This pretty much sums it up, for me too. :rolleyes:
And this is your textbook straw man. :rolleyes:
I personally believe I am able to apply reasonable enough analysis to information I read to make valid determinations about it. I also know some people aren’t. That doesn’t change the fact that we ain’t dealing with your daddy’s information these days. Nothing in our way of life is carved in stone. The legal system is no exception.
See, I am not so trusting. Were I involved in a criminal trial, I definitely would want my guilt or innocence based on what is presented and allowed in the confines of the court, not from amateur snoops playing internet detective.
And you suppose those people don’t have the same confidence in their abilities that you do?
And yet, I’d be pretty sure that many jurors would be looking for exactly this type of information. In the Rodney King beating case four cops were being tried for using excessive force on a guy that was lying on the ground. Their defense was essentially that the guy was resisting arrest in a violent and/or dangerous way. With today’s online access (and a credit card) it’s pretty easy to buy a background check on a person if you have enough info (DOB, etc.) A juror who did that would have found that King had prior arrests for drug offenses, and, well, of course! “The guy was a methhead! They had to beat him!”
You see, that could be “the truth” for any one of the jurors if he or she were so inclined, and, indeed, it was actually true that he had priors for drugs. And that would be a “truth” that was found because a juror decided to play detective. Everyone seeks out “the truth” that they want to find. The internet is ideal for that.
You may believe that the U.S. trial system is “antiquated” (200 years! It’s a geezer!), but the whole point of DUE PROCESS is that it is as little as possible subject to all of these various subjective “truths,” and keeps everyone consistent and focused on the same set of information. Of course it’s adversarial, and each side is going to do it’s best to paint a picture to their advantage–but that’s the role of the judge (and precedent in procedure): to keep distortion and irrelevance out as much as possible.
The prejudice in the trial system doesn’t come from control of information, but from societal inequity at large.
Why does the “amateur snoop” label keep coming up? If you want to base your whole idea of this issue on one narrowly focused example of what can happen when information is mishandled, you are as bad as the example you give.
I’m not following. How is doing this sort of internet investigation not amateur snooping? ETA: Actually, “amateur sleuth” is the phrase I was looking for, not “snoop.”
Unsubscribed.
Tons. Remember, it was 11 - 0 -1 for conviction from the beginning, and not because of my brilliant deduction. I just enjoyed playing Sherlock Holmes.
This restriction is not new. The example the judge gave is that the jurors were not allowed to go to the scene of the crime to check it out. Before that, jurors were not supposed to read about the story in the papers or watch coverage on TV, or, I suppose, go to the library for back issues. The only difference now is that a juror playing detective doesn’t even have to get off his duff to investigate - and the information is even less trustworthy than it was before.
Exactly. In my opinion, it is a real fear that immaterial, prejudicial, irrelevant, llegally obtained, and/or just plain false information can taint the case from “extracurricular” jury investigation. I would prefer jury trials to stay within the bounds of the evidence and testimony that is provided in the court, in order to get the fairest possible outcome and to keep both prosecution and defense playing on the same level according to the same rules.
This scenario of juror investigation is anything but narrow. It is wide open to all kinds of diversions, tangents, pet peeves, personal vendettas, fixations, political agendas, and so on that any juror might find a way to link to those involved in a trial–and not just to a defendant, but also to the personal lives of the attorneys, the judge, and the rest of the court staff. Conceivably a trial could never end, turning into a Kafka novel.
How did you get that from my statement??
Jurors are going to have such questions swimming around their heads whether or not the lawyers address it. I would rather take questions from the jury and address them, then ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.
And I’m certain that the experts would probably do better. However, this isn’t about who does a better job at researching, this is about juries knowing certain information and being forced to consider a case without all of the info. I’m sure that the prosecution would love to enter in all their evidence and use any tricks or loopholes to exclude that of the defense. What I want to do would make that nearly impossible, as anything raised by the jury would be addressed, whether or not one side wants it to be addressed or not
Didn’t you just say many cases are short enough to not have the opportunity to research?
Anyway, it seems one does not need a lot of time, a couple hours even, to just look up a case on the internet and see what people are saying about it. And I don’t think a juror would be especially biased against one side for asking a question and then getting a response. Jurors are hardly the blank slates we make them out to be, they all have their individual biases. Jury selection is as much about exploiting these biases for your side as it is about getting fair and impartial people. The way I see it, jurors can ask questions they would like to know about the case, why a specific piece of evidence is being excluded (after viewing it), and for the lawyers to address some extraneous information they heard outside but not brought up by the lawyers. They’re not goign to be refuting the jurors as the jurors would be questioning the lawyers, not making one side’s case for them
It is wrong that we’re supposed to use our judgement to judge the credibility of witnesses, yet cannot use that same judgement to decide whether a piece of evidence is relevent to the case or not. As a juror, I can say I don’t like how a witness carried himself, I felt his body language was deceptive, and discount his whole testimony based on that gut feeling. Yet I cannot be shown a piece of evidence and decide myself whether that is relevent to the case? That kind of reasoning is wrong
The honest disagreement would only happen if I was able to get those facts regardless of what the judge and lawyers decide. It would be dishonest agreement if I came to my conclusion without havign the facts that they don’t want me to have. And honestly, I consider my duty as a human being and getting the case right a lot more important that what the rest of the jurors want to do to get out quicker
I am saying that lawyers can and seem to conduct their jobs as if to trick jurors into getting the result they want. Given proof of guilt, they should abandon that effort to trick jurors to find on their side and instead try a case based on what is ethical, which is to get the innocent off, but make sure the guilty is punished. I don’t think they’re smarter than the legal system, but I don’t doubt that they can possess information proving one side or the other is correct
And why do you not ask what would happen if a guilty man hires an attorney that is successful in getting him acquitted? That is almost as bad
Mistakes are bound to happen. But as things stand now, a defense lawyer always tries to get his client off, is not any more fair than if both sides work towards the truth. Lawyers shouldn’t make such decisions by gut, and I’m sure most would not. Only when irrefutable evidence comes into play should a lawyer do this. I don’t know why that’s any more outrageous than asking all defense lawyers to try to get his client off no matter what. If anything does change, then there would still be more guilty people hiring lawyers try to get them than there would be innocent people mistakenly decided as guilty by their own attorneys
How does anyone? Investigate it
The fact that so many people outside the courtroom had an opinion that he was guilty, and moreso now some 16 years after the fact, showed that the presence of additional information unavailable to the sequestered jury would have had an effect. Whether that information is relevent or not is, as I keep saying, up to the jurors to decide themselves
Jurors don’t have to go to the stand. The way I envision it, any questions about evidence not presented in the court could be sent to the judge via a note. The judge will then answer the question, or present it to the court and each lawyer can address it. For instance, taking the OJ case as an example again, a juror could say that he saw on the news that OJ was abusive to this wife on multiple occasions and this fact was suppressed by the defense as irrevelent. The note would ask why its irrelevent when common sense would dictate that such a thing is very relevent and speaks to the type of person that may kill. The judge could then address the jury and say that such evidence wasn’t allowed to be presented because just because a person was abusive to his spouse is no indication that he’s a killer, so evidence speaking to OJ’s abusiveness is irrelevent to the case. This is just an example of how such a question would work, I don’t really remember after all these years what exactly was presented.
By doing so, the jurors would have the full information, that OJ was abusive, then they would be told the reason why its irrelevent. You can wonder whether the jurors would be able to unhear that information, but what is happening now is essentially both sides tries to get as much bad information suppressed about their side as possible. I’d rather let the jury have the full information, the reasons its not used, and then trust they’ll use their judgement correctly, just as we do now
Cross examination only examines what is presented, not what isn’t. In your example, the judge would tell the jury that just because someone asks the question in a skewed way doesn’t mean it happened, and such questions are irrelevent
So what if they do? They’re not any more likely to be biased for one side or the other
Its impossible to have no preconceptions due to every human’s inherent bias. And I disagree that asking questions turns them into advocates.
And that is why I think law schools are taught erroneously with a focus on winning your side rather than the truth
The way I see it, you should always ask. If you knew, then you can try to get him off or sabotage the case.
What justice is there for a lawyer to not know whether the person he’s defending is guilty or not? Are we supposed to consider it somehow honorable for a guilty man to get off? Fuck that, the guilty should be punished for the crimes they committ. Anything less is an affront to justice
And even if that leads to less people confessing, well, that’s sort of where we’re at now right? With no lawyers asking that question? So either things will stay the same or there will be some small trickle into moving towards the
That’s a weird case to make your example on. As I recall, all 4 officers were acquitted. After the riots, there was a retrial, making this the most famous case of mob rule in recent memory. I disagree with the verdict in the first case. However, I do not think that a retrial based on a riot is fair. However, a semi-correct verdict was eventually rendered, so I’m content
You paint a bad picture of what a jury can find. I don’t dispute that can happen. But I wouldn’t personally care because knowing someone has prior drug offenses is no indication that he would be behaving violently. But that’s irrelevent to me in this example. I saw the video. That is what I would be basing 99% of my decision on. King was not violent in that and the brutality was excessive.
I chose that case precisely because of two things you yourself say: 1)
What makes you think that everyone thinks the same way you think? It seems to me that those who advocate an overactive jury just assume that everyone is going to be as judicious as themselves
How often do we actually have a video? If those jurors in Simi Valley could acquit despite seeing the video, imagine if there hadn’t been one at all. Those jurors (and, as some would say, Simi Valley being the kind of place it is)–were all too ready to believe that King must have been doing something wrong to acquit. Do you think that–given an iPhone and wifi–they would have gone in search of information to the contrary? People seek whatever particular “truth” that they want to believe.
Okay, I’ve just read all 134 posts in this thread, and waffled a bit on whether to even weigh in here, but I think there’s a point that hasn’t been explicitly made yet.
It’s all well and good to debate about the pros and cons of the current U.S. legal system. In fact, it’s more than well and good; it’s healthy, even necessary to do so.
With this in mind, YogSosoth, if you were simply arguing in this thread that jurors *should be allowed *to use outside sources to help make their decisions, I’d have no problem with that. I’d disagree with you, but I’d respect your argument as a valid point of view.
But with your statements such as:
…you are crossing a line into saying that you would knowingly and willfully disregard a judge’s instructions, swear an oath which you had no intention of upholding, and engage in actions that themselves could be considered criminal. I can’t be the only person here who finds this disturbing.
And furthermore, by your own logic, if you did commit these illegal activities, by definition you would be guilty on the spot, and if prosecuted you would have no problem with the jury at your trial using the same illegal methods to convince themselves of it. Talk about a vicious circle.
We’re talking about bringing in external evidence here. In the jury room I suppose a juror could send a message to the judge with a question. I doubt he’d get a response, except perhaps on matters of law. But there is nothing wrong with it.
it is the job of a prosecutor to make a complete and logical case. If the prosecutor’s case has big holes in it, then vote to acquit. That is the default. The questions should be vital, not what trivial, of course.
What either side wants is not at issue - the judge makes the final decision. Does the average jury member really know what evidence is relevant and which is not? Is he able to keep evidence he finds from prejudicing his decision? If I were on trial in the middle of Alabama, Og forbid, and jurors investigated my posting history and found out I was a devout atheist, do you think that perhaps some of them would assume me guilty?
We might just as well do away with search warrants, since if the cops broke into a house without a warrant, found something, and made sure the press knew, we wouldn’t be able to keep that illegally obtained evidence out of the trial. You might think that is fine, until they break into your house without cause.
You don’t realize how long a short trial can be. 
In any case, you don’t know that something isn’t going to be covered until you are done with the arguments, do you?
Plus it is unfair. The unemployed juror will have more time after court to search than the juror who is going to try to do a day’s work also.
First, I’d suspect most cases don’t even show up. If the case I was on had, I’d be very surprised. Even the rape/murder case I didn’t get picked for had very little about it on the net. Second, as we all know, what people say about things has very little relevance to anything. Pick your favorite biased political site as an example. What if the discussion died down before a discovery refuting the opinions of most was unearthed?
The evidence a juror comes up with might well look damning or redeeming, and might set his or her mind in a direction. Once set, it is hard to move back to the neutral position. If someone comes up with a piece of evidence that seems damning, and is told that it is junk, do you think the average person is going to thank the lawyer for being proved wrong in front of his peers? And, as I mentioned, some evidence is excluded for constitutional reasons.
You are free to judge the relevance of a piece of evidence which has been introduced. We’re talking about evidence from outside. Either neither attorney thought it relevant or one attorney did and the judge thought it inadmissible.
The story of a case is important - both of them. Jurors don’t take notes, and no one wants to read the whole damn transcript before voting. Irrelevant evidence and questions by jurors is going to disrupt this. How would Alice’s Restaurant work if some clown shouted, during the song, “Hey Arlo, what did you have for breakfast,” or “Hey Arlo, did Officer Opie wear glasses?”
The jury room issue is from the case where one juror investigates without telling the others. Rules of evidence are based on hundreds of years of case law and debate by highly trained legal minds, with lots of experience. I don’t think Joe the Juror can do better. This seems a classic case of over-estimating one’s abilities, on the order of “I can write as well as Stephen King” or “I can act as well as Meryl Streep” or “I can be governor of California because I’m rich.”
Presenting one point of view is not tricking, especially when you have an opposing point of view right there, and a judge to keep things honest. The big thing you are missing is that we don’t know who is guilty or innocent until after the trial. We don’t know for certain even then, of course, but we have a much better idea.
Now you are proposing upending our entire legal system. We have innocent until proven guilty for a very good reason. It is not almost as bad. The state, with lots of resources, needs to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If you let the state convict a few guilty people despite screwing up the case, before you know it you will be convicting lots of innocent people also.
If there is irrefutable evidence, the defense can plea bargain or plead guilty, and make a deal for less time for saving the people time and effort. There seem to be a lot of guilty pleas in the latest insider trading case, I suppose because the evidence was so good. But if the evidence is truly irrefutable, and the case goes to trial, the jury will convict.
Crime happened with no witnesses, and little physical evidence. Guy confesses. How do you investigate again? If the confession matches unreleased evidence, that is another story. But then the defense might not know it, not before discovery.
I don’t expect that, though I would do whatever it takes to try an educate the jurors more. Given that some people would take a look at the age, race, weight, sex, etc. of the defendant and make a prejudiced decision based on that, you’d get the exact same thing as you’d do now, only right now, there is no judge or lawyer explaining why something is irrelevent.
Some people might think prior drug offenses are a red flag to future violence. They should be told its not, and why we cannot count it against the defendant. How is that different from lawyers trying to stack the jury with women, or a specific race, or religion in order to appeal to their sympathies?
My whole rant has been about that. Acknowledge that times are different nowadays and address the information overload juries face. Don’t pretend it doesn’t exist or yell at them like children to not look things up. That will not work
They wouldn’t have found any. Sure it may be easy, and I don’t think the Rodney King jury was sequestered, but someone could have doctored up some video of King on a violent rampage. But that didn’t happen and it would be too easy for a profession police forensics video analyst to disprove. And, I’m guessing, even the defense would not be too fond of using purposefully doctored video.
Let the jury search for additional video. We look at the 2nd King verdict as something more correct than the first (at least, I haven’t heard anyone say that all 4 officers should have been acquitted), so I don’t believe more information would have made any difference. I think you are afraid of a problem that wouldn’t happen
First, I don’t really hold any intrinsic respect for oaths. I’m required to say it, so I will. It’s just words. I carry myself, as I’m sure most people do, based on my own moral code. That code tells me if I feel something is unethical, I’m not obligated to obey it. I may do it just for the sake of looks, but its not something I feel a great deal of agony breaking.
That shouldn’t be disturbing at all. Not to Godwin the thread, but some people in history might have been better off if people had ignored evil laws and just followed a more ethical moral code.
Now I’m not saying we should all do this, or that even obeying one bad law makes you unethical. But in this case the law is outdated, heavily skewed towards ignorance, and unjust. And it wouldn’t take much to break it. So I will.
Yes, I would be guilty. I wouldn’t be immoral though, by my own judgement, and I would fight any prosecution of me. But I have no problems with saying that my actions are criminal. I should like to think that if prosecuted, I would make a case to the jury for nullification. Ignore the law as it is written and judge whether or not I did something immoral. If I’m convicted, fine, if not, that proves my point is at least shared
If during jury selection you said that you felt ethically bound to do independent research, and back it up as you’ve done here when quizzed by the judge, you’d be excused. That would be the ethical thing to do. One guy in a case I was up for said that he did not believe that the power structure could create a fair trial. The judge was skeptical, but the guy eloquently defended this position and was excused, with the judge thanking him for his candor.
Information can be used for good or ill, I understand that. Why skew towards ill? What if you were really guilty but had a good lawyer and were due to be acquitted until the jurorer, filled with fundamentalists, found out you were atheist and voted for guilt? I wouldn’t like how they did that, but if the decision is correct in the end, I really don’t care what reasoning they used to arrive at the conclusion
Well I did say the checks on that power would be that anyone wrongfully searched would be entitled to massive payouts. Sort of like now, some people are being released due to DNA evidence exonerating them for crimes they were convicted of decades ago. Each one of these people should be entitled to millions of tax free reparations, enough to make up for the time spent in jail. Lawyers wouldn’t even be able to argue against that reparation, the check would be automatically sent upon the person’s conviction being overturned, to prevent lawyers from muddling up deserved compensation
As the juror, they can raise up the issue any time during the arguments without waiting for it to be done. It would be put into a queue to make certain that the points will be addressed. If it’s something that was going to be addressed anyway, it hurts no one. If not, it helps the flow of free information
As to your second point, what’s unfair about that? Unemployed or people with a lot of free time doesn’t skew towards on side or another. I don’t see that as any more of a problem (actually its much much less of a problem) than rich defendants being able to afford a lot of expensive lawyers and experts.
For example, taking your above example of Voyager the Atheist being on trial in Alabama. Suppose a juror discovers you’re atheist. In a written note to the judge, it would be requested that the issue of the defendant’s religious views be addressed. The judge can then turn to the jury and explain that while some people may want to attribute characteristics to a person based on their religious background, in the case before them, your religious views are not on trial here and should not be a factor. That is the reason why both sides have thus far failed to bring it up. By addressing it, the judge makes sure that the jury knows this isn’t a religious trial, and would be improper to judge your guilt or innocent based on that.
After that, it’s in the jury’s hands
The fact that laws are constantly in flux and, obviously made by imperfect beings, means that today’s law may not be as great as yesterday’s, or greater, but still less perfect that the future’s, or more perfect. I’m somewhat swayed by the appeal to authority, but I’m not saying we should reinvent the wheel. Small changes happen all the time, and I’m not telling you that our system of law should be replaced by robots or a council of alphas. I am simply addressing the antiquated notion that jurors must be forced into a bubble of ignorance, dining only on the facts the lawyers serve, and reach a verdict without sampling anything outside of the menu. It is a natural progression towards more information based on the increasingly difficult nature of suppressing outside information in a society where more and more people carry the equivalent of an encyclopedia in their pockets.
Some people already know that if you do X crime, you’re mandated to do X time. There was another thread recently asking whether you would want to know, before reaching a verdict, what, if any, mandatory sentences there are for the crime you’re going to judge. I’m betting some people already know that by heart. Most don’t. What I want is to bring everybody up to the same level, let them have all that information
You worry about a lone juror accidently fudging up the deliberations with unnecessary outside information. You spend a lot of time with such scenarios where one guy googling one thing can lead to a mistrial or an erroneous verdict. But what if a juror already has that information? You don’t worry about him. What I want to do is to make everyone have that information, then tell them why they should or shouldn’t use it. That levels the playing field
It is tricking if both sides are not trying to get at the truth, but skew the verdict favorably towards their side. Both sides should try to go for the truth, and if they get a happy coincidence that the case falls in their favor, so much the better
We are asking lawyers right now to ignore what’s right and only think about their side, and assume only their side is correct, and to strive for it with as much zeal as they can muster. If you can ask lawyers to be purposefully biased, then you can ask them to be purposefully fair. Both sides need to find what the truth is, not find for their side, and that means not allowing perfectly good evidence to be excluded on technicalities, or excluding evidence they can get away with excluding that might present a more fair view
I’m doing nothing of the sort. I simply want to know why you are not as invested when a guilty man gets acquitted. That bothers me, doesn’t it bother you too?
And I’m not “letting” the state convict anyone. I just want to know why a different type of injustice doesn’t make you more passionate
How do they normally deal with that? It’s doesn’t require a leap of faith
[nitpick]
What weapon? IIRC (and I do) no weapon was ever found at the crime scene and the only “knife” presented at trial (IDNR if it was in fact entered as evidence) was a receipt for a knife that could have made wounds consistent with the wounds in the victims.
Even if either the actual murder was recovered at the crime scene or the knife the receipt was for was found in Simpson’s possession, without trace evidence (the victims fingerprints, blood, flesh, or hair. I.E. unique trace evidence) the obsolete most that a forensic expert can say is “This knife is consistent with the wounds found in the victim.”
And the defense would jump all over that testimony;
“Could a knife, with a blade with the same general dimensions of of the knife in question, create similar if not identical wounds?”
“Yes.”
“Can you state with absolute certainty that this knife caused the victims wounds?”
“No.”
CMC fnord!
This thread really makes me sad. We’ve got plenty of lawyers and this could be used as a teaching moment about the whys of excluding evidence in a criminal trial; relevance, hearsay, prejudicial, opinion, ect.
We could have links to rules of evidence, like this.
Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 . . . but only when we really feel like it. 