The jury has been selected and opening statements are currently scheduled for Monday, June 24. This thread is for discussion of the trial and evidence as it’s presented and the jury verdict. There are live feeds available during court proceedings.
And, unsurprisingly, non-black. It would be nice if the justice system at least tried to be fair. Jesus Christ. How they allowed juror who thought the protests in Sanford was “rioting” borders on insanity.
It’s very unfortunate that Florida uses a six person jury for this type of case. It’s easier to get diversity with 12 jurors. There was a 40 person pool that potential jurors were randomly selected from. The defense and prosecution had objections to a few but surprisingly the jury selection went smoothly with very little argument from either side.
As a defense-oriented guy, I would not be happy with an all female jury. For that matter, I would not be happy with a 6-member jury, either, but from what I understand, Florida does that in all except capital cases.
I think both issues favor the prosecution–and the prosecution already has a stacked deck, with marked cards. Presumption of innocence be damned, juries want to convict, and most of them do.
Yeah, 49% male, 6 white females. What’s the probability of that occurring by chance? None. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but in statistics, don’t you multiply the ratio by itself to get the probability? Soo, that’s 0.49 x 0.49 x 0.49 x 0.49 x 0.49 = 0.02% chance of 6 females on a jury. In other words, if my math is correct, there’s a less than 1% chance that there’d be a jury of 6 females. There is no way this occurred by chance in the face of a 0.02 probability. My BS meter is pinging.
Not quite: figure a ~50% chance the first will be female, so 25% for the first two, 12.5% for the first three, 6.25% for the first four, 3.125% for the first five, 1.5625% for all six.
While I tend to agree with you, the TV lawyers say an all female jury works for the defense as they tend to think women can empathize more with a Zimmerman feeling vulnerable and victimized. Not sure I buy that though.
Honesty, I wouldn’t automatically leap to the conclusion that the jury’s gender makeup is the result of shenanigans. An all female jury doesn’t mirror the overall population, but that may not be a bad thing. If the overall population is disproportionately bigoted, tainted by media bias, and incapable of critical thought, then we should not be sad if the jury skews in the other direction. It could be that men summoned for jury duty in Seminole Co. were particularly talented in disqualifying themselves. After seeing the batshit insanity put out on the internets by self-identified men for the last year, I honestly wouldn’t put it past them.
The prosecution and defense were given the opportunity to cull out jurors they believe will be unfairly biased against their candidate. Prospective jurors were also administered a screening questionnaire before the lawyers even got their hands on them. So yeah, after all this, I’m not surprised the jury looks this way. I’m willing to withhold judgement from the jury until they give me a reason to judge them.
Race aside, though, Zimmerman could not have asked for worst demographics. What he was wanting was a box full of white dudes who are proud and passionate defenders of SYG, vigilantee heroics, and anything put out by Fox News no matter how ridiculous. What he ended up getting was a bunch of mothers, some of whom have raised boys, and are probably not all that impressed by gun-weilding tough guy theatrics. Yeah, I’m sure some of them are biased as all get out, and I wouldn’t put it past them to lapse into stupid when evaluating the evidence. But at this time, I’m not complaining. Zimmerman should be worried.
The other thing worth pointing out (and I’m sure the Zimmerman supporters will disagree with this, but they stay in denial so that ain’t surprising) is that there is a big difference in interpersonal skills between BLDR and O’Mara/West. Anyone who has tuned into the trial so far can see this starkly. Not to stereotype too much, but with an all-female jury, the defense definitely has a reason to worry about this. Body language, tone, and overall demeanor all go into building trust, and trust goes hand in hand with belief. I think women are more attuned to non-verbal communication than men are, and the prosecution is winning in that area.
If 300-lb Zimmerman takes the stand and describes nearly being beaten to death by an unarmed 160-lb kid, I think women will recognize that their bodily dimensions match closest to Martin than the Z-ster. And I hope the State does all they can to help them see that.
Wow. I was about to ask you if you were being hyperbolic about Zimmerman weighing 300 lbs, but I didn’t realize how much weight that guy has gained since he was arrested. Probably still not three bills, but damn.
That said, I tend to agree with your analysis, but most “TV experts” disagree.
Again, I think they are fooling themselves, but who knows. I saw a few others on TV saying basically the same thing.
A jury of 10 women and 2 men acquitted OJ Simpson of murdering the woman he’d beaten and threatened for years, and pre-trial research indicated that females responded very negatively to Marcia Clark, so maybe there’s something to that.
Let me clarify my point: the jury as selected is representative of the area’s racial demographics (the jury is 83% white and 17% Hispanic; Seminole County is 82.8% white and 15.6% Hispanic), though as you note, not its gender demographics.