Juries Must Go.

SezMe said:
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.
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I'm sure we can all acknowledge the number of cases where prejudice against black men has resulted in wrongful imprisonment and execution, so while I agree that one example doesn't make a case, bad jury decisions do exist.
 
The Atheist said:
I'm sure we can all acknowledge the number of cases where prejudice against black men has resulted in wrongful imprisonment and execution, so while I agree that one example doesn't make a case, bad jury decisions do exist.
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Without doubt. In fact, the bad decision in the OJ case arose (partly) out of a history of bad decisions that were racist only in the opposite direction as you correctly state. Two wrongs don't make a right.
 
In case anyone is curious it was our request for a jury trial that led the judge in my brothers case to throw it out. All through the indictment and other pre-trial stuff the cops had constantly assured the judge they had loads of evidence against my brother but when we requested a jury the judge finally asked to see what evidence the detectives said they had and was taken aback that all they had was a psychological profile and no physical evidence or testimony.

Of course he might also have been tired of having his decisions overturned on appeal which is something he was notorious for as well as his unabashed pro-prosecution bias.
 
The Atheist said:
I'm sure we can all acknowledge the number of cases where prejudice against black men has resulted in wrongful imprisonment and execution, so while I agree that one example doesn't make a case, bad jury decisions do exist.
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Would this be solved by having a white judge instead of a white jury, though?
 
The Atheist said:
Yeah, I cross-posted just that with you!



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.
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In the US, there was a huge scandal of Bush's Department of Justice screening for political allegiance, and even race. That's as crooked as it gets.
 
The Atheist said:
Thanks!



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.
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http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?62+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+173+(Spring+1999)

As I said, challenge is rare here. Challenge for cause is hard because there is no information about jurors: and peremptory challenge has been abolished

Challenges for cause are permissible, but because such challenges are very rare, no clear procedure has evolved for dealing with them.82 It has always been regarded as sufficient cause for challenge if a potential juror is clearly disabled in some way, for example, if he is insane, deaf, dumb, or blind,83 but further development of this area of law has obviously been severely limited by the attitude to questioning jurors. It is difficult to challenge a juror for cause if one has no information about that juror beyond a name and address or, formerly, an occupation.
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Cavemonster said:
In the US, there was a huge scandal of Bush's Department of Justice screening for political allegiance, and even race. That's as crooked as it gets.
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I see nothing in there about the judiciary, which is what I asked for.

Corruption in the Bush government is nothing too surprising.
 
The Atheist said:
I see nothing in there about the judiciary, which is what I asked for.

Corruption in the Bush government is nothing too surprising.
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I was hitting the larger issue of corruptability of public servants. There's nothing that makes judges less susceptible. A few notable cases.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/
http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2009/04/human-cost-of-corrupt-judges.html
http://turtleislander.blogspot.com/2007/05/corrupt-judge.html
http://abajournal.com/news/i_bribed_judge_to_get_search_warrant_ex-chicago_cop_testifies/

And frankly, I think it's reasonable to assume that reported abuse is a small percentage of the total.
 
SezMe said:
I wasn't aware of that dimension of the problem...thanks.
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I remember hearing that there was a religious element as well (from NPR coverage). That non-Christians were purposefully weeded out, but I'm too lazy to go looking for an article.

The main point is that here we have public servants, charged with upholding justice who utterly failed. I can't see any checks or limitations that protect judges from becoming as corrupted.
 
The Atheist said:
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.
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I can't speak for the backwoods of New Zealand but in the UK the rules have recently (i.e. within the last 5 years or so) been tightened up to make it much more difficult to get out of jury duty. It is now virtually impossible to get out of it - I've read an article by a barrister who was called up shortly after the rules were changed, who hadn't been able to avoid being called up. What in fact happened was that after being selected for various cases, he had to ask to be excused specifically because he personally knew either the judge or one or both of the counsel involved. It didn't get him out of jury duty though - he still had to attend the court and hang around until called.
 
empeake said:
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.
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Let's just ask those who nominated judges in the USSR or other dictatorships how "impartial and objective" they wanted the judges to be.
 
Mojo said:
I can't speak for the backwoods of New Zealand but in the UK the rules have recently (i.e. within the last 5 years or so) been tightened up to make it much more difficult to get out of jury duty. It is now virtually impossible to get out of it - I've read an article by a barrister who was called up shortly after the rules were changed, who hadn't been able to avoid being called up. What in fact happened was that after being selected for various cases, he had to ask to be excused specifically because he personally knew either the judge or one or both of the counsel involved. It didn't get him out of jury duty though - he still had to attend the court and hang around until called.
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Colorado requires employers to pay employees on jury duty their regular salary, at least for the first couple weeks of service. This makes it really tough to get out of jury duty by claiming financial hardship.
 
Cavemonster said:
I was hitting the larger issue of corruptability of public servants. There's nothing that makes judges less susceptible. A few notable cases.
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Yep, I knew there were some, but what degree of corruption exists? A very few cases over several years doesn't indicate that much of an issue.

Mojo said:
I can't speak for the backwoods of New Zealand but in the UK the rules have recently (i.e. within the last 5 years or so) been tightened up to make it much more difficult to get out of jury duty.
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Yeah, Fiona said all that.

What about financial hardship? How is that treated?

Lonewulf said:
Sounds like the same problem, different face.
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I don't think anyone's recommending judges judge cases alone.

Lonewulf said:
The jury system isn't flawless. Neither is any other kind of system.
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Well, I've asked for examples of these "other" systems and the problems inherent in them, but no details yet, so it isn't much of an argument to date.
 
The Atheist said:
Well, I've asked for examples of these "other" systems and the problems inherent in them, but no details yet, so it isn't much of an argument to date.
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If you don't have a better solution, what's the point of complaining?
 
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