Empathy in the jury room

[Rolfe]

I wasn't sure where to post this, because it touches on several cases we've been discussing here. It's a (fairly long) discussion of how empathy, some might say false empathy, and indeed it seems that this can be turned on and off by instruction, can cause not just unwarranted exoneration of the guilty, but mean and spiteful treatment of those who don't share that viewpoint.

How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational

The strange movement to free the Menendez brothers

www.gurwinder.blog

 

[wasapi]

I wasn't sure where to post this, because it touches on several cases we've been discussing here. It's a (fairly long) discussion of how empathy, some might say false empathy, and indeed it seems that this can be turned on and off by instruction, can cause not just unwarranted exoneration of the guilty, but mean and spiteful treatment of those who don't share that viewpoint.

How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational

The strange movement to free the Menendez brothers

www.gurwinder.blog

I sat on a jury when a young man was charged with armed robbery. He was too dense to realize he was on video and camera. But I did feel sorry for him. He cried and apologized to his grandma for letting her down. He had to pay the consequences, but yeah I think it was sad. Another juruer, a school principal said to me as we were leaving, "Am I my brothers keeper?" I liked it.

 

[junkshop]

I was on the jury deciding the fate of a guy who appeared to genuinely believe that his wife and his boss were having an affair.

He then decided to try to murder his boss, and recruited his brother-in-law to achieve this aim. Things did not go according to plan (mostly because the conspirators were high, and kinda dumb). Outcome of the attempt: intended victim (barely) survived, BIL died, the guy is on trial.

The reason I post this is that during our jury discussions all of us empathised with the accused, we understood that he believed an upsetting thing to be true (that he had been betrayed by his wife and his boss), and that was a thing that it was not unreasonable to be upset by. At no point did any of us doubt that he honestly believed that that the betrayal had occurred. He had a very good barrister.

Then he took the stand. He denied any responsibility, and laid all the blame on his dead BIL and his wife. He flatly contradicted most of his defence team's arguments about chilhood trauma and ongoing insecurity. He showed himself to be a thin-skinned, angry and vengeful dick.

The deliberations didn't take long.

ETA: Sorry, through a combination of tipsiness and attempting to avoid identifiable details I have managed to lose track of my point and post incohenent nonsense. Feel free to ignore this drivel.

ETA2: The same, or similar, goes for most of my posts, as you have no doubt realised by now.

 

[Rolfe]

I thought your post was interesting and relevant. It's possible to empathise with someone and yet still reach the conclusion "string him up and throw away the key."

 

[SpitfireIX]

I wasn't sure where to post this, because it touches on several cases we've been discussing here. It's a (fairly long) discussion of how empathy, some might say false empathy, and indeed it seems that this can be turned on and off by instruction, can cause not just unwarranted exoneration of the guilty, but mean and spiteful treatment of those who don't share that viewpoint.

How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational

The strange movement to free the Menendez brothers

www.gurwinder.blog

FYI, since that article was written, the Menendez brothers have, unfortunately, been resentenced to 50 years to life, but, fortunately, they were denied parole at their first opportunity. They will be eligible again in 2028.

I remember that at the time they were being tried, the idea of having any empathy whatsoever for them never entered my mind, for the simple reason that, whatever justification they might have had for killing their father, I could see no possible justification for their also having killed their mother.

I also remember seeing an interview with a woman (possibly one of the jurors from the first trial) who was making excuses for the pair's post-murder spending spree. "They're rich; it's normal for them to spend that much money on things," or words to that effect.

 

[Trebuchet]

I felt sorry for the young woman we convicted of DUI, not for convicting her but because the testimony proved beyond reasonable doubt that her boyfriend was a total jerk; and because her lawyer was useless and didn't stop the irrelevant testimony.
I was kind of glad when they through out every conviction ever registered on the breath machine they used on her because the trooper doing the maintenance was cooking the books.

ETA: "Threw", not "through". Frickin' homphones. Eye type them awl the dam thyme!

 

[Ranb]

I was in the jury for a trial of a man who was accused of assaulting a police officer. The jury was shocked by the testimony of the small female bartender he beat up prior to being arrested. The defendant had already plead guilty to assaulting her, as we were reminded several times during the trial.

Any empathy I had for the defendant evaporated after he testified that he "might have taken a swing at the cop". He was better off not testifying.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wasn't sure where to post this, because it touches on several cases we've been discussing here. It's a (fairly long) discussion of how empathy, some might say false empathy, and indeed it seems that this can be turned on and off by instruction, can cause not just unwarranted exoneration of the guilty, but mean and spiteful treatment of those who don't share that viewpoint.

How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational

The strange movement to free the Menendez brothers

www.gurwinder.blog

Irrational I get, but cruelty? It makes no sense to me and I have a hard time working it into any kind of a reasonable story.

 

[junkshop]

I thought your post was interesting and relevant. It's possible to empathise with someone and yet still reach the conclusion "string him up and throw away the key."

Thank you, but I must say that lock him up, that I'd be on board with, but not string him up. Never string him up.

 

[Rolfe]

It was a joke...

 

[Rolfe]

I found it quite interesting that the article seemed to suggest that empathy could be turned on and off by instruction.

 

[Olmstead]

Sounds to me like the problem isn't empathy, but a judicial system and society that cares about how people present themselves.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Calls to "remember the victim" could lead a juror to empathize with the victim and disregard reasonable doubt.

 

[theprestige]

Sounds to me like the problem isn't empathy, but a judicial system and society that cares about how people present themselves.

Seems to me there isn't a problem. Empathy is present, but works in concert with intellect, not against it. Even nullification includes an intellectual review of the empathic urge to nullify. And how people present themselves (or more accurately, how they conduct themselves) is and should be an important part of jurisprudence.

Incidentally, I watch a lot of court proceedings. A lot of defendants present themselves *terribly* in court, and have past conduct that puts them in an even worse light. But they still get strictly by the numbers treatment from the court. Very rarely does a bad attitude override dispassionate judgement of their case.

ETA: I say, "how a person conducts themselves" matters, because it does. For example, a person who has chosen to ignore all the conditions of their probation in the past will have a worse chance of being offered probation again.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

In the linked essay above Gurwinder wrote, "This isn’t the first time this has happened. In 2015, the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer deceived millions of people that the rapist and killer Steven Avery was an innocent victim of corrupt police." Mr. Avery was convicted of murdering Ms. Halbach. The only evidence of rape were the words of his nephew Brendan Dassey, who did not testify at Mr. Avery's trial. Referring to Mr. Avery as a rapist is sloppy and inflammatory. Gurwinder wrote about authors who were hoodwinked by convicts but not about authors who championed people who were wrongfully convicted. Color me unimpressed.