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I was selected for jury duty on a DUI case. Interestingly, there was also a lawyer selected. After hearing the case we were all moved to a room to deliberate.

by todd8 7y ago

I was selected for jury duty on a DUI case. Interestingly, there was also a lawyer selected. After hearing the case we were all moved to a room to deliberate. After electing the lawyer as foreman, we proceeded with a preliminary vote on how we felt about the case presented. Only two people voted not-guilty, me and the lawyer. I discovered that the average person on a jury has a great deal of trouble with evidence. It was really quite troubling. For example, one person said “I’m a parent and so I vote guilty because I’m really against drunk driving.”, what sort of reasoning is that? In the end, we acquitted the defendant. She was arrested after pulling out of a bar’s parking lot (because she spun her tires on the gravel as she pulled onto the street ??). The arresting officer took her downtown to be tested. She passed the videoed sobriety test there (walking a triangle marked path backwards while counting or saying the alphabet, etc.) In the jury room we all found the test quite difficult when we tried it, she did it perfectly. She blew right on the line, .08 if I recall, but it was one hour after leaving the bar before she took the test. So her blood alcohol could have been higher or lower when she was arrested depending on the timing of her last drink. The lab tech was unable to describe the accuracy of the machine and clearly had a pat description of the subject taking the test that was designed to validate their guilt. Likewise the arresting officer wasn’t very believable and had his Mom in the car with him (?).

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
The devices can be good at determining if alcohol is in the blood. Maybe they aren't exact. But they can help keep drunk driving from being so dangerous. Of course a particular person may perform better when drunk. The law just sets a number (0.02? 0.08 would be dead drunk in any state in the US) which doesn't prove a person is impaired or not. It just lets lawyers argue.
- blunte 7y ago
  If the defendant had consumed the alcohol just before leaving the bar, their BAC would have been lower at the time they were driving than it would have been an hour later at the station. Thus, they may not have been "driving drunk". On the other hand, if they had been drinking for some time and stopped just before leaving the bar, then their BAC would have been higher at the time they were driving than when tested at the station. Thus, they would have certainly been over the legal limit and thereby "driving drunk".
  - todd8 7y ago
    Yeah, in this case it wasn’t a blood test but a breathalyzer test, and the major concern was the time between arrest and testing—she might have been sobering up or she might have been absorbing the last drink and she was a few minutes from home. There was no evidence presented that would allow us to know. 0.08 might be too high a limit for sure, I hardly ever drink myself, but that’s the legal limit in Texas.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- umanwizard 7y ago
  You’re mistaken — 0.08% is the legal limit in most of the US. And 0.08% corresponds to a moderate level of impairment. Certainly dangerous for driving, but nowhere near “dead drunk”.
blunte 7y ago
What you described, with "what sort of reasoning is that?" is the mechanism by which marketers (especially those marketing politics) use to steer simple minded people with. Unfortunately, most people are simple minded and are unable to separate their emotions from reason.
- bumby 7y ago
  Psychology seems to point out that we all make emotional decisions first and then rationalize them. The danger is that everybody is convinced their decision is rational. I don't know if the non-reproducability crises has hit these studies
  - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
    We all lie. We are all hypocritical. There seems to be a threshold upon which someone is deemed a lier, hypocrite or simple minded. That we all do something doesn't mean that we all do it to the same degree. For some reason when talking about intelligence, people are uncomfortable with some being better endowed than others. I've noted that the people who are most uncomfortable with this reality are many times hyper aware of the difference in physical endowment between different individuals.
    - bumby 7y ago
      I may be missing your connection here but I wasn't referring to "rational" as a proxy for intelligence. What i was referring to was the fact that our decisions originate in our emotional centers of our brain without our conscious awareness only to be justified after the fact by our "rational" mind
      - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
        Sort of. We have system one and system two thinking. We all have system one. Some people have system two to a greater or lesser extent. It's a lot more complicated than 'decisions originate in our emotional centers... only justified... by our rational mind' Yes, to a degree that happens, but it's more than that or people wouldn't think or deliberate points in highly analytical manners. Your post sounds like someone who reads Dan Ariely. Personally, I prefer more nuanced authors such as Kahneman.
jostmey 7y ago
> I discovered that the average person on a jury has a great deal of trouble with evidence. It was really quite troubling. Trial by jury--it's far from perfect but I believe the best solution mankind has devised thus far
- booleandilemma 7y ago
  I would never want to be tried by a jury. You really want your future to be decided by a group of people that are going to make preconceived judgements about you based on your facial hair and skin color? Who are probably going to go home and watch The Real Housewives when the trial is over? People whose conception of reality comes primarily from the tv shows they watch? Nothanks.
  - baddox 7y ago
    That makes a jury sound like a bad option, until you stop and think about what the other option is.
    - JoeSmithson 7y ago
      Other options are also perfectly good legal systems (France, Germany etc)
      - walshemj 7y ago
        So what reasons do you have for preferring an inquisitorial system?
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      I have been on juries twice and I think there is a lot of room for improvement. In one case there was an expert witness that made claims about light during dusk which i was pretty sure was questionable based on my photography experience. But there is no way to challenge such statements if the defense lawyer doesn’t do it and even then it probably costs a lot of money to find an opposing expert witness. Most defendants won’t have that money. As a juror you are supposed to judge only by what has been presented in court. But this leaves a lot of room for bullshit experts. I think there need to be some nationwide standards about accuracy of different methods like alcohol tests, speed traps and especially forensics where I have read that a lot of completely false methods are being used to convict people. The judge should have the ability to call out such things based on established scientific evidence and inform the jury.
seppin 7y ago
> “I’m a parent and so I vote guilty because I’m really against drunk driving.” "Jury of your peers" is not as good as it sounds.
lmm 7y ago
> So her blood alcohol could have been higher or lower when she was arrested depending on the timing of her last drink. I don't follow - it's not like she drank more on the way between the bar and the police station, is it?
- rustybelt 7y ago
  If she had a drink right before leaving, the alcohol might not have made it into her bloodstream yet.
- timcederman 7y ago
  If she hadn't drunk anything a while before leaving, it'd likely be lower. If she'd had a drink immediately before leaving, it'd have been higher.
- yissp 7y ago
  Apparently it can take up to 2 hours after consumption for alcohol to enter your bloodstream https://www.driverseducationusa.com/resources/alcohol-absorption-in-your-body/ https://www.driverseducationusa.com/resources/alcohol-absorp... so if she had a drink immediately before leaving presumably her BAC could be higher an hour later?
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Maybe she ate a meal, then had a single sip of a friend's drink before walking out the door. The alcohol vapors in the mouth can cause breathalyzers to register high. In college, I had a breathalyzer and had fun scaring my friends by aerating some vodka in my mouth right before blowing - I've registered 0.34% when my actual BAC was closer to 0.04%
bcrosby95 7y ago
I was on a murder trial about 15 years ago. So many people tried to get out of it by telling the judge "I can't be impartial because I don't like guns". Every time, the judge said "so are you telling me you would convict someone of murder, that you don't think murdered anyone, just because you don't like guns?" Most people said no. Some would squirm and get squirrely and the judge would follow up with "you would ruin an innocent person's life just because you don't like guns?" No one said yes, despite them obviously wanting to. She did a good job of calling them on their bullshit.
- downandout 7y ago
  That was 15 years ago. As polarized as the US is today, I have a feeling that many people would ruin an innocent person's life over ideological differences, though few would admit an intent to do so when questioned directly in public. We see many politically motivated firings/forced resignations these days, for example, as a part of "cancel culture" [1]. Depending on the person's financial stability, being fired may well ruin their life. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca...
  - devtul 7y ago
    Cancel culture seems like a huge outlet for sadists and/or teenagers and young adults who never had anyone else depending on them for shelter and food.
    - paggle 7y ago
      Cancel culture lets everyone feel like a Clint Eastwood vigilante -- enjoy the sadistic pleasure of torturing someone while also feeling like you're the good guy.
- Redoubts 7y ago
  Oh man, mine was worse. After the first person got off for saying ”I can’t be impartial because I don’t like cops because (shaggy dog story), but I also hate Mexicans like the defendant because (another shaggy dog story).”, everyone took it as the green light to make up wild shit to get out of selection. That ended up being the most asinine two days of jury selection I’ve ever been apart of.
bsder 7y ago
> I discovered that the average person on a jury has a great deal of trouble with evidence. I am, sadly, increasingly convinced that trial by jury hinges on getting a single person on the jury who actually understands evidence and has the guts to stand his ground. So many people simply are "You're in the defendant's chair. You're guilty." It makes me want to cry.
voldacar 7y ago
> For example, one person said “I’m a parent and so I vote guilty because I’m really against drunk driving.” Wow that is incredibly unsettling. Especially considering that a guilty verdict would mean thousands of dollars in fines and potentially someone spending years of their life in jail.
deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I really hope people remember this comment when they hear someone was previously convicted of DUI. Once you're convicted once the entire system works to ensure you get convicted with each subsequent encounter with the system.

by todd8 7y ago

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

The devices can be good at determining if alcohol is in the blood. Maybe they aren't exact. But they can help keep drunk driving from being so dangerous. Of course a particular person may perform better when drunk. The law just sets a number (0.02? 0.08 would be dead drunk in any state in the US) which doesn't prove a person is impaired or not. It just lets lawyers argue.

blunte 7y ago
If the defendant had consumed the alcohol just before leaving the bar, their BAC would have been lower at the time they were driving than it would have been an hour later at the station. Thus, they may not have been "driving drunk". On the other hand, if they had been drinking for some time and stopped just before leaving the bar, then their BAC would have been higher at the time they were driving than when tested at the station. Thus, they would have certainly been over the legal limit and thereby "driving drunk".
- todd8 7y ago
  Yeah, in this case it wasn’t a blood test but a breathalyzer test, and the major concern was the time between arrest and testing—she might have been sobering up or she might have been absorbing the last drink and she was a few minutes from home. There was no evidence presented that would allow us to know. 0.08 might be too high a limit for sure, I hardly ever drink myself, but that’s the legal limit in Texas.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
umanwizard 7y ago
You’re mistaken — 0.08% is the legal limit in most of the US. And 0.08% corresponds to a moderate level of impairment. Certainly dangerous for driving, but nowhere near “dead drunk”.

blunte 7y ago

What you described, with "what sort of reasoning is that?" is the mechanism by which marketers (especially those marketing politics) use to steer simple minded people with. Unfortunately, most people are simple minded and are unable to separate their emotions from reason.

bumby 7y ago
Psychology seems to point out that we all make emotional decisions first and then rationalize them. The danger is that everybody is convinced their decision is rational. I don't know if the non-reproducability crises has hit these studies
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  We all lie. We are all hypocritical. There seems to be a threshold upon which someone is deemed a lier, hypocrite or simple minded. That we all do something doesn't mean that we all do it to the same degree. For some reason when talking about intelligence, people are uncomfortable with some being better endowed than others. I've noted that the people who are most uncomfortable with this reality are many times hyper aware of the difference in physical endowment between different individuals.
  - bumby 7y ago
    I may be missing your connection here but I wasn't referring to "rational" as a proxy for intelligence. What i was referring to was the fact that our decisions originate in our emotional centers of our brain without our conscious awareness only to be justified after the fact by our "rational" mind
    - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
      Sort of. We have system one and system two thinking. We all have system one. Some people have system two to a greater or lesser extent. It's a lot more complicated than 'decisions originate in our emotional centers... only justified... by our rational mind' Yes, to a degree that happens, but it's more than that or people wouldn't think or deliberate points in highly analytical manners. Your post sounds like someone who reads Dan Ariely. Personally, I prefer more nuanced authors such as Kahneman.

jostmey 7y ago

> I discovered that the average person on a jury has a great deal of trouble with evidence. It was really quite troubling. Trial by jury--it's far from perfect but I believe the best solution mankind has devised thus far

booleandilemma 7y ago
I would never want to be tried by a jury. You really want your future to be decided by a group of people that are going to make preconceived judgements about you based on your facial hair and skin color? Who are probably going to go home and watch The Real Housewives when the trial is over? People whose conception of reality comes primarily from the tv shows they watch? Nothanks.
- baddox 7y ago
  That makes a jury sound like a bad option, until you stop and think about what the other option is.
  - JoeSmithson 7y ago
    Other options are also perfectly good legal systems (France, Germany etc)
    - walshemj 7y ago
      So what reasons do you have for preferring an inquisitorial system?
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    I have been on juries twice and I think there is a lot of room for improvement. In one case there was an expert witness that made claims about light during dusk which i was pretty sure was questionable based on my photography experience. But there is no way to challenge such statements if the defense lawyer doesn’t do it and even then it probably costs a lot of money to find an opposing expert witness. Most defendants won’t have that money. As a juror you are supposed to judge only by what has been presented in court. But this leaves a lot of room for bullshit experts. I think there need to be some nationwide standards about accuracy of different methods like alcohol tests, speed traps and especially forensics where I have read that a lot of completely false methods are being used to convict people. The judge should have the ability to call out such things based on established scientific evidence and inform the jury.

seppin 7y ago

> “I’m a parent and so I vote guilty because I’m really against drunk driving.” "Jury of your peers" is not as good as it sounds.

lmm 7y ago

> So her blood alcohol could have been higher or lower when she was arrested depending on the timing of her last drink. I don't follow - it's not like she drank more on the way between the bar and the police station, is it?

rustybelt 7y ago
If she had a drink right before leaving, the alcohol might not have made it into her bloodstream yet.
timcederman 7y ago
If she hadn't drunk anything a while before leaving, it'd likely be lower. If she'd had a drink immediately before leaving, it'd have been higher.
yissp 7y ago
Apparently it can take up to 2 hours after consumption for alcohol to enter your bloodstream https://www.driverseducationusa.com/resources/alcohol-absorption-in-your-body/ https://www.driverseducationusa.com/resources/alcohol-absorp... so if she had a drink immediately before leaving presumably her BAC could be higher an hour later?
cwkoss 7y ago
Maybe she ate a meal, then had a single sip of a friend's drink before walking out the door. The alcohol vapors in the mouth can cause breathalyzers to register high. In college, I had a breathalyzer and had fun scaring my friends by aerating some vodka in my mouth right before blowing - I've registered 0.34% when my actual BAC was closer to 0.04%

bcrosby95 7y ago

I was on a murder trial about 15 years ago. So many people tried to get out of it by telling the judge "I can't be impartial because I don't like guns". Every time, the judge said "so are you telling me you would convict someone of murder, that you don't think murdered anyone, just because you don't like guns?" Most people said no. Some would squirm and get squirrely and the judge would follow up with "you would ruin an innocent person's life just because you don't like guns?" No one said yes, despite them obviously wanting to. She did a good job of calling them on their bullshit.

downandout 7y ago
That was 15 years ago. As polarized as the US is today, I have a feeling that many people would ruin an innocent person's life over ideological differences, though few would admit an intent to do so when questioned directly in public. We see many politically motivated firings/forced resignations these days, for example, as a part of "cancel culture" [1]. Depending on the person's financial stability, being fired may well ruin their life. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca...
- devtul 7y ago
  Cancel culture seems like a huge outlet for sadists and/or teenagers and young adults who never had anyone else depending on them for shelter and food.
  - paggle 7y ago
    Cancel culture lets everyone feel like a Clint Eastwood vigilante -- enjoy the sadistic pleasure of torturing someone while also feeling like you're the good guy.
Redoubts 7y ago
Oh man, mine was worse. After the first person got off for saying ”I can’t be impartial because I don’t like cops because (shaggy dog story), but I also hate Mexicans like the defendant because (another shaggy dog story).”, everyone took it as the green light to make up wild shit to get out of selection. That ended up being the most asinine two days of jury selection I’ve ever been apart of.

bsder 7y ago

> I discovered that the average person on a jury has a great deal of trouble with evidence. I am, sadly, increasingly convinced that trial by jury hinges on getting a single person on the jury who actually understands evidence and has the guts to stand his ground. So many people simply are "You're in the defendant's chair. You're guilty." It makes me want to cry.

voldacar 7y ago

> For example, one person said “I’m a parent and so I vote guilty because I’m really against drunk driving.” Wow that is incredibly unsettling. Especially considering that a guilty verdict would mean thousands of dollars in fines and potentially someone spending years of their life in jail.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I really hope people remember this comment when they hear someone was previously convicted of DUI. Once you're convicted once the entire system works to ensure you get convicted with each subsequent encounter with the system.