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Jury Duty

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Re: Jury Duty

#191

Post by rwmj »

jvvw wrote: post #155

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…

I think the solution is probably just to teach Logic in schools. It used to be taught as a separate subject in Medieval times :-)

Re: Jury Duty

#192

Post by maxerickson »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #124
agiamas wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these same people are voting for your president or prime minister or MP. If anything, the (unfortunately, long term..) solution is to educate these people, not to abolish jury duty.

Good luck with that. We'd have to start with totally remaking news media, or even getting rid of them altogether - it's them who present a new outrage every day with a handy judgement to cache and retrieve the next time you see a similar looking situation. But "free speech!", "free media - the cornerstone of democracy!", something something.

Presumably this pandering is less effective on people that have the sort of education being talked about here. (if not I'm not sure I agree that such education is a worthwhile goal).

So why are you so certain that the problem starts with the media?

Re: Jury Duty

#193

Post by xntrk »

geomark wrote: post #190
wtbob wrote: post #187

I've served on two juries, one for murder and one for a far lesser offense. In one the defendant was a fairly wealthy young man; in the other a poor woman. One defendant was guilty; the other not. My experience in both those trials was nothing like the author's here. Indeed, I wonder how much of his experience was due to his own concern about things like race and politics instead of, y'know, guilt and innocence. Perh…

You are so fortunate. I served three times and each was a frustrating and disheartening experience.

I have served once and would have to agree it was frustrating. Some people on the jury were not willing to even talk about their viewpoint after a few hours into deliberation.

Re: Jury Duty

#194

Post by mszkoda »

newjersey wrote: post #184
ckozlowski wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the defense didn't object to this, or ask the alternate ("Does anyone in here intrinsically trust the police?") perplexes me.

> That the defense didn't object to this, or ask the alternate ("Does anyone in here intrinsically trust the police?") perplexes me. Actually, it didn't occur to me. You made it sound very simple but I didn't see it as a possibility at all. So if someone says yes, we just throw them out of the jury. Now I think this should be a standard question for any case where the police is a witness. Well, on second thought, we…

I thought this was commonly asked, but maybe it varies by state. In my city in Pennsylvania we get a standardized form that does ask this question. It states, "Would you be more likely to believe the testimony of a police officer or any other law enforcement officer because of his or her job?" [1]

[1]http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/234/chapter6/s632.html

Re: Jury Duty

#195

Post by wtbob »

xntrk wrote: post #193
geomark wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are so fortunate. I served three times and each was a frustrating and disheartening experience.

I have served once and would have to agree it was frustrating. Some people on the jury were not willing to even talk about their viewpoint after a few hours into deliberation.

I wonder if I've been lucky, or if different states or counties have different types of juries, police and justice systems, or both.

Re: Jury Duty

#196

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

smackfu wrote: post #183
_pmf_ wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non American, the USA justice system honestly sounds like the worst possible system for justice imaginable. You just have to love a justice system where the police chief, the district attorney and the judge are political offices and must appeal to the masses.

What do you mean by political offices? In most of the country, those are not elected positions.

The chief DA is elected in Texas. The police chief isn't elected but works for the Mayor/City Council. Many judges are elected and others are appointees. Differences in local politics and structure exist, but IMO it is fair to say that those positions are political.

>>and must appeal to the masses.

As to GP's assertion that those people must appeal to "the masses", I think that one must be very careful as to how they define "the masses"; to me "masses" is not the correct word since IMO there is usually a much smaller faction of the local population(s) of people that vote, and/or are active in local politics.

Re: Jury Duty

#197

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

wtbob wrote: post #187

I've served on two juries, one for murder and one for a far lesser offense. In one the defendant was a fairly wealthy young man; in the other a poor woman. One defendant was guilty; the other not. My experience in both those trials was nothing like the author's here. Indeed, I wonder how much of his experience was due to his own concern about things like race and politics instead of, y'know, guilt and innocence. Perh…

I was the foreman in a murder trial, and the experience, for me, was also inspiring and uplifting. There was only one bump in the road for us. Early on, people starting bringing up a hesitation of rendering a guilty verdict, for fear that the man would be put to death, and they didn't know if they could do that. I don't know about other districts, but we weren't voting on the sentence. The judge would do that later. It was an easy argument to point out that this wasn't under our purview, and people dropped that concern quickly.

We were done in 2 hours. It was a drug robbery; someone got shot and died. "Felony murder" makes it really clear: everyone involved is guilty. The statute made things very easy.

The thing that haunts me about my case is that, out of 3 people (the shooter and his 2 accomplices, who were to be tried together in a separate case), our guy produced the gun for the police. If anything, the case made me wonder why there isn't tribal knowledge (unfortunate phrase wording, in this case) among inner-city, young, black men that YOU DO NOT DO THIS? It was open-and-shut, despite all the nonsense about a coerced confession and its subsequent retraction.

Re: Jury Duty

#198

Post by 4ad »

mszkoda wrote: post #194
newjersey wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the defense didn't object to this, or ask the alternate ("Does anyone in here intrinsically trust the police?") perplexes me. Actually, it didn't occur to me. You made it sound very simple but I didn't see it as a possibility at all. So if someone says yes, we just throw them out of the jury. Now I think this should be a standard question for any case where the police is a witness. Well, on second thought, we…

I thought this was commonly asked, but maybe it varies by state. In my city in Pennsylvania we get a standardized form that does ask this question. It states, "Would you be more likely to believe the testimony of a police officer or any other law enforcement officer because of his or her job?" [1] [1] http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/234/chapter6/s632.html

So what kind of answer are they expecting for that question? I genuinely can't tell. It seems obvious to me that people who answer "yes" should be excluded, yet I feel the opposite is true.

Re: Jury Duty

#199

Post by wfo »

throw_this_away wrote: post #90
YorkianTones wrote: post #29

"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…

Reading that quote was incredibly disheartening; That people could be so cavalier about sending a person to jail (possibly forever) even when there's obviously reasonable doubt. I've never served on a jury, but it seems like the state should put more effort into teaching jurors that "beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't just an abstract idea...

Don't worry this is very uncommon the vast majority of cases never see trial and are instead decided by the prosecutor threatening to destroy the life of a defendant guilty or not if they don't sign a (likely false) confession called a 'plea' in exchange for mercy.

Re: Jury Duty

#200

Post by 4ad »

jerf wrote: post #188

A general comment on a lot of the comments here: You can make anything look good by only considering the positives, you can make anything look bad by only considering the negatives. Rather a lot of the latter going on here. To come to a proper decision about what is better, you need to consider both the negatives and the positives of multiple alternatives. Before rushing to condemn jury trials, I'd also recommend con…

Who condemns jury trials? Most people here complain about the implementation of jury trials, not the concept of jury trials.
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