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California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

calmatters.org

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Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#101

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tialaramex wrote: post #54
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you served your time, you served your time. Seriously, so much this. The thing should be stateless. You made a mistake, there were consequences - but once that's over, you ought to be good as new. Eternal punishment only ought to have a place in dumb mythology.

> You made a mistake, there were consequences - but once that's over, you ought to be good as new. The consequences for being found guilty of a crime are more nuanced than this suggests, although not so much in the US which is very focused on vengeance. Let's take an example a sentencing example I sat in on: The man had forged paperwork purportedly showing he'd paid a bunch of money for supplies, because he had alrea…

An alternative way to think of this is you're not punishing the former crime, but punishing anticipated future intent. It's down to the candidate for release to decide whether to change.

Of course in some circumstances, maybe paedophilia, the candidate may not be able to change the desire to commit further crimes.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#102

Post by linuxftw »

maxlybbert wrote: post #86
pell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jury system seems completely corrupt to me. I am glad we do not use this method in criminal trials here in Germany where I live.

I used to have a very low opinion of the jury system. I can’t imagine how a system designed to be swayed by emotional or ignorant but opinionated people would look any different from what we already have. After I served on a jury, I had to admit that, whatever its faults, there is some value to occasionally explaining the law to random citizens and asking them to apply it in a given case. It should put a limit on how…

The whole point of the jury is determining whether or not these laws are even reasonable in the first place.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#103

Post by leetcrew »

kevingadd wrote: post #67
rootsudo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corrupt? It's a jury of your peers, how is it corrupt? It's random people that decide your fate. In German it's judges. So a judge tries you and says you're guilty or innocent? You have to forego your right of trial by Jury in the USA for that to be the case.

The corruption is that the lawyers are allowed to take advantage of the jury dismissal system to stack the jury, and in many locations they will do so.

have you ever served on a jury? it really does not work this way. the defense and prosecution both get to dismiss as many people with obvious bias (eg, victim of gun violence in a murder trial) as they want. then they both get to dismiss a small number of people without giving a reason. usually there are not enough of the second type to actually "stack" a jury. plus the other side is going to use their strikes to dismiss your favorites anyway, and I believe the defense generally gets more strikes.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#104

Post by Aperocky »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #56
elchief wrote: post #39

If you served your time, you served your time. If not, shoulda got more time

Would you let a pedophile who served his time babysit your children?

He has the freedom to apply to any jobs and employers have the freedom to reject him.

This is a complete strawman, the argument is that legal rights of this person is fully restored in the eye of the government, potential employers can always turn people down for almost any reason.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#106

Post by Chathamization »

maxlybbert wrote: post #86
pell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jury system seems completely corrupt to me. I am glad we do not use this method in criminal trials here in Germany where I live.

I used to have a very low opinion of the jury system. I can’t imagine how a system designed to be swayed by emotional or ignorant but opinionated people would look any different from what we already have. After I served on a jury, I had to admit that, whatever its faults, there is some value to occasionally explaining the law to random citizens and asking them to apply it in a given case. It should put a limit on how…

> It should put a limit on how weird or explicitly unfair the law can be.

The defense isn't allowed to tell jurors about jury nullification and there's an effort to keep out any potential jurors who are aware of it. In general there seems to be a big effort to not have jurors think to much on their own. Once during selection I mentioned how unreliable eye witness testimony can be (they were trying to weed out anyone who had problems with convicting based solely on eye witness testimony), and the prosecutor asked me "What if the judge told you to give eye witness testimony the same weight as physical evidence?"

I often see people worry that if we didn't have trial by jury a lot more innocent people would get convicted. Yet if you look at a country like Germany, it doesn't have trial by jury and it has ~1/9 the incarceration rate as the USA.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#108

Post by ryeights »

sokoloff wrote: post #52
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you served your time, you served your time. Seriously, so much this. The thing should be stateless. You made a mistake, there were consequences - but once that's over, you ought to be good as new. Eternal punishment only ought to have a place in dumb mythology.

Though I see that point, I think there's a counterpoint which is, "We can choose to release felons at the earliest moment when they no longer represent a serious threat to a peaceable society" but that by releasing them at that earlier moment, we give them many freedoms but don't trust them with certain things we trust other citizens with (gun ownership, voting, jury duty, working with children, commercial trucking/a…

Isn't that what supervised release should be for? We monitor them in the general population for a short period (a few years) to determine if they're still dangerous. If not, restore their rights. I don't think anyone who goes to prison for 10 years and is observed on perfect behavior for another 3-4 is going to suddenly become dangerous again when their right to buy a gun is restored. These are pretty large timescales we're talking about.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#109

Post by maxlybbert »

Chathamization wrote: post #106
maxlybbert wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have a very low opinion of the jury system. I can’t imagine how a system designed to be swayed by emotional or ignorant but opinionated people would look any different from what we already have. After I served on a jury, I had to admit that, whatever its faults, there is some value to occasionally explaining the law to random citizens and asking them to apply it in a given case. It should put a limit on how…

> It should put a limit on how weird or explicitly unfair the law can be. The defense isn't allowed to tell jurors about jury nullification and there's an effort to keep out any potential jurors who are aware of it. In general there seems to be a big effort to not have jurors think to much on their own. Once during selection I mentioned how unreliable eye witness testimony can be (they were trying to weed out anyone…

I've had to sit in the room more than once waiting to see if any trials wanted to actually select a jury. There were only two times when I was in the room while the jury was selected. Once, when they filled up the jury before they asked me anything, and the other time when I was actually put on the jury.

I think it's very telling that the first time, the prosecutor kept asking if people would apply the law as written, and not how they would prefer it to be written. I didn't think I could answer that question without hearing the details, but she refused to provide them (she never got to me, so I never had to answer). It turned out that an inmate was caught with some drugs inside a prison, and she was charged with possession of the drugs, and possession of drug paraphernalia (the paraphernalia being a plastic bag the drugs had been kept in).

The second time, the judge asked if anybody had served on a jury before, and those who answered "yes" were asked if anything happened during that service that shook their confidence in the system. They were specifically cautioned to not go into details so that the rest of us wouldn't be tainted.

Both of those experiences feel like huge red flags for the system in general. But, again, I have to acknowledge there does seem to be some value in including regular citizens. I'm not sure if that value outweighs the negatives. But, it's an explicitly guaranteed Constitutional right in the US, so without an amendment, it isn't going away.

For the record, in the US, if you'd rather take your chances with just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury. But most people accused of crimes seem to believe the jury is a better bet.

Re: California is about to allow former felons to serve on juries

#110

Post by crazygringo »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #56
elchief wrote: post #39

If you served your time, you served your time. If not, shoulda got more time

Would you let a pedophile who served his time babysit your children?

No, whether they've ever served time or not is irrelevant in this case.

It's a false equivalence, because they're not suitable for the role in the first place.

A better question is, would I let a pedophile who served their time work at McDonald's? And the answer is, of course. They need a job just like everyone else.

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