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I had a very charged discussion with friends just the other night about this very idea. I argued that even if a defendant has the resources to get to a jury tri
by rday 13y ago
I had a very charged discussion with friends just the other night about this very idea. I argued that even if a defendant has the resources to get to a jury trial, the jury is prejudiced against the "criminal" from the start.
It turned out, however, that each person in the room had either been wrongly accused of a crime or knew someone that had been railroaded by the system. They knew that the prosecution wasn't perfect. My sample size is 6 people, myself included, and we are all fairly educated.
Regarding the media, everyone in the room agreed that the Nancy Graces of the world are actively harming our society...
- mindcrime 13y agoFWIW, I was on a jury for the first and (so far) only time, about 2 years ago. It wasn't a big, flashy murder or rape case, just a guy being accused of breaking into a cop car and stealing a flashlight and a handheld radio. But, I found that the other jurors, by and large, took the "innocent until proven guilty" thing VERY seriously. I know that most of us thought he was "probably" guilty, but in the end, we actually acquitted him on all charges because we didn't believe the State had proven he was guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt". Granted it's just one anecdote about one jury on one case in North Carolina, but this jury was not prejudiced against the "criminal" from the start. And, if anything, by the end, most of us were biased against the State for being (or appearing to be) some combination of: incompetent (the investigator from the Sheriff's department), abusive / a plain dick ( the prosecutor), and/or dishonest (the cop who had his car broken into).