Ok, sorry to resurrect this thread, but Teacher read this. He says that he doesn’t remember calling you guys idiots, but he apologizes if he did and he didn’t mean it. He says also that I read too much into things, the class is to the average student, it’s a non-honors class, the “Garth takes Dr. Dre to court” was just for entertainment purposes, and we’ve concentrated on the wrong part of the question, we should just focus on the description of the jury, like Flash said.
I still disagree with him, as I disagreed with Flash, but it’s his test so I’d best try to think like him in the context of this class. I’m also not disliking the class as much, now that I’ve started ignoring the 6th and 7th Amendment issue. It’s a new chapter, might as well leave the old one behind.
And, Billdo, thanks for linking to www.findlaw.com . I’m finding it a very nifty site.
There is absolutely no justification for the argument that it’s acceptable for an “average” layperson to hold an incorrect and clearly counterfactual belief of how stuff like this works. Indeed, in my opinion, it’s more important for us non-lawyers to have a general handle on the fundamentals of the law, non-doctors to understand the way medicine is supposed to work, non-scientists to grasp the scientific method, and so on, in order that we as voters and free people can make informed decisions about our government’s priorities and the management of our own lives. Clearly this instructor sees no problem with sending his students into the world with the wholly mistaken idea that they can initiate and pursue a criminal proceeding. I, for one, am appalled.
But perhaps this is straying into Great Debates territory…
For my part, I appreciate the apology, and the fact that he was eventually willing to come attempt to educate himself. As to the fact that we were focusing on the “wrong” aspect of the question, it is certainly true that we were focusing on an aspect other than the one he wanted to draw attention to, but that is simply due to the fact that, as (poorly) written, the controlling facts are not the ones he wanted to highlight, but are in actuality the others that he threw in there for flavor. I understand that this was an unintended consequence, but regardless of his oversight, your answer was correct and his was wrong on the facts as given.