4 ms·

> It should put a limit on how weird or explicitly unfair the law can be. The defense isn't allowed to tell jurors about jury nullification and there's an effo

> It should put a limit on how weird or explicitly unfair the law can be. The defense isn't allowed to tell jurors about jury nullification and there's an effort to keep out any potential jurors who are aware of it. In general there seems to be a big effort to not have jurors think to much on their own. Once during selection I mentioned how unreliable eye witness testimony can be (they were trying to weed out anyone who had problems with convicting based solely on eye witness testimony), and the prosecutor asked me "What if the judge told you to give eye witness testimony the same weight as physical evidence?" I often see people worry that if we didn't have trial by jury a lot more innocent people would get convicted. Yet if you look at a country like Germany, it doesn't have trial by jury and it has ~1/9 the incarceration rate as the USA.

maxlybbert 7y ago
I've had to sit in the room more than once waiting to see if any trials wanted to actually select a jury. There were only two times when I was in the room while the jury was selected. Once, when they filled up the jury before they asked me anything, and the other time when I was actually put on the jury. I think it's very telling that the first time, the prosecutor kept asking if people would apply the law as written, and not how they would prefer it to be written. I didn't think I could answer that question without hearing the details, but she refused to provide them (she never got to me, so I never had to answer). It turned out that an inmate was caught with some drugs inside a prison, and she was charged with possession of the drugs, and possession of drug paraphernalia (the paraphernalia being a plastic bag the drugs had been kept in). The second time, the judge asked if anybody had served on a jury before, and those who answered "yes" were asked if anything happened during that service that shook their confidence in the system. They were specifically cautioned to not go into details so that the rest of us wouldn't be tainted. Both of those experiences feel like huge red flags for the system in general. But, again, I have to acknowledge there does seem to be some value in including regular citizens. I'm not sure if that value outweighs the negatives. But, it's an explicitly guaranteed Constitutional right in the US, so without an amendment, it isn't going away. For the record, in the US, if you'd rather take your chances with just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury. But most people accused of crimes seem to believe the jury is a better bet.
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  >For the record, in the US, if you'd rather take your chances with just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury. But most people accused of crimes seem to believe the jury is a better bet. Apparently this happens quite a lot in extreme cases like child rape or murder where the accused probably committed the crime but has a defense that replies on legal technicalities. They know that a jury would likely ignore the instructions to focus on the exact law and find them guilty because, well, they probably did it.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    > They know that a jury would likely ignore the instructions to focus on the exact law and find them guilty because, well, they probably did it. Or, if they probably didn't do it (perhaps school nurse convinced the teenager she had been abused and the police officer led the kid into saying what would make up a charge) the accused would worry that the witch hunt attitude of most people (who have children) would not give them a fair shake. My sister and my father had a strained relationship during her teenager years, and my mother tried to coach her through a criminal charge against him to help her divorce case. Thankfully, my sister eventually relented and recanted. But if it had gone to trial, my father would have not been fairly judged by a jury.
samatman 7y ago
The incarceration rate is irrelevant to your argument, because it depends on both the base rate of criminality and the conviction rate. The conviction rate is what you're looking for, and consulting Table 5 and Table 6 of this document: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/gap.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/gap.pdf We see that Germany has a higher conviction rate than the US. What we'd really like to see is the rate of false conviction, but this is difficult to determine, for obvious reasons.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

maxlybbert 7y ago

I've had to sit in the room more than once waiting to see if any trials wanted to actually select a jury. There were only two times when I was in the room while the jury was selected. Once, when they filled up the jury before they asked me anything, and the other time when I was actually put on the jury. I think it's very telling that the first time, the prosecutor kept asking if people would apply the law as written, and not how they would prefer it to be written. I didn't think I could answer that question without hearing the details, but she refused to provide them (she never got to me, so I never had to answer). It turned out that an inmate was caught with some drugs inside a prison, and she was charged with possession of the drugs, and possession of drug paraphernalia (the paraphernalia being a plastic bag the drugs had been kept in). The second time, the judge asked if anybody had served on a jury before, and those who answered "yes" were asked if anything happened during that service that shook their confidence in the system. They were specifically cautioned to not go into details so that the rest of us wouldn't be tainted. Both of those experiences feel like huge red flags for the system in general. But, again, I have to acknowledge there does seem to be some value in including regular citizens. I'm not sure if that value outweighs the negatives. But, it's an explicitly guaranteed Constitutional right in the US, so without an amendment, it isn't going away. For the record, in the US, if you'd rather take your chances with just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury. But most people accused of crimes seem to believe the jury is a better bet.

alasdair_ 7y ago
>For the record, in the US, if you'd rather take your chances with just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury. But most people accused of crimes seem to believe the jury is a better bet. Apparently this happens quite a lot in extreme cases like child rape or murder where the accused probably committed the crime but has a defense that replies on legal technicalities. They know that a jury would likely ignore the instructions to focus on the exact law and find them guilty because, well, they probably did it.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  > They know that a jury would likely ignore the instructions to focus on the exact law and find them guilty because, well, they probably did it. Or, if they probably didn't do it (perhaps school nurse convinced the teenager she had been abused and the police officer led the kid into saying what would make up a charge) the accused would worry that the witch hunt attitude of most people (who have children) would not give them a fair shake. My sister and my father had a strained relationship during her teenager years, and my mother tried to coach her through a criminal charge against him to help her divorce case. Thankfully, my sister eventually relented and recanted. But if it had gone to trial, my father would have not been fairly judged by a jury.

samatman 7y ago

The incarceration rate is irrelevant to your argument, because it depends on both the base rate of criminality and the conviction rate. The conviction rate is what you're looking for, and consulting Table 5 and Table 6 of this document: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/gap.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/gap.pdf We see that Germany has a higher conviction rate than the US. What we'd really like to see is the rate of false conviction, but this is difficult to determine, for obvious reasons.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]