My sister used to work with the legal system and fraud. She said that most people involved in law know that if you are guilty you’d want a jury (more likely to get off) and if you are innocent, you’d want a judge only (more likely to be found innocent).
I’m glad you brought this up. I, for one, am not willing to assume this.
The racism may well be on the friends part, and this friend may have misunderstood or misrepresented what happened in deliberations. All things being equal, this is a more likely explanation than anything else.
I’m a bit confused on this.
Did the black woman get a ticket from the police? My understanding has been that the person doing the rear ending is pretty much by default at fault (you are supposed to leave enough room to stop and not hit the person in front of you even if they slam on the brakes for no apparent reason).
I am puzzled how anyone could find the person in this case who did the rear ending not at fault.
Can’t a judge set aside the verdict if he/she thinks the jurors clearly did not do their job?
Anecdotal evidence means evidence IN THE ANECDOTE. I think we’re all agreed that none of us knows what happened in the actual court case, and I certainly don’t claim to be privy to facts that even the OP doesn’t know. I was analyzing the story given in the OP, not the event that inspired it.
There’s the little matter of evidence as well as the percentages isn’t there? What amazed my friend was that according to the evidence , being rear ended at high speed and several doctors testimony about the white ladies injuries, it seemed painfully obvious that the black lady was at fault. It’s not like it was a close call and the blacks sided with the black person and the whites with the white person.
They denied that rear ending someone at high speed made the black driver at fault and denied the ample evidence of the white ladies injuries in order to justify their decision that the injured party get $0. Not less, not little, $0. The injured ladies attorney said
“I’m not asking for $2,000,000. I’m asking you to come up with an amount you think is fair.”
What they decided was fair didn’t even cover her medical bills and didn’t address at all the fact that she could no longer work and would suffer daily discomfort. That’s what seemed fair to them??? Your percentages are irrelevant.
My friend mentioned that in jury deliberation. They said “Oh no, that law has changed. It isn’t necessarily her fault just because she rear ended somebody at high speed”
I always thought that rear ending someone almost always puts you at fault but I don’t know if it’s a law. In this case lots of cars made safe stops in a traffic jam and one lady didn’t. I have no idea what she was doing but it’s not like she slammed on the brakes and they had a fender bender. Both cars were totaled and the driver in the front car was taken to the emergency room.
Can you explain exactly why the story I repeated from one of the jurors hours after the decision is of “doubtful provenance”
He had his notes from the trial with him when he told me the story.
O realize that’s not proof but I’ve made no attempt to try and prove anything. I’m just repeating a story as told to me and we’re discussing it. Do you have any reason to believe there wasn’t any prejudice involved?
btw, Since I’m repeating what a juror told me wouldn’t that make it a second hand anecdote rather than third hand.
and weren’t we
for the sake of discussion? Do we know for sure exactly what happened and exactly what all the facts are. Nope. and BFD
That’s what dumbfounded my friend as well. How can you reasonably suggest she’s not at fault?
I asked about that. He said they would probably appeal. Remember, in this type of case it’s not a guilty or not guilty verdict. They did award her something. The injustice is that the dollar amount is pretty unreasonable considering the damage done.
I have seen no evidence. What I have read is a third hand account of a trial, by a juror who probably was breaking a confidentiality oath, through a total stranger whose probity is undetermined. I don’t give a rat’s ass for what evidence your friend saw, or for what his cousin saw, or for what your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate saw. There’s not a state in the Union in which any of that can be defined as evidence. If you want me to impugn the integrity of the (I’m assuming) seven out of twelve jurors who found the case unfounded, you’ll have to pull something out besides attitude.
What the fuck are you talking about? So insulting my friend makes for a **more likely **explanation than anything else? What’s you’re fucked up reasoning for that conclusion?
I realize you don’t know me or my friend so you have no reason to accept what I said without question. You also have no fucking reason I can see to assume it’s more likely that my friend is the racist. What’s your problem?
FTR, I would never represent any story here to be true that I didn’t have very good reason to believe was true. I’ve known this guy for years and he is a very honest decent person who would have no reason I’m aware of to just misrepresent what happened out of racism. If I thought his info was very sketchy or knew him to be prone to exageration I would never have posted the story at all.
I realize it’s one jurors story and don’t present it as 100% accurate or flawless , but based on what I know of him and the fact he had just left the court house hours before and still had his notes with him, I thought it was interesting enough to post and discuss.
It sounds like he was talking about the case after the verdict was in. Which is perfectly legal, as long as he didn’t divulge the names of the jurors or the people involved. Right?
Obviously we weren’t there and didn’t see all the evidence presented, but it’s not unreasonable to suppose racism was a motivating factor. We don’t know, but it seems logical enough.
Again, please enlighten me about a story told to me BY A JUROR, who had just left a trial THAT WAS OVER is a third hand account. That seems second hand to me but perhaps I’m mistaken.
I didn’t represent anything as legal hard evidence did I? Try to keep your snark relevant. It’s more effective that way. As** Dr Drake** kindly pointed out to you
I’m not asking you to impugn anything and I don’t give a flying fuck if you find the story credible or not. I posted it here to discuss as is, an anecdotal story.
As in “if this is what happened then what do you think?” If you don’t want to discuss it under those terms then kindly piss off.
No, probably not.
Jurors are bound by confidentiality oaths during jury deliberation, and until their ruling is presented in court. But after the case is over, those oaths no longer apply. (Except that a Judge can order them extended. But this is very rare, and the Judge has to have good reason to do so.)
It’s fairly common nowdays to see jurors in high-profile cases being interviewed on TV after the case is over.
One much wiser than I once raised and answered a similar question like this:
I was researching something the other day for another one of these dang threads, and in Minnesota at least it is not *always * the rear-ending driver’s fault. I realize we are not talking about Minnesota, but when I was growing up in Minnesota I was told “yes, always rear-ending driver’s fault” and apparently it is not, or is no longer, true there. So to the extent we are basing our opinions on that being a hard and fast rule, apparently it isn’t.
I can see there being exceptions, maybe based on some other hazard to the vehicle that rear ends the other one. I don’t see any evidence of that here, but maybe the jury did.
Also, was the black driver uninsured? Did the white driver have uninsured motorist coverage? Where was insurance in all of this? Did the standard have to go beyond “at fault” to “negligent” for the white driver to be entitled to damages? Because if it is just “at fault,” none of us could really afford to put a professional athlete out of work for even one season. Even if the fault was 50/50 in the accident, our portion would still bankrupt us.
I don’t know what the law is here but I could understand that the person might not be at fault under severe weather conditions or some other unexpected unforeseeable circumstance. What if you gave yourself time and space to brake safely but at a crucial moment your brakes failed. I don’t think a person could be expected to predict that.
In this case I didn’t get that impression. It seemed like she just wasn’t paying attention. Should have and could have braked in time but just didn’t. It was an accident to be sure but an accident that really hurt someone.
I don’t know about the insurance. I wondered too. Next time he comes in I’ll ask.
See, people are just dumb. Can someone please explain to me the purpose for the whole rule against outside research? Would it be unreasonable for someone to go home, putz around online, and come back knowing the truth about the law and rear-end liability to share with their fellow jurors?
I suspect there is a good reason for this, and I long to have it explained in a way that will make me say, ‘‘Oh. I suppose that law has its drawbacks (such as in this case), but really it is better than the alternative.’’ What is that alternative?
If I were ever on trial for something, I’d want a judge, not a jury–someone who knows the law. I learned from sitting as a juror that some people are just fucking idiots that will totally ignore the law or facts in a case for the sake of their own stupid opinions. I do not see how that can reasonably be called justice.
Also interesting.
I understand the feeling of “we’ve been wronged so often” Very human and in the case of minorities it’s often true. I happen to believe in Karma or something like it , still, at some point humans have to stand up for human rights rather than maintain the gulf under the guise of payback.
When I served on a jury we were instructed by the judge, in great detail as I recall, regarding the law involved in the case. As it turned out, at one point during our deliberations this became relevant, as several of the jurors kept trying to decide the case based on their understanding of the law, which contradicted what we were told by the judge. This led to some spirited discussion, which I ended up having to referee because they had selected me as foreman.
It is the judge’s job to explain the law as it applies to the case to the jury. If, as was reported by cosmodan’s friend, some of the jurors were claiming that the law “was changed” so that the driver who rear-ended the other was not at fault, and were using that as a reason for not requiring her to pay any damages, then the judge should have been asked to clarify the law on this point.
Ladies and gentlemen, watch my hands.
First-hand account can be told by a participant in an event. Second-hand account can be told by a direct witness to an event. Third-hand account is that told by a direct witness to a non-party, and fourth-hand is the relay of that story to others – i.e., the OP. The “facts” we are given are literally a fourth-hand account of a small-time civil trial whose original sources are at this point inaccessible. But the thrust of the OP isn’t dependent upon a mere four steps between reality and desired conclusion: it relies upon the further unproven assumptions that (1) racism existed in a majority of the jurors, and (2) that such racism overcame the second-hand facts the jury heard and determined its verdict. Not even the third-hand account as originally reported supports the OP’s conclusion.
If cosmosdan is honestly certain that juries in Tennessee vote along racial lines, his first step should be to reduce the percentage of white jurors, because they are way over-represented (see Rose v Mitchell). Moreover, surveys of jurors come up with the result that the jurors themselves sense a bias – against minorities.
Oh, well. There’s always someone who’ll rail against affirmative action, for example, because it treats different races differently. These guys are the folks who, after cheating at cards for several hours and winning 90% of the money on the table, and finally getting caught, pull out a brand-new deck and say, “Okay, boys, now, let’s play fair.”
Someone bet too much on litigation and not enough on insurance? Happens every day, and sympathy begins to flow. Someone blames a minority jury for the unfavorable outcome of what was a crapshoot process to begin with? Sympathy dries up quick.