Juries Must Go.

[Edges]

Maybe in the USA, but not everywhere.

Really? Learn something new everyday.

So, I guess my next question is, do people think the US has the appropriate solution to the jury problem, ie, that one can choose to be tried by a jury or a judge?

Personally, I can't imagine being forced to be tried by a judge as a good solution to the problem with juries. As others have pointed out, not all judges are created equal. They are just as likely to be swayed by prosecutors and defense attornies, particularly if they are biased towards one or the other. By virtue of being human beings, it would be impossible for them to be completely impartial.

 

[Lonewulf]

Your avatar matches your attitude. This is nothing but a troll thread to insult people, right?

I called it first.

 

[Skeptic]

Wouldn't judges be less susceptible to subjective decisions?

Absolutely not.

 

[Beth]

I haven't read through the whole thread, but the first page hits on all the relevant arguments both sides. I've had one experience on a jury. If it is in any way representative of our legal system, bad as jurors often are I will vote to keep them. Mainly because it is the least corruptible system we humans as devised to date.

I saw a defendant who was, as near as possible to tell, a violent unemployed loser. A prosecution who didn't have any evidence other than a very weak Id by one out of two men who were drunk at the time. And a defense that was so sorry, I wondered it the defense lawyer was afraid of getting this guy off the hook. I was appalled and disgusted at the whole affair. If this what is referred to as 'justice' in our society, we are in a sorry state. Juries, I am sad to say, is the best we've done up till now. Personally, I'd be willing to consider some other approach, but the number one criteria on my list is keeping the power to put people in jail distributed among as many different people as possible.

 

[Cainkane1]

Outdated & absurd.

How a bunch of ill-informed amateurs are supposed to decide guilt & innocence has always astonished me, but things seem even worse now.

30 years ago, nearly all employers allowed employees to attend jury service on full pay. Now, it's the government and very few corporates, which leaves most juries made up of people whose compos is often not very mentis.

Housewives, the terminally unemployable and retirees. And even worse, public servants.

I've been on a Grand jury and a petite jury and I think we did a damn good job myself.

 

[empeake]

Originally Posted by empeake
Wouldn't judges be less susceptible to subjective decisions?

Absolutely not.

Please explain why not. I am not implying that judges never make subjective decisions, but simply that they are (or at least should be) LESS prone to do so than a juror, as a result of their education, experience and training. After all, it is part of the judge's job description to be objective and impartial.

 

[Fiona]

Can't speak for Skeptic, empeake, but I outlined some of the reasons in an earlier post: judges are subject to groupthink as is everyone else: probably more so; for there is good reason to isolate them from the wider community to some extent, as a safeguard against corruption and threats, for example. They are also apt to be in a good financial position and they are very likely to see the rule of law as a very high thing indeed: so high that maintaining confidence in the system can at times outweigh considerations of justice. Judges are human. Humans are not very good at being objective and impartial in all circumstances; and they are not very good at noticing when they are not being objective and impartial, either. Juries are not members of the group and so they are not affected by the particular failings which come from that source. They are a safeguard, as I said

 

[empeake]

Can't speak for Skeptic, empeake, but I outlined some of the reasons in an earlier post: judges are subject to groupthink as is everyone else: probably more so; for there is good reason to isolate them from the wider community to some extent, as a safeguard against corruption and threats, for example. They are also apt to be in a good financial position and they are very likely to see the rule of law as a very high thing indeed: so high that maintaining confidence in the system can at times outweigh considerations of justice. Judges are human. Humans are not very good at being objective and impartial in all circumstances; and they are not very good at noticing when they are not being objective and impartial, either. Juries are not members of the group and so they are not affected by the particular failings which come from that source. They are a safeguard, as I said

I live in a country where there is no jury system and corruption is rampant in the legal system, so I see your point. Perhaps the jury system is the best for certain types of cases, and a judge (or panel of judges) is better for others.

 

[richman2112]

Housewives, the terminally unemployable and retirees. And even worse, public servants.

LOL "Sorry Mr. whats your name? Einstein?, who cares about some stupid theory from some patent clerk, please leave."

What nonsense, Any idiot cant get an education and this includes a group of laymen instructed to interpret the case as you proposed. And who says the people instructing them will be non-idiots? As far as i'm concerned common sense is the best form of intelligence and the average people who have to deal with life more intensely usually have more.

 

[The Atheist]

I know this article is dated, but it makes a good argument for a tribunal system.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1273

Thanks!

ETA: that is english law: the situation is similar in Scotland

How does it work in practice?

We don't have an allowable number of challenges here either, but people are still challenged and to date, I haven't heard or seen of a challenge being disallowed.

Must be a New Zealand thing.
Employers in the UK can't prevent employees doing service when they are called up.

They can't prevent them attending, but they don't have to pay them.

I'm none of these, and my employer has 'allowed' me to go - on full pay - as I have been called up for duty this week.

I did note a minority of employers who still give full pay when on jury service.

Your avatar matches your attitude. This is nothing but a troll thread to insult people, right?

You really should try looking at the evidence before you jump in and make a fool of yourself.

Most people have been able to come to terms with the fact that I sometimes kick things off with outrageous statements.

Other than one poster who hasn't yet bothered to make a contribution, we seem to have a reasonably enlightened discussion going on.

Feel free to continue down that path.

It's the same in Australia. You have to have a very good reason to get out of jury duty.

Financial hardship one of them?

Pretty easy to prove financial hardship during a recession if your employer isn't paying you. Would the registrar insist a person harms his/her financial position by serving on a jury?

I was on a jury recently during a three day trial.

Would you have been able to attend a three-month trial?

I called it first.

Six

I haven't read through the whole thread, but the first page hits on all the relevant arguments both sides. I've had one experience on a jury. If it is in any way representative of our legal system, bad as jurors often are I will vote to keep them. Mainly because it is the least corruptible system we humans as devised to date.

That's a pretty broad statement without evidence.

What alternatives have you considered?

 

[Lonewulf]

Six

My gosh, you can count! Gasp! Shock! Awe!

 

[Alt+F4]

That's a pretty broad statement without evidence.

Why don't you provide evidence that the unemployed, stay-at-home-moms or government employees make poor jurors?

 

[Euromutt]

I'm surprised to see that people here are actually defending the jury system. I there's anything that I expect people in this forum to be familiar with, it's that people in general are very bad at figuring out what conclusions you can draw from a given piece of evidence. If people were good at it, this forum wouldn't even exist.

True. But I speak from experience when I tell you that applies to judges as well. I worked for over three years at ICTY, and a number co-workers of mine were frequently frustrated by certain judges who seemed to regard eyewitness testimony as the gold standard of evidence, and forensic and documentary evidence is just there to support the witness' testimony.

I mean, I'm Dutch, and I grew up with a Napoleonic Code-style inquisitorial system, and I used to have a fairly low opinion of jury trials, but since living in the US, I've actually warmed to them quite a bit. For starters, from a defendant's point of view, you have something of an advantage that a jury may be more likely to empathize with a defendant (what if it were me?) than a judge.

The authors of The Wire stated in an interview that if they ever found themselves on the jury in a drugs possession case, they would vote to acquit, and I agreed with their position; it's hard to imagine a judge taking that stance.

 

[SezMe]

The authors of The Wire stated in an interview that if they ever found themselves on the jury in a drugs possession case, they would vote to acquit, and I agreed with their position; it's hard to imagine a judge taking that stance.

Uh-oh, you just made a major contribution to TA's case.

Rendering a verdict based on one's position on the law, not on the case, is very bad form. In fact, I would hope that any potential jurors who had such an attitude would be thrown out during the vetting process.

If you approve of this position, then presumably you approve of jurors using their own individual biases in other areas. For example, deciding a black guy is in violation of drug laws because, well, all THOSE people in the 'hood do drugs.

 

[The Atheist]

My gosh, you can count! Gasp! Shock! Awe!

Seven.

Why don't you provide evidence that the unemployed, stay-at-home-moms or government employees make poor jurors?

You may like to note that most of us have been able to move past that.

I mean, I'm Dutch, and I grew up with a Napoleonic Code-style inquisitorial system, and I used to have a fairly low opinion of jury trials, but since living in the US, I've actually warmed to them quite a bit. For starters, from a defendant's point of view, you have something of an advantage that a jury may be more likely to empathize with a defendant (what if it were me?) than a judge.

The authors of The Wire stated in an interview that if they ever found themselves on the jury in a drugs possession case, they would vote to acquit, and I agreed with their position; it's hard to imagine a judge taking that stance.

Those seem like two excellent pieces of evidence against juries. I want juries who rely on evidence, not empathy with the defendant, and while I support legalisation of all drugs, I'd want a drug jury to also rule on the evidence, rather than their personal beliefs.

On your basis, a juror who wanted to acquit a murderer on the basis that the victim was an abortionist would be perfectly ok.

It's exactly what I want to avoid, so thanks for making that point for me.

 

[fuelair]

Uh-oh, you just made a major contribution to TA's case.

Rendering a verdict based on one's position on the law, not on the case, is very bad form. In fact, I would hope that any potential jurors who had such an attitude would be thrown out during the vetting process.

If you approve of this position, then presumably you approve of jurors using their own individual biases in other areas. For example, deciding a black guy is in violation of drug laws because, well, all THOSE people in the 'hood do drugs.

Actually, jury nullification is quite legal - in fact, I seem to remember a case some years back in Sunny CAL with some orange guy - where theevidence was clear he killed two people but the jury let him off anyway. Played golf and hunted down his wife's murderer for a while, then
got involved in sports memorabiia or guns or something.

 

[Bikewer]

Anyone who's been in law enforcement can likely tell horror stories involving juries. An instructor at the academy here relates how he found himself involved in a civil-rights complaint, and his first day in court found one of the jurors asleep....

My wife sat on a jury where the defense in a felony-assault case was maintaining that the accused was insane. Everyone was of the opinion that this was a sham on the part of the defendant, including several psychiatrists who testified.
However, one of the jurors had a son who suffered from mental illness...She was convinced.

A mistrial resulted.

One can go on and on. One can also talk about peremptory dismissals on the flimsiest grounds, shrinking pools of qualified jurors in many areas, "stacking" of jurors by defense attorneys, sophisticated screening techniques based on computer analysis of probable voting patterns, etc, etc.
Obviously there are problems.

There are problems with having "professional" juries as well. The first that springs to mind is corruption. If everyone knows who the jurors are going to be, then unscrupulous persons can dig into their life histories for dirt or susceptibility of bribery.
More difficult when jurors are pulled from a large constituency and then sequestered after the selection process.
I think it's a matter that could well use looking at.

 

[Lonewulf]

Seven.

Eight.

 

[The Atheist]

Uh-oh, you just made a major contribution to TA's case.

Yeah, I cross-posted just that with you!

One can go on and on. One can also talk about peremptory dismissals on the flimsiest grounds, shrinking pools of qualified jurors in many areas, "stacking" of jurors by defense attorneys, sophisticated screening techniques based on computer analysis of probable voting patterns, etc, etc.
Obviously there are problems.

There are problems with having "professional" juries as well. The first that springs to mind is corruption. If everyone knows who the jurors are going to be, then unscrupulous persons can dig into their life histories for dirt or susceptibility of bribery.
More difficult when jurors are pulled from a large constituency and then sequestered after the selection process.
I think it's a matter that could well use looking at.

I don't know enough about the US situation, but I know that corruption of the juducuary here is unheard of. How many crooked judges have been uncovered in USA?

If it's only a few, wouldn't that argue that professionals aren't very likely to be corrupted? If it's lots, it does raise a different problem.

 

[SezMe]

Actually, jury nullification is quite legal - in fact, I seem to remember a case some years back in Sunny CAL with some orange guy - where theevidence was clear he killed two people but the jury let him off anyway. Played golf and hunted down his wife's murderer for a while, then
got involved in sports memorabiia or guns or something.

Ha! That little episode was anything but jury nullification. There was no attempt on the part of that jury to find anything wrong with homicide jurisprudence. Rather, it may well be Exhibit A in TA's case that juries don't work. They simply ruled based on race, pure and simple.

Mind you, I'm not sure I agree with TA but jury nullification and/or extremely bad decisions in a notorious case don't make for good arguments against him.