If you sit down with a checklist of all the logical fallacies and check them off as you hear them used in argument, you can fill the page within the first 15 minutes of Jerry Springer. While a juror must, in the end, go with his/her gut feel, you have to hope that at least he/she is weighing the correct argument. Would you support a law that required jurors to pass a basic logic test and, upon failure, offer a short home study course to allow them to pass and participate? We often test the mental competency of the defendants, why not the people who will sit in judgement?
Because even idiots are entitled to a jury of their peers.
No. Anyway, I doubt a ‘short home course’ is going to correct a deficit of that magnitude.
Potential jurors are ‘tested’ by lawyers who then select or reject them based on various criteria - not just logical ability.
The “testing” of jurors has nothing to do with ability to reason, the attorney is only looking for signs of empathy for or against the case.
However, if I am a white middle aged male computer programmer (which I am not), than my peers are also computer programmers.
As well, the peers of police officers are not regular street people, either.
The whole concept of haing someone with no more legal knowledge than My Cousin Vinny, deciding the legal fate of someone is ludicrous. The jurors should at least have some understanding of the law and what it means specifically pertaining to the case at hand. So, yes, I battery of basic skills should be required, and even some legal education.
I’ve never been on jury duty, but don’t jurors receive law-specific instructions? As in: What laws are involved, what the possible verdicts on the various counts may be, etc…?
yes, it lasts all of about 1-5 minutes, and many times, this leads to very confused jurors who obviously disregard the laws and vote contrary to the instructions received.
That is exactly why the jurors do require some legal education prior to sitting on a jury.
That would be like telling a person, "that is a keyboard, push the little squares with the letters on them and they appear on that wierd looking TV in front of you. Now write me an accounting software program for an international multi-million dollar import / export corporation.
The difference is that human life or freedom is in question with the jury
Actually, when I’ve been on juries, the judge’s reading of the instructions takes about a half a day. Definitely not just 5 minutes.
Ed
Are you suggesting that a jury must be composed of members of the same occupation as the defendant? Or that they must at least be of the same socio-economic level? Or from the same neighborhood?
That’s a quaint definition of “peers.”
Another way to look at it is that a jury of peers was a direct rejection of an established class system, where nobility could sit in judgment of commoners. In the USA, we have (in theory) a one-class society. Therefore (again, in theory) everybody is a peer to everyone else.
FWIW, last time I served on a jury, the lawyers gave questionnaires to the pool on the day before selection. Occupation, favorite book – not an in-depth psych profile, but possibly enough to clue counsel in to who were the deeper thinkers.
But, as you said royjwood, the only thing that matters is empathy toward a client.
The problem with allowing lawyers to do the evaluation is that they aren’t necessarily looking for someone who can follow a logical argument. A particularly good rhetoritician would try to keep the dumb ones on the jury. If both lawyers think they have the rhetorical edge, then the jury will be filled with the least competent people available.
KidC, you ever been to court? I mean one with a jury?
The juries ARE filled with the least-competent people possible!
That’s the whole point to choosing a jury these days.
You want to pick the stupid ones, because they’re easier to convince of stuff.
The smart ones hear what they’re told about the case, and form opinions. Forming an opinion about the case is a good way to get yourself excluded from the jury pool by the lawer on the other side.
The denser ones don’t form any opinion at all, through the whole process. Then they just agree with whatever all the other jurors decide.
It’s time to re-tool The System, folks. The lawyers have figured it out.
Juries are mostly incompetent. The last court case I saw, half the jury fell asleep. :rolleyes:
I’m surprised no one’s brought this up yet, but if people had to pass a test to be a jury member, don’t you think that some would fail to get out of jury duty? :dubious:
The other problem is in many countries, better-educated and therefore more professional/skilled people evade jury duty to avoid earnings loss. So it could probably be shown that the average jury education and IQ is less than the national average: ergo, they are not truly one’s “peers.” I would advocate a minimum IQ test and basic literacy test, because they should at least be able to understand the instructions they are given. But as monica points out, it might get abused by deliberate failers.
One of my pohilosophy professors was excluded in jury selection by the defense lawyer. Later, he met the lawyer in the bathroom and asked why he was excluded. The lawyer told him that he excludes everyone who commonly reads at greater than a high school level; my professor had stated on the questionnaire that he regularly reads the Journal of Philosophy. When asked to explain that, the lawyer said that people like my professor tend not to listen to the lawyer’s arguments, instead trying to figure it out on their own and coming to really bizarre conclusions.
For those slagging juries, one thing that changed my mind was hearing a statistic on an episode of A&E’s American Justice: namely, that judges agree with jury verdicts 80% of the time, and don’t disagree enough to set aside a verdict 95% of the time. In other words, in almost every jury trial, the judge agrees with the jury or only minimally disagrees, so faulting the jury for lack of intelligence or reasoning skills is no guarantee of a different outcome.
In my experience as a juror (which must make me “incompetent” and “stupid” BTW), it was vital for me to use my intellect to ignore much of what the lawyers said – because they often asked leading questions that ultimately had no probative value.
Example: the lawyer would ask the witness, “If I told you the defendant beats his wife, would you believe me?” The defense attorney would properly object, and the judge would disallow the question. A stupid juror would be left with “the defendant beats his wife.” A smart juror would observe that nothing the lawyer says is of any value, only the testimony of the witnesses.
In short, the professor is bad news for lawyers not because he relies on his own intellect at the expense of the facts, but because he ignores their irrelevant statements.
Where “really bizarre” in this context means “rational and well thought-out”.