I agree with this…to a certain extent. Letting the guilty off because of a technicality is like sports refs who acknowledge that they made a mistake, but refuse to correct it “because the rules don’t allow challenges within the last 2 minutes,” - but, of course, with consequences far more dire for the people involved in court.
But at the same time, bending rules at will or making exceptions here and there, is a recipe for abuse of power later on.
A proper juror can only decide guilty/not guilt on the basis of the specific case presented for the specific crime charged. Period. Anything else is simply a lynch mob with the government standing by to perform whatever sentence the mob chooses for whatever reason the mob chooses.
All of BigT’s argument amounts to this: “I know he was guilty of something before the trial even started. Now that I as a juror have the opportunity to punish him, I must take it.”
That is the darkest perversion of Justice I’ve heard in a very long time.
I don’t think that the case should ever have gone to trial in the first place. We have no physical evidence whatsoever in the case with one witness with contradictory testimony. Yet they deliberated longer than the actual trial lasted. It was he said, she said and in such situations tie should really go to the accused.
Someone is only guilty when found so by a court, and even then it’s subject to appeal. If someone hasn’t been proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, they are found not guilty, and that is binding and irrevocable.
Acting as though someone is guilty who hasn’t been found that way by a court is ALWAYS an injustice. It can’t be anything else.
As for the general idea of a mistrial, it’s also unjust. If there’s a juror who’s not convinced of guilt, that by definition means there’s reasonable doubt - someone has seen the full facts of the case and finds reason to doubt guilt.
I dislike a mistrial because the prosecutor has seemingly unlimited resources to continue trying the case until the end of time whereas attorneys can drain the resources of even the richest people rather quickly.
Disagree. I don’t know the specifics of this case, and I could imagine a case where I’d agree with this, but in general, if the prosecutor and the accused both reasonably believed there was an immunity deal, then the deal should be honored. Mistakes in process should never benefit the state, because the state is the most powerful party that controls the process, and we really don’t want the state to have an interest in fucking things up. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that.
Disagree as well. Better a hundred guilty men go free, etc.
And also, because guilty and not-guilty votes are not symmetrical. They are not one’s best estimate of whether the accused committed a crime; they are about whether the prosecution proved that. The null hypothesis is not guilty.
If I’m the lone holdout not willing to vote guilty (and I am legitimately considering the evidence), then the prosecution did not prove its case. Doesn’t matter what the other 11 people think. If they can’t convince me, then guilt is not proved. I’m not budging.
If I’m the lone holdout not willing to vote not-guilty (and I believe at least one of the other jurors is legitimately considering the evidence), then the prosecution did not prove its case. If I can convince them otherwise, great. Otherwise, guilt is not proved. I’ll try for a while, then give up and vote not-guilty.
I have multiple problems with this post, I will focus on two.
Your job as a juror is not to “know he did it”, whatever it is and whoever he is, your job as a juror is to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecution proved the case against the defendant. Even if you are convinced that he is guilty, say because of some outside information/belief/value you have, unless the prosecution demonstrated in this trial beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the specific charge against him, you need to vote not guilty. People don’t like this, look up jury nullification sometime, but that is what you are sworn to do.
ALL the evidence necessary to convince you, the juror, beyond a reasonable doubt, MUST have been presented in the trial. Outside information, no matter how solid or pertinent, is not to be considered. That is the way the law works. That is what the law is asking the jury to do.
And that is important-because Mr. Cosby is not a lawyer. Under the law as I understand it, Mr. Cosby should have been protected because he was advised by his lawyer, and in fact by the prosecutor, that the offer was in fact legal. As it turns out, those legal professionals were wrong-they should be appropriately punished, but Mr. Cosby did nothing wrong in accepting the deal and he should not be punished for following the practice of law.
This is really key. If the government is permitted to profit from it’s mistakes, soon enough all trials will contain “mistakes”.
Our whole constitution is designed around protecting the citizenry from the natural tendency of all governments to overstep their bounds. We need to keep the camel’s nose out of the tent everywhere all the time.
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The old saying is “a bad man might have a good case”. What **BigT [/B ]is saying that essentially we should concentrate on the “bad man” bit and ignore everything else.
That is…horrifying. Justice is reduced to whether or not a person is sympathetic. What about cases where the victim is a bastard? Would BigT oppose punishment for them because they clearly had it coming?
There is surprisingly little direct evidence of that. There is a lot of evidence that he liked to give women drugs and like to have sex with them. That does not necessarily mean its rape. There is a lot of evidence of bad behavior and a general scummy character. Quite a lot less for actual verifiable rapes.
Even his much-purported “confession”* does not equal confession of rape and in fact is pretty exculpatory if read in depth. He says again in essence that he shared 'ludes with certain women and they took it. He says he never hid what they were. That they later had sex and that at no point did the women say no. None of that is in anyway confessing to rape. In that all the elements of rape have been admitted, i.e lack of consent and knowing/should have known of said absence.
*It is a confession to various drug offenses though.
This question has been considered for years, and yes, there is such a point. I won’t quote this entire case, but it includes a nice summary of how courts have handled the competing interests when a jury is deadlocked.