I’m as bleeding-heart liberal as they come. I believe in rehabilitation, rather than punishment. But no this would not affect my verdict. Given a choice between letting a bad guy go free, and giving too harsh a penalty, I’d have to go for the latter. If the sentence is unduly harsh the bad guy and his lawyer can appeal and try to get it reduced.
I dunno…I think my duty as a human being trumps my duty as a citizen. If the punishment is too harsh, I would feel obligated to not partake in the decision to punish someone too harshly. I’d also have an obligation to try to get that law struck down, but first business would be to not be part of ruining someone’s life.
In this case, there will be three priors introduced. They are crimes of the same nature of (but less serious than) what he’s charged with now. There are other lesser offenses that the jury could convict him of which carry potential prison time (and given his record, if he’s convicted of the lessers, he’ll get some time).
A related question (I guess I'm allowed to hijack my own thread :) ): if you were serving on a jury in a criminal case, would you want to know what the potential penalties were? Would you want to know if there was a mandatory minimum sentence that the judge had to impose?It depends on how great an injustice I feel it would be.
A life sentence when it “feels” like 20 years would be more appropriate? Guilty.
A life sentence for marijuana posession under a three strikes law? Not guilty.
I tend to be a bit of a hard nose, so unless it was a very young first timer with a HELLUVA good excuse, I’d probably go with guilty as charged.
I agree with Metacom.
Although I tend to hang with the bleeding heart crowd, I’m in the minority on this one. I would have the utmost sympathy for the defendant, truly, but I would be inclined to simply vote based on my belief in the defendant’s guilt.
Having participated as a paralegal in some trials, including one that lasted four months, I know that there are a lot of things both positive and negative that the jury never hears about. A jury isn’t necessarily told that information is being kept from them, and they certainly aren’t told why. I think a juror really has little choice but to trust the system.
I just don’t think individual jurors are typically in a position to make a call like that. They just don’t have enough pieces of the puzzle. Therefore, I think it’s best for jurors to simply vote based on the information that was put before them and let the lawyers worry about trying to straighten out legal injustices.
After re-reading the thread, I should add that I think that Three Strikes laws are a load of crap, and I would probably refuse to sit on any trial where that was at issue.
No.
I’m opposed to these silly mandatory sentences and “Three strikes you’re out” laws that send people to prison for petty theft and whatnot, but if I’m on a jury, my job is to make a finding of fact; is he guilty or ain’t he? That’s my civic duty. Sentencing isn’t my job.