7 ms·

To me, it just highlights that there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors.

by biofox 5y ago

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
I disagree with the jury system but as I understand it American jurors are supposed to reflect society. If you only want smart people you leave it to the judge.
- dls2016 5y ago
  About those judges…
- dTal 5y ago
  In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions. Attorneys do not want thinkers, they want predictable cogs in the court machine.
  - parineum 5y ago
    > In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions. Jurors get dismissed based on whether or not one side feels they decide in their favor or not. That's it.
    - Buttons840 5y ago
      When there's no agreement I suspect the less educated are favored though. I'd believe a juror getting dismissed for knowing statistics and being persuadable by logical arguments, before I'd believe a juror being dismissed for being in a demographic who favors police and emotional arguments.
      - parineum 5y ago
        Depends on which side is moving to dismiss that particular juror and what finding in their favor would require.
    - Nevermark 5y ago
      So whoever thinks their case is weakest when viewed intelligently (i.e. ability to handle subtletly, nuance, complexity, rational over emotion, science, statistics) is going to need to get those intelligent people off the jury.
  - oceanghost 5y ago
    Just mentioning FIJA can be enough to land you in jail.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      That's not true. Jury nullification is legal (both talking about it and carrying it out), even if some judges and prosecutors wish it otherwise.
      - oceanghost 5y ago
        I can't find any supporting documentation-- so take this as hearsay-- but I recall a man being arrested for handing out FIJA pamphlets in front of a courthouse at the Southwestern Justice Center in Riverside, CA.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  You have the right to not have a jury. There are some downsides. It's harder to win an appeal; jury nullification is off the table; plenty of judges are biased or uninformed. Your lawyer can't manipulate a judge as easily as a jury. Still, if I had to defend myself against some emotionally charged claim whose defense relied on legal technicalities, I might prefer a bench trial to a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty. If the potential jury of "my peers" were going to be biased against me for reasons of religion or race or culture, I'd be more inclined to let a judge decide.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    What we need is a right to a multi-judge tribunal.
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      Agreed, although impractical due to a shortage of judges. You shouldn't have to rely on making it to an appeals panel to have your fate decided by more than the whims of a single person.
  - reddog 5y ago
    > a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty Maybe they are not idiots, just regular folks who take their civic duty seriously.
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      Yeah, that was too dismissive. I do think there's a problem with juries in that the pool of people is narrowed to those who both want to and are able to serve. Some jobs will pay employees who have jury duty, but many will not. Some people have backup caregivers for their dependents, but many don't. I'm not interested enough to look for statistics on it, but I would be surprised if juries aren't primarily composed of a narrow subset of social classes, like upper middle class professionals, retired people, the childless, and the unemployed, or some similar categories. It should be hard to get out of serving and jurors should be compensated in a way that eliminates the financial burden without becoming an incentive in itself.
- scotty79 5y ago
  What's worse is that judges are elected and it creates perverse incentives.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Wait... there are smart judges?!
boomboomsubban 5y ago
So do you think it's completely impossible that you would be part of the 2/3rd that found the fake suspect guilty? I don't think basic comprehension or reasoning prevent you from falling for these kinds of arguments, and rather than try to limit possible jurors we should just bar unscientific evidence.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Who makes the rules for the aptitude? Who decides if it's scientific or not, and what the limit is (p .1 or .001, study design, etc)? The people running the system makes the rules. The general attitude is to treat the law enforcement side more favorably than the defendant, to the point that they are basically assumed guilty from the start.
annoyingnoob 5y ago
I sat in court once for 3 days as a potential juror. I was the last person that was not selected for the jury. There is a process like what you describe called voir dire. Both sides have an opportunity to interview jurors and can ask to eliminate some. In the case I watched there was a potential juror that had recently become a citizen and was very interested in being a juror, but she was also not a native English speaker and was clearly not following everything that was going on - both sides wanted her gone right away. You still get a jury of citizens from the local community, which is the point.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  The process is a good one but it's not like what was described. Each side gets a chance to remove some jurors, not a chance to insure all jurors in the pool meet a criteria, and removal is based on how much the attorney thinks you'll hurt their chances not based on if you'll be able to accurately interpret the case. I was also the last person struck in a case involving IT once the prosecuting side found out I worked in IT. Looking at the case results the prosecution lost the case for reasons that would be apparent to anyone that understood how IT systems worked. To be clear I think the selection process is a good one (or at least I think it's better than other options I've heard) it's just not the same thing as the GP was proposing.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    I disagree, both sides have the opportunity to ask potential jurors a lot of questions. The answers to those questions can clearly illuminate someone's comprehension and reasoning - they definitely did in my experience. Now each side does not necessarily get all of the eliminations that they want but that is part of the process. The case I watched was a domestic violence case. Both sides were asking potential jurors about their knowledge of bruising and the way bruises change/develop over time. One of the potential jurors was an older Engineer from an aerospace company you've heard of, his answer included explaining that the most interesting problems that he deals with include how one handles the unknowns of a given project/situation. He gave a clear indication of his reasoning and thought process, the prosecution dropped him like a hot rock. Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people.
clairity 5y ago
you’ve just failed your own test, since you don’t understand how and why a jury works. if you did, you’d comprehend that the better solution is expanding juries, not testing jurors. i’ll let you work out why that would be the case, and perhaps come up with an even better option as a result.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
refurb 5y ago
So I sat on a 6 week felony jury and had low expectations but was pleasantly surprised - fellow jurors took it very seriously, the judges instructions are clear and written at a layman’s level and the “presumption of innocence” dominated. Anecdotal but it really gave me faith that juries do a pretty good job.
- jrockway 5y ago
  I was on a grand jury and we were all a very cynical bunch. They presented a bunch of cases that boiled down to "person we don't like talked back to the police" and our jury refused to indict them. In one case, it was painfully obvious that the police officers testifying were flat-out lying. Their story changed from sentence to sentence. I think even the prosecutor thought that continuing to prosecute this particular case would be a career killer. Eventually the ADAs caught on that our group asked too many questions, and just carefully ran out the clock on our two week grand jury session. Cases we were halfway through hearing mysteriously disappeared. Apparently the other two juries that met during our two week cycle had to stay late every day, while we got dismissed early. It's one of those things where the system is designed to be good (23 randos get to decide if the cops are full of shit before you even get indicted, and you don't have to be very smart to see that sometimes the cops are full of shit), but The System turned it into something bad for no good reason. I guess if people aren't committing felonies, we don't need assistant district attorneys, and then the people that already do that job have their career progress reset. So they are forced to play into a broken system and make up very tenuous felonies for their own personal career gain. It's sad. Someone should do something about that. (I wonder if there should be an after-the-fact non-binding review board. Look at all the cases that were prosecuted over a given year, and just have a group of experts gut-check them. If a lot of cases seem like bullshit, dock the numbers for the DA's office so they suffer at election time.)
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    The fact that your joury went home early while others stayed late, is this information available to the defense?
AlbertCory 5y ago
To me, it just highlights that if you've never served on a jury, your opinion is merely prejudice against those who are (presumably) less credentialed than you are.
pfortuny 5y ago
A jury of peers is a jury of citizens with no regard to their upbringing, education, rece, religion, or any other thing. Citizens.

To me, it just highlights that there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors.

by biofox 5y ago

To me, it just highlights that there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors.

I disagree with the jury system but as I understand it American jurors are supposed to reflect society. If you only want smart people you leave it to the judge.

dls2016 5y ago
About those judges…
dTal 5y ago
In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions. Attorneys do not want thinkers, they want predictable cogs in the court machine.
- parineum 5y ago
  > In fact jury selection is notorious for discarding potential jurors with intelligence, critical thinking, legal awareness, or domain expertise. Jurors reflect the part of society least qualified to be making these decisions. Jurors get dismissed based on whether or not one side feels they decide in their favor or not. That's it.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    When there's no agreement I suspect the less educated are favored though. I'd believe a juror getting dismissed for knowing statistics and being persuadable by logical arguments, before I'd believe a juror being dismissed for being in a demographic who favors police and emotional arguments.
    - parineum 5y ago
      Depends on which side is moving to dismiss that particular juror and what finding in their favor would require.
  - Nevermark 5y ago
    So whoever thinks their case is weakest when viewed intelligently (i.e. ability to handle subtletly, nuance, complexity, rational over emotion, science, statistics) is going to need to get those intelligent people off the jury.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  Just mentioning FIJA can be enough to land you in jail.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    That's not true. Jury nullification is legal (both talking about it and carrying it out), even if some judges and prosecutors wish it otherwise.
    - oceanghost 5y ago
      I can't find any supporting documentation-- so take this as hearsay-- but I recall a man being arrested for handing out FIJA pamphlets in front of a courthouse at the Southwestern Justice Center in Riverside, CA.
caymanjim 5y ago
You have the right to not have a jury. There are some downsides. It's harder to win an appeal; jury nullification is off the table; plenty of judges are biased or uninformed. Your lawyer can't manipulate a judge as easily as a jury. Still, if I had to defend myself against some emotionally charged claim whose defense relied on legal technicalities, I might prefer a bench trial to a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty. If the potential jury of "my peers" were going to be biased against me for reasons of religion or race or culture, I'd be more inclined to let a judge decide.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  What we need is a right to a multi-judge tribunal.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Agreed, although impractical due to a shortage of judges. You shouldn't have to rely on making it to an appeals panel to have your fate decided by more than the whims of a single person.
- reddog 5y ago
  > a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty Maybe they are not idiots, just regular folks who take their civic duty seriously.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Yeah, that was too dismissive. I do think there's a problem with juries in that the pool of people is narrowed to those who both want to and are able to serve. Some jobs will pay employees who have jury duty, but many will not. Some people have backup caregivers for their dependents, but many don't. I'm not interested enough to look for statistics on it, but I would be surprised if juries aren't primarily composed of a narrow subset of social classes, like upper middle class professionals, retired people, the childless, and the unemployed, or some similar categories. It should be hard to get out of serving and jurors should be compensated in a way that eliminates the financial burden without becoming an incentive in itself.
scotty79 5y ago
What's worse is that judges are elected and it creates perverse incentives.
kingcharles 5y ago
Wait... there are smart judges?!

boomboomsubban 5y ago

So do you think it's completely impossible that you would be part of the 2/3rd that found the fake suspect guilty? I don't think basic comprehension or reasoning prevent you from falling for these kinds of arguments, and rather than try to limit possible jurors we should just bar unscientific evidence.

giantg2 5y ago
Who makes the rules for the aptitude? Who decides if it's scientific or not, and what the limit is (p .1 or .001, study design, etc)? The people running the system makes the rules. The general attitude is to treat the law enforcement side more favorably than the defendant, to the point that they are basically assumed guilty from the start.

annoyingnoob 5y ago

I sat in court once for 3 days as a potential juror. I was the last person that was not selected for the jury. There is a process like what you describe called voir dire. Both sides have an opportunity to interview jurors and can ask to eliminate some. In the case I watched there was a potential juror that had recently become a citizen and was very interested in being a juror, but she was also not a native English speaker and was clearly not following everything that was going on - both sides wanted her gone right away. You still get a jury of citizens from the local community, which is the point.

zamadatix 5y ago
The process is a good one but it's not like what was described. Each side gets a chance to remove some jurors, not a chance to insure all jurors in the pool meet a criteria, and removal is based on how much the attorney thinks you'll hurt their chances not based on if you'll be able to accurately interpret the case. I was also the last person struck in a case involving IT once the prosecuting side found out I worked in IT. Looking at the case results the prosecution lost the case for reasons that would be apparent to anyone that understood how IT systems worked. To be clear I think the selection process is a good one (or at least I think it's better than other options I've heard) it's just not the same thing as the GP was proposing.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  I disagree, both sides have the opportunity to ask potential jurors a lot of questions. The answers to those questions can clearly illuminate someone's comprehension and reasoning - they definitely did in my experience. Now each side does not necessarily get all of the eliminations that they want but that is part of the process. The case I watched was a domestic violence case. Both sides were asking potential jurors about their knowledge of bruising and the way bruises change/develop over time. One of the potential jurors was an older Engineer from an aerospace company you've heard of, his answer included explaining that the most interesting problems that he deals with include how one handles the unknowns of a given project/situation. He gave a clear indication of his reasoning and thought process, the prosecution dropped him like a hot rock. Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people.

clairity 5y ago

you’ve just failed your own test, since you don’t understand how and why a jury works. if you did, you’d comprehend that the better solution is expanding juries, not testing jurors. i’ll let you work out why that would be the case, and perhaps come up with an even better option as a result.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

refurb 5y ago

So I sat on a 6 week felony jury and had low expectations but was pleasantly surprised - fellow jurors took it very seriously, the judges instructions are clear and written at a layman’s level and the “presumption of innocence” dominated. Anecdotal but it really gave me faith that juries do a pretty good job.

jrockway 5y ago
I was on a grand jury and we were all a very cynical bunch. They presented a bunch of cases that boiled down to "person we don't like talked back to the police" and our jury refused to indict them. In one case, it was painfully obvious that the police officers testifying were flat-out lying. Their story changed from sentence to sentence. I think even the prosecutor thought that continuing to prosecute this particular case would be a career killer. Eventually the ADAs caught on that our group asked too many questions, and just carefully ran out the clock on our two week grand jury session. Cases we were halfway through hearing mysteriously disappeared. Apparently the other two juries that met during our two week cycle had to stay late every day, while we got dismissed early. It's one of those things where the system is designed to be good (23 randos get to decide if the cops are full of shit before you even get indicted, and you don't have to be very smart to see that sometimes the cops are full of shit), but The System turned it into something bad for no good reason. I guess if people aren't committing felonies, we don't need assistant district attorneys, and then the people that already do that job have their career progress reset. So they are forced to play into a broken system and make up very tenuous felonies for their own personal career gain. It's sad. Someone should do something about that. (I wonder if there should be an after-the-fact non-binding review board. Look at all the cases that were prosecuted over a given year, and just have a group of experts gut-check them. If a lot of cases seem like bullshit, dock the numbers for the DA's office so they suffer at election time.)
- Buttons840 5y ago
  The fact that your joury went home early while others stayed late, is this information available to the defense?

AlbertCory 5y ago

To me, it just highlights that if you've never served on a jury, your opinion is merely prejudice against those who are (presumably) less credentialed than you are.

pfortuny 5y ago

A jury of peers is a jury of citizens with no regard to their upbringing, education, rece, religion, or any other thing. Citizens.