The power of a randomly-selected jury

[mantispid]

The following two links are articles that talk about why the 12-person randomly-selected jury is such an ingenious way of protecting rights, even for a political minority.

The Power of Jury Numbers, Part 1
The Power of Jury Numbers, Part 2

I would have quoted them directly in the thread, but didn't want to make the post too large.

Interestingly enough, these articles articulate why the government has an interest in 'stacking' juries, and why we don't see truly random (aka FAIR) juries anymore.



Oh, and here's a link to the Fully Informed Jury Association, if anyone is interested.

 

[mantispid]

It's interesting to note, that even if just 5% of the general population opposes a law, there would only be a 54% chance of finding a randomly selected 12-person jury that would convict.

If we used the drug war as an example, which has at least 15% opposition, there would only be a 14% chance of finding a jury that would convict a person guilty of violating a drug law. If we're talking about only medical marijuana, which has over 50% support in many places, it becomes virtually impossible to ever convict a person for violating that law.


We really need to try to get random juries back. This whole 'jury selection (stacking)' business is clearly one of the strategies to tyranny.

 

[cordex]

mantispid,
When I attended jury selection, the effort seemed to honestly be to get a fair and impartial jury. The questions mostly seemed directed at determining if someone could legally serve on the jury (lived in the same county as the accused, etc) and was capable of delivering an honestly impartial verdict (didn't know the accused, the victim, the attorneys, or the witnesses personally).
This isn't to say that the jurys are never stacked, but in that trial, the selection process seemed to be pretty decent.

A truly random jury means that you might have the defendant's mom, or the victim's dad, or the prosecutor's spouse, or the defending attorney's daughter in the jury pool, which could very well lead to justice not being served.

I'm a big supporter of jury nullification, but not so much of purely random juries.

 

[El Tejon]

cordex, Hendricks County? The process depends a lot on where you are. Indiana, in its typical way, the courts are far more "hands off" and allow the attorneys to control the questioning after the judge's preliminary re-election speech (oops, did I say that?)/questioning. Federal court is far different.

mantis, let me tell you, it's not THAT random.

 

[mantispid]

Oh, I know the way things work isn't completely random. I'm just saying I wish it were.

The odds of getting a person's immediate family members in a jury pool is so low as to be virtually a non-issue.

Now, some argue that a 'jury of peers' means only people who personally *know* the accused in some way or another. Of course, that's not in the scope of the articles linked above. Those articles only deal with a completely random jury.


I know a lot of stacking goes on. For instance, striking jurors who say they don't believe in the death penalty, those who say they do believe in the death penalty, those who say they don't believe in drug laws, etc. etc. The point is, those shouldn't be valid reasons for striking a juror. A jury is supposed to be a cross section of the community.. complete with biases, etc.

That's why we have trial by jury. It is so that laws that do not have broad support (i.e. over 95%) can't be used to persecute a minority. It effectively makes such laws unenforceable, as it becomes nearly impossible to convict as the support for a particular law wanes. This is how justice is supposed to be carried out.. in realtime. Not after the next election. In this way, if a population doesn't like a particular law, they can nullify it NOW.. and fix it during the next election cycle (of course, this assumes that elections/etc. are clean too.. ).

 

[cordex]

El T,
Yep. Hon. Jeff Boles presiding.
Good feller.
Didn't talk much about himself after his brief introduction. Didn't sense much in the way of a re-election speech, either. Spoke in little words and explained things so that Cordex could understand him. Even got a whiteboard out and drew a diagram to explain why he decided to dismiss the case (accuser and primary witness decided she didn't want to testify after all).

Odd, but the bailiff didn't seem to be packin'.

 

[El Tejon]

Boles, and not my cousin Judge Love?

Criminal case that got dismissed on directed verdict at jury trial??? Wow, weak case, huh?

Most courts here have distinctions between armed and unarmed bailiffs. Don't worry, more likely than not, the judge was prepared in some way.

 

[Don Galt]

It seems selection may be part of the problem... but the average american is not very aware of the legal system... so they end up on a jury and they take what the judge tells them as being "the law", when in fact, often the judge is breaking the law.

We will not end corruption in our judicial system until judges start ending up in jail for jury tampering.

Hell, one person handing out FIJA information on a courthouse steps --- exercising first ammendment rights-- was prosecuted for jury tampering because potential jurers might go by!

And yet in most courts in this country, the Judge insures the verdict he wants-- the one that will get him re-elected, or in good iwth the prosecutors and cos-- by instructing the jury that they can only come back with a guilty verdict.... by illegally exclusing the constitutionality, or morality, of the law from the consideration.

That undermines the jury system completely.

 

[El Tejon]

Mmmm, Don, I guess it depends on where you are. In my state the jury is instructed both upon opening and closing that it is the trier of the facts and the law.

 

[cordex]

Criminal case that got dismissed on directed verdict at jury trial??? Wow, weak case, huh?

I suppose. We heard the testimony of the responding police and the brother of the victim, but the alleged victim didn't show up, and when the cops tried to bring her in she ran.
*sigh*
Went and had lunch whilst they tried to find her, but he dismissed after we came back.

I'd not be surprised at all if Judge Boles was packin'.