6 ms·
Public Enemy: quotes from the Martin Shkreli jury selection process
- gizmo 9y agoHilarious, but if those people really wanted to see Shkreli convicted they would pretend to be impartial.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jessaustin 9y agoOf course, what they really want to do is not serve on a jury.
- pesch3 9y ago>>> juror no. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan. clearly the best reason to be biased
- Grazester 9y agoI read that and thought it was funny. The court nearly had to build its own jury of AI bots to have a fair trial for this guy.
- DeepRote 9y agoDisclaimer: I'm a huge fan of Shkreli. Great guy, excellent financial instincts, pharma wizard etc. I'm surprised he didn't get assassinated for some of that stuff with Wu-Tang, especially in NY. I know I've been waiting a new full-featured Wu-tang album for a LOOOONG time, and I know a lot of new yorkers were too. Multiply that anger by several million people and media deception, it shocks me that he's still around. The lesson I've learned about all this is the value in nobody knowing your name. Shkreli was fucked over HARD by the media, he's really just a cool guy playing the game, and they spin him as this terrible evil mastermind. He used to stream all the time, you couldn't watch him for more than five minutes before falling in love with him. He's a man of the people in the truest sense. More than anyone I've ever met. I hope he finds a way through all this.
- Grazester 9y agoThis should be a lesson for him. To random people on the internet fascinated by his trolling then he would appear cool. When you go in front of congress(in the real world) and act the same way you dont appear as charming.
- vim_wannabe 9y agoMy favorite congressional hearing has to be Tim Cook and Apple tax policy. It basically turned into an Apple promo with the help of him and the questioners.
- and0 9y agoI don't follow Shkreli closely but him sexually harassing journalist Lauren Duca (he still continues to do this: "when I'm acquitted, I'm going to fuck Lauren Duca") makes him very much not a "man of the people in the truest sense".
- DeepRote 9y agoWhat's not manly about that? I'd fuck Lauren too. Granted, I might not tweet it out quite like that, but yeah. You don't get to determine morality based off someone's speech, only off their actions. Until they actually fuck, it's that big of a deal. People that complain about mean things online were recently attacking people with dangerous weapons the other day. I have become suspicious of most people who want to gatekeep other people, it's usually a signal that they have no respect for the concept of personal property and human rights.
- corndoge 9y agoRegardless of Martin's guilt or innocence (prior to conviction) this is virtue signalling at it's finest.
- oracardo 9y agoVirtue signalling should be weakened by an anonymous jury.
- praptak 9y ago"It has become popular to describe certain behaviour as ‘virtue signalling’. [...] As popular as it is, it’s a stupid term that misuses the concepts it invokes, it encourages lazy thinking, and it’s hypocritical. The term signalling does not mean the same thing as 'saying' or 'showing off' when it is used by economists or biologists. Signalling means credibly giving information that is difficult to prove just by saying it. For example, banks used to have very grand buildings. Any bank could claim to be safe, but only a bank that had lots of money could afford a grand office." https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/stop-saying-virtue-signalling
- corndoge 9y ago"Guano (from Quechua "wani" via Spanish) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds, seals, or cave-dwelling bats.[1] As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium: nutrients essential for plant growth." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano In other words -- why do I give a shit what Adam Smith's opinion is?
- castis 9y agoIn the past year or two, it seems like this has become a favored way to easily dismiss someones moral opinion and is being appended to my list of things to help me disregard the opinion of the person calling out 'virtue signaling'.
- corndoge 9y ago
- chomp 9y agoI understand that Martin may not be popular to many people, but everyone deserves a fair trial, even those who are repugnant. I am glad that these people recognized that they were biased and spoke up, rather than taint the jury.
- MrZongle2 9y agoTrue honesty should always be commended, but I have to wonder: how many of those folks just wanted out of jury duty?
- ramy_d 9y agodefinitely this one: juror no. 52: When I walked in here today I looked at him, and in my head, that’s a snake — not knowing who he was. I just walked in and looked right at him and that’s a snake.
- refurb 9y agoHow many of these people just wanted to get out of jury duty. I did jury duty a couple years ago and it was entertaining how hard some people tried to appear impartial so they would be excused. Lawyer - "Do you think people have the right to self-defense?" Potential juror - "No. If someone shoots at you, it's murder if you shoot back."
- will_brown 9y agoIn Miami it's quite popular to hear jurors say, "judge I don't speak English" to get released when they obviously do.
- 15155 9y ago> Potential juror - "No. If someone shoots at you, it's murder if you shoot back." Never attribute to malice. This is an alarmingly common line of thinking, especially in more progressive areas. Some would prefer to take (what they believe to be) the moral high ground from the grave.
- archagon 9y agoYou know what? I find it distasteful how frequently this idea is mocked when it comes up in political conversation. Personally, I can't imagine ever shooting someone to kill, even in self-defense. In fact, "don't kill people" sits almost at the root of my value system, and I'm sure it's the same for many others.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI've had to use a shotgun to prevent a carjacker from taking someone's vehicle at gunpoint until the sheriff arrived. Don't kill people unless required. I don't want to kill someone, ever, if avoidable; but the world we live in leaves us no choice sometimes if someone has made a poor decision.
- archagon 9y agoI could bluff it but I don't think I'd pull the trigger.
- will_brown 9y agoI think this is so important and less reflective of either Shkreli or the legal system, rather it shines a bright light on how many people are struggling to afford both adequate healthcare/drug coverage and simple can't afford their own prescriptions and as a result do not/can not take them. It is a damn shame. It is also a damn shame people in this country have to be in court/under oath (potential jury members are during the selection process) to admit to these financial shortcomings, because such admissions of financial difficulty are social stigmas that almost anyone would try to avoid admitting (it's the same with millions who were in foreclosure during the Great Recession who would never admit it).
- popctrl 9y agoSo does the fact that so many people know about and despise Shkreli mean that the jury selection process will select for people who are less informed or don't reflect the values of the general population (Or just people who are willing to lie about their ability to be impartial)? Is there a term for this, or how is this accounted for in the process?
- jstanley 9y agoActually the people who hate Shkreli are almost universally under-informed. Listen to the man speak for 5 minutes, instead of listening to the media's portrayal of him, and you'll learn he's an intelligent guy doing no harm. Nobody was priced out of being able to get Daraprim. Only 2000 people take it. 70% of it was given away FREE to people who said they couldn't afford it. Insurance companies paid the increased price. Drug prices are a very small percentage of the costs insurance companies pay (most of it going towards doctors' fees IIRC). The extra profit was put into researching improvements on Daraprim, which was a 70 (?) year old drug. The only reason Shkreli's company even acquired the rights to Daraprim is because other companies couldn't make enough money on it to want to keep making it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 9y agoAnd the rest of the cost was covered by the magic money tree. By which I mean people that pay insurance premiums and taxes (which fund government provided coverage). Re your edit, drugs are 10% of US health spending: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-expenditures.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-expenditures.htm But if we want to significantly reduce spending overall, we are probably going to have to seize every opportunity, even the modest ones.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 9y ago
- Redoubts 9y agoOne should note that people come up with tons of crazy excuses for why they can't serve on a jury when they don't want to be there. Source: I was in jury selection for a simple possession trial that lasted two fulls days, and watched peoples excuses become more and more elaborate as the process wore on.
- ghaff 9y agoRight. And I assume that this [EDIT: was expected to be] a long, high profile trial that most people would really prefer to not be empaneled for. A while back I was called in for jury selection for a Grand Jury which would have involved something like 4 days a week for multiple months, i.e. completely awful from my perspective. The thing that surprised me in that case was that a fair number of people basically volunteered to be chosen--though many obviously did not. (The DA let them go through voir dire first before picking from people who were less inclined to do it.)
- jessaustin 9y agoAnyone surprised by this has never sat voir dire. No one on earth is as biased and judgmental as the yokels trying to get out of jury duty claim to be. Both times I've gone through this I was hoping the judge would start handing out contempt of court citations.
- cafard 9y agoIn Washington, DC, nobody but the judge and the lawyers gets to hear what the potential juror says. I suppose it would diminish the boredom of the voir dire, but when juror x gets sent back to the waiting room early or shuffled out of the box during the final cull, none of the other jurors have a clue what it is about.
- jstanley 9y agoIt's sad that a bunch of idiots acting like this get to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. In this case maybe he got lucky because they'd already heard of him and made their stupidity apparent straight away. But what if they hadn't? What if they only learnt about his drug pricing during the trial and then convicted him based on that?
- jessaustin 9y agoThat would have been an instant mistrial, since the charges had nothing to do with drug pricing.
- mcguire 9y agoAh, is this nonfiction?
- DeepRote 9y agoA lesson in what? Tyranny? Should I show congress respect because they think they have power over me? PC culture is approaching it's logical conclusion: the metamorphosis into fascism. Shkreli opposes it as much as most sane people do and just so happens to be successful. Neither he nor anybody else owes the govt or even the public respect just for existing. He has as much right to run his business as you have to make comments about industries you don't know jack shit about, or talk about govt structures you also don't know jack shit about. They are public servants that owe citizens everything, not lawless overlords that we have to be nice to.
- Grazester 9y agoIt's about exercising restraint even if you don't care for something. Anyone with an ounce of self preservation would have learnt to do into early adulthood. Now what did I comment on concerning the government or the industry that Shkreli represents that I didn't know about?
- sillysaurus3 9y agoPC culture is approaching it's logical conclusion: the metamorphosis into fascism. Aw, come on. Your points were thoughtful and cogent. Casually dropping the fascism card discredits your earlier rebuttal and takes the conversation into flamewar territory.
- DeepRote 9y agoOh jeez, earning your respect for my argument was the entire point! That it hurts to hear doesn't make it wrong. Edit: To twist the knife a bit, your comment could be paraphrased as "You're right, but you said a thing I don't like!" People who support PC culture beat the shit out of people with bats the other day, in case you missed that. People who support PC culture marched and chanted for dead police officers. People who support PC culture have called for violence against the President of the greatest country on earth simply for disagreeing with him. People who support PC culture have called a HOMICIDE case a political weapon. A man was KILLED, and they hand-wave it aside because it doesn't complement their message.
- cowsandmilk 9y agoMany comments seem to be unaware that the trial is now over. He was convicted on 3 of 8 charges[1]. I guess one could argue that an extremely biased jury would just have convicted him on everything. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/dealbook/martin-shkreli-guilty.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/dealbook/martin-...
- k__ 9y agoWhen will the US get rid of these juries? How can they seriously trust judicial decisions on random people?
- monochromatic 9y agoIt's like democracy: the worst system there is, except for all the others.
- k__ 9y agoWe don't have this system in Germany and it's clearly better.
- ghaff 9y agoProbably never? The jury system, especially for criminal trials, goes back a very long way in US/UK legal system (as well as many other ones).
- nailer 9y ago> I have several friends who have H.I.V. or AIDS who, again, can’t afford the prescription drugs that they were able to afford. Skreli's defense for this is that the costs are primarily borne by insurance providers. I have no idea about US healthcare which seems a bit of a quagmire, is this true?
- convery 9y agoAs an outsider, why are juries not "blindfolded"? As in, given a fake name, only the transcribed testimonies, and relevant evidence. It's just strange that the accuseds identity and (potential) reputation could influence the trial (positively or negatively).
- cardiffspaceman 9y agoI think your answer is that just reading the transcripts would not be as good as hearing and observing the testimony. The first thing that potential jurors are asked is if they know anyone in the courtroom, and this is in the presence of the judge, bailiffs, attorneys for both sides, defendant, and a few other people. If you answer that you do know someone, they ask if your knowledge of the person would prevent you from rendering an impartial verdict in the trial to come. The question of whether a potential juror knows a particular person comes up repeatedly. In the trial I served on, the attorneys also informed us of the sexual orientation of the defendant and asked if that would be a problem. The jury is allowed to form an opinion of the credibility of the statements of any of the players and use that to weigh anything said against anything else. But it will be from an opinion formed in the courtroom, not from a preexisting opinion, nor from internet research. BTW I never had to serve the USA in the military, so I weigh the inconvenience of six or seven days of jury service spread over three or four weeks against the fact that my life was not in danger.
- convery 9y agoAs an outsider, why is juries not "blindfolded"? As in, given a fake name, only the transcribed testimonies, and relevant evidence. It's just strange that the accuseds identity and (potential) reputation could influence the trial (positively or negatively).
- mmahemoff 9y agoIs this a story about what happens when potential jurors have access to Google prior to the interview? Shkreli is internet-meme famous and not exactly a national celebrity. I'd be surprised if so many people would recognise him by name without having an omniscient device in their pocket, let alone sneak in an obscure reference to his Wu-Tang Clan album. I guess people don't know what the case is when they're invited to selection, but nowadays they find out some minutes or hours before the actual interview?
- jaclaz 9y agoInteresting transcript, but I would be actually more curious to see the transcript of the questions (and answers given by them) asked to the jurors that were actually selected.
- petraeus 9y agoSmart enough to land himself in prison .. is an oxymoron?