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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 compreh

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.

taneq 5y ago
> Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people. I think the ‘jury of your peers’ thing is meant to be in the sense of ‘all men are created equal’. They don’t, I presume, intelligence test the defendant and if they score lowly, screen the jury to admit only dumbasses.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  The op was advocating for 'basic comprehension and reasoning test' which I think voir dire covers and in my experience did cover. The current process is more about eliminating bias than screening for intelligence, which seems right. I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    If the case is engineering-heavy, I’d expect [at least] one side to bias the jury away from containing engineers/scientists. If it’s heavily reliant on medical testimony, at least one side will try to exclude doctors, etc. I think that’s inherent in the adversarial system (where each lawyer is advocating for their client’s interests), but I also think it sucks.
    - taneq 5y ago
      I’d be interested in seeing a stats about key evidence type vs. juror preferences on each side vs. eventual case outcome. I bet you could predict guilt reasonably well by looking at what sort of jurors the defence tries to exclude.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community." But you are getting a random, not a balanced sample of the community - one person might get a jury of stock brokers, the other might be stuck with 13 guys that are local drunks and never finished school.
LocalH 5y ago
If you ask me, neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney should be the ones striking jurors. I don't have a full solution to that, either, but it seems like voir dire is one way attorneys try to stack the deck, often times by excluding the most qualified jurors. But, I agree - it must first and foremost be a jury of the accused's peers - but that doesn't mean "man on the street style average joe" necessarily.
zamadatix 5y ago
First to separate the disagreements. You open by disagreeing that the process requiring jurors to pass a certain comprehension level doesn't exist today and close by disagreeing that the current "jury of your peers" process shouldn't be such a thing. Apart from being self conflicting claims (it can't both be the process used today and be against the process used today) they are 2 separate discussions. In regards to the first disagreement GPs proposal wasn't "a process that optionally allows an attorney to strike some jurors they find have low comprehension" it was "there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors." as in a hard requirement to have some level of comprehension regardless if the attorneys wish to strike a juror based on this fact. In regards to the second disagreement you aren't guaranteed to a jury of your peers in the US you are guaranteed to an impartial jury. Jury of your peers was part of common law and guaranteed e.g. high class people would only have juries of other high class people and is not part of US law. A "special" or "blue ribbon" jury like the GP proposed are allowed to been used as deemed necessary by the court in many states and actually by the Supreme Court itself in it's only jury trial (they drew from a pool of merchants) they are just not mandated for every trial. Again I do side with your opinion that special juries shouldn't be the default but that's not what is under question.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Where I live, the state/county defines eligible jurors as registered voters and/or licensed drivers over 18. So 'peers' meaning eligible voters in your community/county. And yes, the system is rightly more about eliminating bias. The process of voir dire is the opportunity for both sides to apply their own test. Also for special cases, and even not so special cases, jury questionnaires are an option[0]. These jury questionnaires can ask all kinds of questions to uncover bias and certainly involve basic comprehension. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    That is likely how your state selects jurors but again it's not because you have a right to a jury of your peers (for any definition of peers). In the US the only right is to an impartial jury, which is indeed what voir dire tries to do, which has been ruled to be possible even with pre-filtering the juror pool. Jury questionnaires are made to provide a background for the attorneys during voir dire not as an aptitude test, as such they do not have an objective pass/fail score rather subjective information to allow attorneys to try to form the most impartial jury they can out of the pool. While the attorney could try to make an assumption of comprehension level based on the responses in the questionnaire 1) The attorney still has to consider lack of comprehension a negative thing for their chances at the case 2) The attorney has to be willing to use strikes for this reason vs other uses such as removing blatantly biased jurors 3) Even when both of the prior hold true the number of perceived "fails" may be higher than the number of allowed strikes. Therefore the ability to strike some from the pool for comprehension level is not the same as the pool being pre filtered for comprehension level. To be clear the GP proposal is the universal application an additional comprehension test one has to pass to be part of the pool prior to voir dire, not just that someone with low comprehension is allowed to be struck for that reason. Think of the proposal being like if your state randomly chose anybody instead of pre-filtering for eligible voters and GP proposed "we should filter out children and etc from the pool" with your response being "voir dire does that". Voir dire in that case may allow for the possibility of some of those people being filtered at the cost of a less filtered qualified jury of adults but it wouldn't be a replacement for pre-filtering. The same is true of the proposal on a minimum comprehension pre-filter, whether you agree with the pre-filter or not it's not the same as having the ability to filter some people in voir dire.

taneq 5y ago

> Its not a jury of your peers if its a jury of only the sharpest or most educated people. I think the ‘jury of your peers’ thing is meant to be in the sense of ‘all men are created equal’. They don’t, I presume, intelligence test the defendant and if they score lowly, screen the jury to admit only dumbasses.

annoyingnoob 5y ago
The op was advocating for 'basic comprehension and reasoning test' which I think voir dire covers and in my experience did cover. The current process is more about eliminating bias than screening for intelligence, which seems right. I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If the case is engineering-heavy, I’d expect [at least] one side to bias the jury away from containing engineers/scientists. If it’s heavily reliant on medical testimony, at least one side will try to exclude doctors, etc. I think that’s inherent in the adversarial system (where each lawyer is advocating for their client’s interests), but I also think it sucks.
  - taneq 5y ago
    I’d be interested in seeing a stats about key evidence type vs. juror preferences on each side vs. eventual case outcome. I bet you could predict guilt reasonably well by looking at what sort of jurors the defence tries to exclude.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "I think a jury should be representative of the community, all of the community." But you are getting a random, not a balanced sample of the community - one person might get a jury of stock brokers, the other might be stuck with 13 guys that are local drunks and never finished school.

LocalH 5y ago

If you ask me, neither the prosecutor nor the defense attorney should be the ones striking jurors. I don't have a full solution to that, either, but it seems like voir dire is one way attorneys try to stack the deck, often times by excluding the most qualified jurors. But, I agree - it must first and foremost be a jury of the accused's peers - but that doesn't mean "man on the street style average joe" necessarily.

zamadatix 5y ago

First to separate the disagreements. You open by disagreeing that the process requiring jurors to pass a certain comprehension level doesn't exist today and close by disagreeing that the current "jury of your peers" process shouldn't be such a thing. Apart from being self conflicting claims (it can't both be the process used today and be against the process used today) they are 2 separate discussions. In regards to the first disagreement GPs proposal wasn't "a process that optionally allows an attorney to strike some jurors they find have low comprehension" it was "there really ought to be some basic comprehension and reasoning test for jurors." as in a hard requirement to have some level of comprehension regardless if the attorneys wish to strike a juror based on this fact. In regards to the second disagreement you aren't guaranteed to a jury of your peers in the US you are guaranteed to an impartial jury. Jury of your peers was part of common law and guaranteed e.g. high class people would only have juries of other high class people and is not part of US law. A "special" or "blue ribbon" jury like the GP proposed are allowed to been used as deemed necessary by the court in many states and actually by the Supreme Court itself in it's only jury trial (they drew from a pool of merchants) they are just not mandated for every trial. Again I do side with your opinion that special juries shouldn't be the default but that's not what is under question.

annoyingnoob 5y ago
Where I live, the state/county defines eligible jurors as registered voters and/or licensed drivers over 18. So 'peers' meaning eligible voters in your community/county. And yes, the system is rightly more about eliminating bias. The process of voir dire is the opportunity for both sides to apply their own test. Also for special cases, and even not so special cases, jury questionnaires are an option[0]. These jury questionnaires can ask all kinds of questions to uncover bias and certainly involve basic comprehension. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_questionnaire
- zamadatix 5y ago
  That is likely how your state selects jurors but again it's not because you have a right to a jury of your peers (for any definition of peers). In the US the only right is to an impartial jury, which is indeed what voir dire tries to do, which has been ruled to be possible even with pre-filtering the juror pool. Jury questionnaires are made to provide a background for the attorneys during voir dire not as an aptitude test, as such they do not have an objective pass/fail score rather subjective information to allow attorneys to try to form the most impartial jury they can out of the pool. While the attorney could try to make an assumption of comprehension level based on the responses in the questionnaire 1) The attorney still has to consider lack of comprehension a negative thing for their chances at the case 2) The attorney has to be willing to use strikes for this reason vs other uses such as removing blatantly biased jurors 3) Even when both of the prior hold true the number of perceived "fails" may be higher than the number of allowed strikes. Therefore the ability to strike some from the pool for comprehension level is not the same as the pool being pre filtered for comprehension level. To be clear the GP proposal is the universal application an additional comprehension test one has to pass to be part of the pool prior to voir dire, not just that someone with low comprehension is allowed to be struck for that reason. Think of the proposal being like if your state randomly chose anybody instead of pre-filtering for eligible voters and GP proposed "we should filter out children and etc from the pool" with your response being "voir dire does that". Voir dire in that case may allow for the possibility of some of those people being filtered at the cost of a less filtered qualified jury of adults but it wouldn't be a replacement for pre-filtering. The same is true of the proposal on a minimum comprehension pre-filter, whether you agree with the pre-filter or not it's not the same as having the ability to filter some people in voir dire.