What’s wrong with CK Dexter being an administrator? He’s exactly right in this case. Juries are specifically chosen for their inability to think beyond evidence, for the ability to blindly follow the orders the judge gives them, and from what I’ve heard, sometimes for their lack of knowledge of how the court system works.
One thing, for example, (and not from this trial) that prosecutors will attempt to discover is whether or not a juror is educated about the judicial process enough to know that jury nullification is legal and that they do have the right to decide that an obviously guilty defendent (as in he did it) shouldn’t be convicted because either the prosecution didn’t make a good enough case or they feel the law on that area is flat out stupid.
What prosecutor wants to have someone on trial for possession of pot in his own house, not harming anyone, and a jury that knows full well they can say ‘Yeah, he did it, but so fucking what?’
Reasoning ability can also be a bad thing for either the prosecution or the defense, as the jury hears the arguments from both sides, the witness testimony, and realizes that maybe the prosecution is trying to string them along emotionally to punish somebody for the fact that a pretty brunette with a bun in the oven got killed, or that the defense is trying to string them along by muddying up the waters with confusing alibis and inconsistent statemtents between witnesses and have the jury put together that their defense or prosecution is swiss cheese.
Better to have them follow orders, on both sides, and not think too hard. Or better to have those who believe they must come up with a verdict, so when the vote is 11 to 1, the holdout caves because ‘there must be a unanimous verdict’.
Well, I think any juror that votes for a death penalty is an idiot.
Here’s some select juror quotes. . .
“. . .it didnt’ seem to faze him, so we HAD to kill him, right?”
WHAT? He showed no emotion at the verdict of him being declared guilty so you somehow use this to mean he must die? What does “no emotion” mean if he was innocent? What’s it mean if he was guilty? What did you expect him to do. . .fly into a rage promising to kill every last one of you? Break down weeping saying “i’m sorry. I’m sorry.” What the fuck is she talking about?
So, what’s the logical follow up to this last one?
“. . .ooooo, it just made me so mad, I had to kill him.”
All of these responses are the reason why we DON’T want to kill people. It’s revenge. He made them mad at him, so they wanted to kill him. That’s it. Nothing about why the death penalty should actually be applied. Just anger at the guy.
Fuckin’ idiots is right.
Don’t get me started on the people who stand around outside and cheer for this shit. Nothing more than bread-and-circus sickos, a very base element of society. Low form of humanity.
Hm. You know, that’s quite a good response you wrote there Trunk. Slightly hyperbolic, guessing the mindset of the jurors on the basis of one quote (shame on you!), but this section is really interesting. Previously, I would have said that the death penalty [in general] is a good thing, but between this post and Dex’s, I am reconsidering.
Of course, I think that it’s still a good idea, but until we can get retards like these out of the jury box, it should be banned. I think your findings could be used as strong evidence for a retrial.
Furthermore, it doesn’t appear that these jurors are mad, but they’re self-righteous. They’re in a position where they’ve got life-and-death control over someone and damned if the little puppet guy didn’t do the dance they wanted. Thus, they can exert what they believe to be their will, give the mom and kid (and family, let’s not forget the family) the justice they deserve, happily say that justice is done and at the appropriate time feel bad for sending a man to the chair (or wherever) but steel themselves knowing that “justice had to be served.”*
Good post, is all.
Did I just chastise **Trunk ** for extrapolating based on isolated evidence and then do it myself? Ugh.
There was some rather attractive young professional woman on CourtTV last night just bursting at the seems, gushing over how happy she was that Peterson got death and that “we did the right thing” (I’m pretty sure she used “we”, but I’m also sure she wasn’t a juror. I don’t know who she was.)
I was waiting for her to starting jumping up and down screaming “WE WON! WE WON!” It was sick.
I am all in favor of the death penalty, but goddamn, we have to be 110 % sure he did it. And while we may have proved it beyond all reasonable doubt, it does stand there is that small chance, yes? No one saw him do it. We don’t have a videotape of him doing it.
I realize this limits the death penalty to a very few cases, and also to crimes of passion which aren’t first-degree and couldn’t be death penalty-worthy anyway, but come on. Better to be sure, right?
That way you could totally limit the appeals. I mean, if we are so sure they did it, right?
Just my two cents, and probably not very shiny ones at that.
I hate to point out your stupidity, but he does only get one mandatory appeal. If found guilty by one jury and the decision is upheld by the state supreme on appeal, then you are sentenced to die. But there are other remedies that cannot be taken away from the convicted without completely infringing on their rights as American Citizens.
Mistakes are made, evidence omitted or tampered with, people make shady deals for testimony, Etc. Sometimes this stuff doesn’t come to light for years, and the Defense has a right to investigate and file motions with the court.
Would you honestly take the due process away from someone who is sentenced to die? If so, American freedoms are truly alien to you. Shari’a justice is more your thing than American justice.
Bravo, Trunk! I agree 100% Sensationalism has taken hold and not one person from their reactions and the evidence presented on my nightly news, to me, has acted objectively.
You know some people are just not into public displays of emotion. I’m certainly not. My wife and I seperated this year. Last night, we sat down and divided up the Christmas decorations. This sucked ass. However I did not show emotion during it. I put on my brave face and got through it. I would probably act the same way Mr. Peterson did in his situation and I would probably be facing a death sentence now because of it.
First OJ, where a jury got talked out of accepting irrefutable DNA evidence and now Scott Peterson where a jury seems to be swayed by the demeanour of the defendant for conviction. Couple that with the Texas error rate that Muffin has pointed out earlier can only suggest to me that the jury system is bunkrupt of credibility.
I just wonder how much money and time would be saved if justice was determined by tribunals of appointed judges (with written judgements) rather than a 12 person jury.
I haven’t followed the case other than I watch CNN in the morning and they bludgeon me with Peterson. Try as I might to ignore it, it is always there in the background.
I’m very surprised a white jury sentenced a white man with an expensive (if at times not very competent, it seems) lawyer to death in the state of California. There is no doubt in my mind that if this case wasn’t a media circus, with blathering idiots on every channel opining about subjects in which they were clueless, Scott Peterson might not even have been convicted, let alone get a death penalty. He should send a Thank-You card to CNN.
I am not against a death penalty for moral reasons. I am against the way the death penalty, in states which have it, is applied. I am against the number of mistaken convictions of men sentenced to death. When we have a system that treats every defendant equally, and is 100% foolproof in convictions, then I will back a death penalty.
All of you do realize that what the jury came back with was simply a recomendation, right? The actual sentance will be passed in February, and the judge has free reign NOT to impose the death penalty if he feels it inapropriate, no matter what the jury said yesterday. If the judge comes back with the same thing, are you going to label him stupid, or uneducated, or emotional or whatever else y’all are saying about the jury today?
Well, if you have a cite, let’s see it. Otherwise I’ll let you off the hook and chalk it up to you not ever being picked for a jury.
If a case is well publicized, obviously people will have formed an opinion. There’s no avoiding it, even if you’re among the stupidest people on earth. What the court wants to know is will the juror be able to set aside his or her opinion, and judge the case based solely on the evidence. Is setting aside one’s opinions, prejudices, conjectures, and WAGs and considering only the evidence a mark of world-class stupidity?
Or are they specifically chosen for their ability to think beyond their preconceptions and prejudices and consider only the evidence? That’s more the hallmark of an open mind than of drooling stupidity, IMO.
You mean apply the law as specified by the judge to the evidence presented in the case? Why is this a hallmark of stupidity?
This is all explained during voir dire and the judge’s instructions to the jury. What aspect of the court system are you referring to?
Maybe.
Nothing stupid about that. Those are the rules. Just about everything in a trial is proscribed by law. Does that make everybody participating in a trial stupid?
This morning on CBS they interviewed a juror who was so emotionally devastated by participating in the trial he could barely speak; during the interview his voice cracked several times and he broke into tears when he talked about how much he’d wanted to tell his son he loved him, how all he wanted to do was hold his wife, etc. I could relate much more to this guy than that female juror with the red hair who seemed filled with self-conscious righteous indignation, or the people gathered outside the courthouse cheering when the recommendation was made public.
Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but Geragos did advise Peterson to remain stoic and unemotional throughout the trial, didn’t he? I seem to remember hearing or reading that before I succumbed to total media overload. Based on the reaction of the jury–their interpretation of Peterson’s silence as sociopathic or unremorseful–was this a serious misstep for Geragos?
I’m not sure the relevance of this figure. It says that 35% of all death sentences are reversed upon appeal. So what? Appeal is part of the process. I’d be much more alarmed if 0% of Texas death penalty convictions were reversed during appeals. That 35% is(presumably) the system weeding out those unjustly sentenced to death. It’s a sign of the system working, not a condemnation of it.
It means that of 100 people sentenced to die in Texas, at least 35% should not have been sentenced to die. That’s one hell of an error rate for such a serious punishment. Fundamental justice should not depend so heavily on errors being caught in appeal. If appellant courts only found occasional major errors, that would be one thing, but to find major errors over a third of the time is quite another.
What I meant is, they have to think not only of the evidence presented but whether or not it actually fits together to prove the prosecution’s case. A prosecutor doesn’t want a jury that’s going to see that there are a lot of puzzle pieces presented, but they come from different puzzles and don’t create a cohesive image, especially if the case isn’t all that strong.
A defense attorney would want someone to be able to see that although the prosecution presented tons of pictures and circumstances and witnesses, those things do not create a clear, cohesive picture of guilt. They don’t want someone who will blindly believe that because the prosecutor has a mountain of evidence that a crime happened, the defendant must have been the person who did it. Someone who will see any ‘smoke and mirrors’ presented by the prosecution.
So, the way the system is set up, it catches errors, but you’re angry because it doesn’t catch them at the right place? Seems like a pointless nitpick to me.
Some of the things that cause death penalty cases to be overturned are not necessarily errors. What percentage of these overturned cases rely on scientific testing (such as DNA) that was not available at the time of the original conviction?
Which is part of the reason I don’t think trial juries should decide the punishment in DP cases. At the end of the process, they are so irrational and emotionalized as a bonded group that they can no longer think straight or deliberate properly. Every time I’ve served on a jury the mere fact of finding someone guilty was traumatic enough on the group that having to go into another whole phase would be exactly the disaster that it often is. I am a strong believer in the jury system (though I think it’s too often described in hushed tones and imbued with an almost mythical power, when really it’s more of a “best of worst, which is all we have available” solution rather than a perfect system)
The fact that “he showed no emotion” was a major part of their reasoning is asinine. If he was showed lots of emotion, they could have cited this as his instability. And juries are well-known for looking at full-on tearful remorse and handing down sentances of death regardless, so what’s the point? They are just trying to make themselves feel better. What his emotions are now, sincere, faked, or otherwise, make no difference at all as to whether he should remain alive (given that his life lasts a lot longer than this trial or this sentance).