how the system works - how come they can eliminate people from the jury pool? I would have expected the jury selection to be completely random? There is no way the system can be fair if they get to select the jury.

Both the prosecution and the defence get to exclude ("challenge") a certain number of jurors. The idea is that you want jurors to be "generic", i. e. they should each be an average person without any experiences relevant to the case.

So, for example, a recent victim of crime makes for a bad juror for the defence who will probably boot him/her of the jury.

Re: Jury Duty

#159

Post by newjersey »

madaxe_again wrote: post #150
d_t_w wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every complex system can be defined in terms of trade-offs, right? Trial by Jury has a fairly extensive history outside of the US, and while not perfect it is a balance against a potentially corrupt establishment. I think if I had to choose trial by a jury of my peers, or by a judge, I'd probably opt for my peers. I think the bigger problem in the US appears to be mandatory minimums, prosecutors driven by win ratios,…

The thing is, "peers" has had its meaning mutated beyond recognition over the ages. A jury of your peers used to mean exactly that - people who were familiar with you, the social circumstances that lead to your being in the dock, who had empathy both for you and for the law. Part of the tradition comes from the Frankpledge and tythings, which required you and your peers to collectively police one another, and endure…

Moreover, jury selection is a touchy subject itself.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/discrimination-jury-s...

> In order to show that the prosecutor’s dismissal of a juror was discriminatory, a defendant must show that it was based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

A good legal defense is already out of reach of many people.

I'd think this alone (fta) should cause a judge to throw out the prosecution from the case:

> The first thing the prosecutor did during voir dire was ask all the men of color whether we trusted cops. Every black man had a story: police harassment, spurious arrests, intimidation.

Re: Jury Duty

#160

Post by benihana »

RyanZAG wrote: post #118

As a non American, the USA justice system honestly sounds like the worst possible system for justice imaginable. I don't think I could design a worse system if I tried. Do you all just keep the system because it keeps so many people employed following the pointless bureaucracy of it all? The people making the decisions have no training in law at all, yet they have to decide if the law was broken. They get a brief spo…

>Do you all just keep the system because it keeps so many people employed following the pointless bureaucracy of it all?

No, the main reason we keep it around is to give arrogant Europeans and Canadians something to feel superior about. It's not because in a nation with 300 million people in a space as vast as America, it's hard to get people to agree on how we should do things. Nope, it's cause we're idiots and we like inefficient things.

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