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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

#131

Post by user5994461 »

crazygringo wrote: post #110
bufferoverflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I bet MacDonald's would disagree. Pretty sure they consider themselves targeted toward teenagers and kids.

Last I went there, it was filled with teenagers, typical middle school and high school from the area. Further away from the city center, the bigger macdonalds have playing area and attractions for children, to cater to young families with kids.

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

#132

Post by user5994461 »

brigandish wrote: post #112
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.

As an aside, this for me has always been the glaring difference between continental Europe which is largely under a civil law system, and Britain, which has a common law system (and hence, the US, Canada, Australia…) The different systems are completely at odds philosophically and require a completely different attitude, which explains so much - Brexit and the antipathy of many Brits towards the EU, and the EU itself…

European countries have a jury system, usually reserved to criminal cases with long sentences, like a murder.

Germany is the exception. Abolished jury in 1924.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial

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

#133

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

sethammons wrote: post #88
kevingadd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically makes "professional jurors" better, though? I won't say the idea isn't appealing, but what about making them professionals makes them better than our peers? There are already a bunch of heavily regulated professionals involved in the process so it's kind of arbitrary to claim that we need to regulate more of it. Why not limit witness testimony to professionals too?

In the jury I sat on, we had a question about the the law and it's wording. The response we got was, "you have already received your instructions." Gee, thanks. Someone more well versed might have better understood the definition.

Why not reject the law if it’s wording is too confusing and difficult to apply?

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

samatman wrote: post #127
Chathamization wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The incarceration rate is irrelevant to your argument, because it depends on both the base rate of criminality and the conviction rate. The conviction rate is what you're looking for, and consulting Table 5 and Table 6 of this document: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/gap.pdf We see that Germany has a higher conviction rate than the US. What we'd really like to see is the rate of false conviction, but this is dif…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by flatiron »

gnicholas wrote: post #19

I've served on a jury in CA and have seen jury selection on a couple occasions. Based on what I've seen, I think it will remain highly unlikely that a convicted felon will make their way onto a jury of a criminal trial (civil trials might be more likely). In the standard questionnaire that prospective jurors are given, they are asked if they or members of their immediate family have been victims of a crime, or if the…

My brothers a cop and I disclosed and served. They didn’t seem to mind. The cops had little to do with the trial though. The crime was reported by a family member and they just simply picked the guy up. The crazy part was when it was Friday. We were still hung. Guy comes in and says ok times up either you guys vote or come back Monday and the two hold outs went “yeah well I don’t agree but I don’t want to come back Monday” and that was that. That part still rattles in my brain.

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

#136

Post by anoncake »

lacker wrote: post #93
wongarsu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like being judged by a professional with experience. Judges are great. And if one judge or panel of judges is bad you will notice everything they do will be overturned in appeals. The problem is selecting good judges. In Germany this seems to work great, but what I see in recent times in the US terrifies me. Voting for judges leads to populists winning, appointing them leads to very questionable people being appoin…

Part of trial by jury is to prevent the government from pushing immoral, dictatorial laws on its citizens. I wouldn’t say that Germany has a great track record of avoiding that.

Trial by jury would have been useless against Hitler. What would have stopped him from abolishing it? Certainly not the Weimar Constitution -- even if trial by jury had been enshrined as a basic right -- because it demonstrably wasn't effective at protecting peoples' rights.

Also, it apparently didn't prevent the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment during WW2, slavery, the continued official discrimination against blacks afterwards, civil forfeiture...

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

#137

Post by linuxftw »

maxlybbert wrote: post #120
linuxftw wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The courts do their best to discourage jury nullification, but it is important to remember that after Colonial American juries regularly failed to convict people for particular crimes, the British government would instead charge people for those crimes in Britain. That was listed in the Declaration of Independence as one of the king’s abuses: “For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For tran…

Indeed. This knowledge has been withheld from the public for generations, hidden in plain site. We have to educate each other.

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

#138

Post by GhettoMaestro »

izacus wrote: post #113
bufferoverflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Would you let a pedophile who served his time babysit your children? Is USA so full of paedophiles that all felons are paedophiles? Or why are you trying to establish this equivalence?

There is a massive uptick in online child pornography. For what it is worth, it appears to be hitting epidemic levels. I have no reason to think this is a US-only problem.

Reference: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...

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

#139

Post by gamblor956 »

leetcrew wrote: post #95
thenewewb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a good chance OP is lying on the Internet.

I believe them. some people will say anything to get out of jury duty. they don't seem to understand that perjury is a serious offense. the last time I was called, I heard one woman loudly announce "I'm gonna stand up for everything!" during voir dire.

I believe that the woman may have made those statements.

I don't believe that a judge would have let her remain part of the jury pool after having made those statements. That's the type of activity that results in a judge being forcibly retired.

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

#140

Post by dang »

thenewewb wrote: post #40
harikb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good chance she used an explicit statement like that to get herself dismissed from the jury pool.

Also a good chance OP is lying on the Internet.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Would you mind reviewing the rules and sticking to them on HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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