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Author
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Topic: The Juror Is Out (August 2001)
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 08-27-2001 11:39 PM
   
The August Life in Practice update is now online. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 08-27-2001 11:42 PM
Dave, while I still haven't managed to figure out how you got on a jury, (you've picked apart my arguments enough times for me to know that I wouldn't want you anywhere near a jury box if I were a lawyer trying to make a case for the alleged blueness of the sky) I think it's an experience that every civic-minded chap like yourself should have. I had my own jury experience a few months ago and I found myself at the voir dire stage twice in one day. The second time, I asked to be excused because of the nature of the case (a story for another time) but the first time, I had that eagerness to be a part of the system that you felt. I think that did me in. This particular judge seemed to have a twisted sense of humor and was intent on sitting a jury comprised of people who desperately wanted to be someplace else. (One man tried to lie his way out of the box by inventing family members who had been arrested/convicted. He became Juror #2.) I suppose there is some logic in not sitting a juror full of overeager citizens. Chances are many of them may be crime drama junkies whose minds are so full of "TV law" that it may cloud their understanding of the local statutes and even the evidence. I admit it, for me to list of law-related programs I've watched religiously in my lifetime would eat up too much of TINN's bandwidth. That said, having never been in a jury room, I'm curious to know just how much of the final decision comes from an analysis of the evidence and the law and how much is simply inertia? That is, do the people with the most forceful personalities get the ruling they want because so many of the others don't want to be there? Dave, or anyone else who's been on a jury, care to answer that?
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Kevin Ott
True Believer
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posted 08-27-2001 11:43 PM
Hoo boy. Talk about your tough cases. One thing I first thought of when I read this: If I raped a woman, and that woman brought the issue to the police and I were placed on trial, the first thing I would do would be to admit that I had sex with her, but that I thought that the sex had been consensual. That way, even if I knew that she had been unwilling, she would bear a much larger burden of proof and my chances of getting away with it would be greater.Such a case would be hard for me to deal with. My default setting when a woman claims to have been raped is to believe her, even if it means possibly believing something untrue. I'm sure there are women out there who make false claims to save face, but I imagine they're extremely few and far between. Anyway, the default setting shouldn't always be the way to go, especially if someone's livelihood and reputation are at stake. It's interesting how people deal with that sort of tragedy. I knew a woman in college -- I didn't know her well -- who told me she had been raped only days after it happened. She volunteered the information without any prompts from me at all. I also dated a woman who had been violated by a high school boyfriend, but it took her months to tell me about it, and when she did, she was reluctant to use the word "rape" even though the situation she described -- her saying no and him going ahead and doing it anyway -- was pretty much a textbook definition.
So no case is open and shut, and even the ones that do boil down to a he-said-she-said aren't likely to be easily resolved. I always wanted to serve on a jury. Now I'm not so sure I'm ready for the responsibility.
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 08-29-2001 01:02 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Pattie Gillett:
That said, having never been in a jury room, I'm curious to know just how much of the final decision comes from an analysis of the evidence and the law and how much is simply inertia? That is, do the people with the most forceful personalities get the ruling they want because so many of the others don't want to be there? Dave, or anyone else who's been on a jury, care to answer that?
Well, in my case, that certainly didn't happen. The three holdouts were among the quieter people there, not just during the deliberations but in our bantering/hanging out as well. (You spend a lot of time as a juror in situations where you are not allowed to talk about the case. Worse than not thinking of pink elephants.) One guy barely spoke, but we all knew we weren't going to change his mind. (We all had figured out by the end of the first hour or two that we were going to be hung, which gave the rest of the deliberations something of an air of futility.) Part of the foreperson's job is to make sure that the forceful people don't shout down the others or anything like that, as well. Now, in a case where you had strong personalities on one side, and people who weren't really sure one way or the other, it's possible that the strong personalities could persuade the holdouts. But then, thanks to the reasonable doubt requirement, you could have people who are sure that they're not sure.  Honestly, I think that getting people to understand exactly what that means can be a challenge. One of the jurors in my case seemed to have a problem with the fact that I said that I believed that the defendant probably committed the crime, but that since I did not believe that beyond a reasonable doubt I could not vote to convict. It seemed to me, at least, that once she had decided she believed the defendant had committed the crime, considering the standard of proof was not important. But it could be argued that, given my line of work, I placed too much emphasis on the standard, although obviously I don't believe this to be the case. |
Pattie Gillett
True Believer
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posted 09-02-2001 12:37 PM
Back when I was considering going to law school (but before I realized that doing so would increase the likelihood that I would come out a lawyer) I read books by and spoke to a number of lawyers who warned that you really didn't want to know what went on in jury room and that the less you knew about how those 12 people actually arrived at their decision, the better. Well, I don't know about you, but that heightens my faith in the process. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 09-04-2001 08:08 AM
Well, I'm definitely generalizing from too small a sample size here, but the jury I was on was an excellent example of what the system should be. Although that very well may be because all of the stereotypes about who gets put onto juries were demonstrably NOT the case on my panel, which surprised many of us who did not expect to be approved. I was one of three teachers, we had a lawyer as well, and many people with post-graduate degrees. That said, I can see why verdicts would go into the same category as laws and sausages, especially since the way the process works, the information that the jurors would want to try and come to a conclusion is information that doesn't get entered at trial. Lord knows we were asking ourselves why the attorneys didn't ask this question or that question, or why such and such a witness hadn't been called. | |
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