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> 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 o
by 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 agoThe 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 agoIf 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 agoI’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.