61–70 of 114 posts
The comment section here is in poor shape. Violent crime is up all over the united states, and at least from what I've seen, there is not a single easy explanation for why. ie, I'm very sympathetic to the argument that "de-fund the police" has had very negative effects, however we're seeing violent crime rise in districts which were not de-funded. The whole red vs. blue states / cities thing doesn't seem to stack up…
Was on a jury for a murder trial dec 2021. The trial gave me a new found respect for how trials are conducted, what evidence is allowed in, how defendants are protected, and the general thought and reasoning behind it all. Then, the jury deliberated and I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide. It was an absolute shit show in false pretenses, irrational…
> Then, the jury deliberated and I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide. Isn't this a consequence of jury vetting on the part of the attorneys? i.e. the defense does not want logical/rational thinkers on the jury if they have a bad case (know the defendant committed the crime, lots of evidence against defendant, etc). In those cases they want people wh…
How about “more murders are being discovered” than before. In old times, you could’ve done killed someone and blame it on anything.
But not 20 or 50 years ago.
The comment section here is in poor shape. Violent crime is up all over the united states, and at least from what I've seen, there is not a single easy explanation for why. ie, I'm very sympathetic to the argument that "de-fund the police" has had very negative effects, however we're seeing violent crime rise in districts which were not de-funded. The whole red vs. blue states / cities thing doesn't seem to stack up…
As NPR is the source of this story and I’m too lazy to look up actual statistics… They had a story a week or so ago about how all crime is up and speculated that the police are less likely to interact with the public because they’re afraid the encounter will escalate and they will end up getting prosecuted for doing their job. Think they even had an “expert” to back their claim. So what you get is police who won’t do…
It's too bad nobody has the political will to get rid of and rebuild whole PDs. That's what it will take to get rid of bad cops.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your anecdote sounds like an example of the system working to me. I'm absolutely sure your assessment is correct: I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide People as a rule are horrible at logical thinking. But that's absolutely the right side to err on. Much better for twelve people to have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Put another way, it's…
How will that continue to work in the future as society becomes more polarized and culture wars grow in importance? Every trial will be a hung one, you will have one blue/red juror which will refuse to find guilty a blue/red defendant.
Failing in the right direction (not locking someone up) is one of the most important characteristics of a justice system.
One thing is kind of unclear to me, are we segregating by murder type? For example (not sure if true): It would seem a drop in easier to identity domestic violence murders would throw stats off for the others that were always hard to solve. My googling is failing on getting the mix of murders by type by year.
https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/relationship-murder... > Relationship of Murder Victims to Alleged Offenders, 2021 > Of the estimated 4,970 female victims of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2021, data reported by law enforcement agencies indicate that one-third (34%) were killed by an intimate partner (figure 1). By comparison, about 6% of the 17,970 males murdered that year were victims of intimate…
But if you instead ask, of the people who were murdered by an intimate partner, how many were women and how many were men? That breaks down to 61% vs 39%, still a substantial difference but far short of that evident "5x" from the other framing. Viewed that way, it's more like 1.5x.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
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Counterpoint, I was on a murder jury several years ago where every part of the justice system was pretty abysmal. Whether the police who were near incompetent in their investigation, the forensics people who could barely maintain chain of evidence or both sets of attorneys who couldn’t make logical arguments on either side. The only people who came out looking good was the judge who was able to keep this circus from…
> "police who were near incompetent in their investigation, the forensics people who could barely maintain chain of evidence" Are you sure they were all bad at their jobs? It's certainly possible. But it's also possible that you simply had unrealistic expectations for what the process looks like, exemplifying the "CSI Effect". This is why I find these sort of pseudo-anonymous anecdotes very difficult to judge; I know…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "police who were near incompetent in their investigation, the forensics people who could barely maintain chain of evidence" Are you sure they were all bad at their jobs? It's certainly possible. But it's also possible that you simply had unrealistic expectations for what the process looks like, exemplifying the "CSI Effect". This is why I find these sort of pseudo-anonymous anecdotes very difficult to judge; I know…
Let’s put it this way, even though they had a full video confession it made it to trial…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your anecdote sounds like an example of the system working to me. I'm absolutely sure your assessment is correct: I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide People as a rule are horrible at logical thinking. But that's absolutely the right side to err on. Much better for twelve people to have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. Put another way, it's…
People "not being logical" renders their decisions random. Or biased in case, some common cause for such biased thinking is present. Like prejudice towards skin colors, poverty or whatever. The former case results in GP's tie, the latter in the absurdly skewed prison population the US is known for. People are horrible at logical thinking.
Was on a jury for a murder trial dec 2021. The trial gave me a new found respect for how trials are conducted, what evidence is allowed in, how defendants are protected, and the general thought and reasoning behind it all. Then, the jury deliberated and I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide. It was an absolute shit show in false pretenses, irrational…
Different trial (attempted murder), but I too was on a Jury. At the start of deliberation, it was an even split. Towards the end of deliberation it was 11/12 in favor of returning a verdict of guilty. However... One juror opened up some bizarre Pandora's box arguing against the fundamental knowability of the universe. How could any fact truly be "known"? At times, I love conversations like that. But not when a man ha…