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Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling
coomaria noted an unsurprising story about how courts are having problems with jurors Googling during cases. As anyone who has ever been called for jury duty knows, you aren't allowed to get outside information about the case you are hearing, but apparently the iPhone makes it far too easy to ignore this advice. A lawyer is trying to get jurors to sign a form explicitly stating they won't "use 'personal electronic and media devices' to research or communicate about the case." Of course, I'm not exactly sure why a juror should need to sign something for your iPhone but not a newspaper.
"Not aloud"? "To easy"?
Is there an editor in the house?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
IIRC, newspapers are censored for jurors.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Maybe they're just trying to figure out what all the complicated legalese being thrown out by both sides is supposed to mean by checking out Wikipedia or Findlaw?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
You're not supposed to read the newspaper either.
It's a Microsoft case, right?
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
using an news paper to research is more difficult, not as up to date, and if sequestered that won't have on delivered.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...then hearing the lawyers would be deafened, rendering justice blind.
I'm surprised twitter hasn't come up as an issue before this...
"just ruld guilty 4 life LOL pmita prison!"
Yes, we must stop people from informing themselves with the relevant issues. If they were to make informed decisions about court cases, how will the RIAA make money off file sharers?
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
If they don't stop this behavior, Police who testify will have to use something more convincing than a quote from Wikipedia to put someone behind bars.
informed juries are inconvenient for judges and lawyers who want total control of the system
lawyers want to pretend they are necessary, when well written laws could be understandable without them
judges are petty tyrants ruling over their little fiefdom with an iron fist, and any action outside of their direct control is considered a threat
our whole system of justice is so full of bugs it needs to be scrapped and rewritten from the ground up, but nothing short of a revolution will really change anything
I speak AAVE, you insensitive clod!
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Just use something like this http://www.tayx.co.uk/products.html
It's pretty cheap...
I can't call that English
why not an impartial wiki on each case moderated by some group of people that are not associated with either the defendant or his lawyers, and not associated with the district attorney & his council, because we all know how each party in a case will misconstrue and twist the truth until the line between the truth and outright lies is blurred to incomprehensible.
if a truly impartial wiki was available it would possibly save a lot of time and prevent wrongful convictions, and also prevent the the real culprit from being found not-guilty.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
IANAL, but my cousin is and her husband is a police officer, and one of her biggest complaints is that jurors are now expecting evidence to be collected and more importantly processed along the lines of the tv show CSI. Where DNA results are turned around in an hour and even bullets collected in the pouring rain can still be matched to a national gunpowder manufacturer database.
If jurors search online for information about the case or the defendant, then it makes it harder to maintain the presumption of innocence.
For example, the media might report all sort of information about the case: the defendant had previously been seen hanging around the schoolyard, the defendant was "known to police", he was convicted of a similar crime 20 years before, etc.
Some of this information might be true, and some of it might not be true. If it's raised during the court case, then it can be rebutted by the other side. If it's just speculation printed in the media and found out by the jurors from their hotel room, the defence might not know what they have to rebut.
Of course .. this is going to get harder and harder as computers and the
internet become more and more pervasive.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
The law hates jurors in the first place - all those non-professionals who evaluate things in terms of right and wrong and not on the pure bases of compliance with appropriate legal loopholes.
It seems like the modern court system starts with the assumption that jurors only mess things up. Then it has rules of evidence so that the jury is given precisely the right information so that they reach the "appropriate" conclusion.
I understand the issues with expert testimony and all that. IMHO some kinds of expert decisions probably shouldn't be made by a jury at all (whether a given product did or didn't cause an injury, for example). However, the solution isn't to leave it up to a jury but to filter information to such an extent that they're forced to come up with the "right" decision. If you want to take the decision away from the jury, just do it!
Last time I was sitting on a jury they took all our phones and PDA's. No electronic devices allowed.
What nutty judges are allowing the jurors to even have their phones on them? so they can be googling while sitting there? Although unless you are sequestered, you can go home and google everything you heard that day...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Perhaps because a newspaper often is more shock and awe stuff and really doesn't cover laws and loopholes as a Google searches might.
How about going the other way? Google could create a special search engine for legal questions, and a Wiki for evidence. Then televise all trials and allow the public at large to text in their votes. The advertising revenue could easily fund the system and perhaps some decent health care for indigents. And given the well-known WoC® (Wisdom of Crowds), we'd be assured of better outcomes. I see it as win-win-win.
.nosig
The prosecution and defense have, for years, been trying to weed out intelligent, informed jurors especially ones that know the defendant or the victim. They claim it is necessary to keep out prejudice even while they do extremely unethical things like introducing the testimony of career criminals who have been given incentives to testilie (aka jailhouse snitches) and to keep information about the victim/plaintiff's behavior from the jury's ears lest the jury come to the conclusion that their behavior was so irresponsible that it mitigates the severity of what the defendant did.
"Googling"...?
"the iPhone makes it far to easy to ignore this advice"...?
Did the iPhone suddenly invent mobile internet access? Web access has been a standard feature of every cell phone and PDA sold in the world (certainly in Europe and Asia) since years before the iPhone even existed. And is Google now somehow the only way to contact other people or read news websites?
Can these articles at least be tagged with "productplacement" or possibly "fanboysummary"?
And anyway, sequestered jurors aren't allowed to keep cellphones, while non-sequestered jurors can even watch TV, so the whole point is nonsensical.
"This verdict is written on a cocktail napkin. And it still says 'guilty'... And 'guilty' is spelled wrong!"
"I'm not wearing a tie at all."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Rosenthal
You should always search the internet for what your case is really about. Ed was convicted by a jury that followed the judges direction and was uninformed. 5 of them recanted and called a press conference as soon as they read that his defense team had been completely gagged, unable to present that Ed had been working for the city of Oakland as a medical marijuanna grower.
You should trust yourself to make informed decisions, and not leave it up to some random judge, who most likely *will* side with the government (they appointed him afterall). Our founders created juries so we could defend ourselves against tyranny and injustice. They didn't mean for you to be guilty of it too.
"...the iPhone makes it far too easy..."
Need a mistrial? There's an app for that.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
We don't want these jurors looking up information and being educated. Just what we tell them. Period. No dictionaries, thesarus, the more ignorant and impressionable we can keep jurors the better...
Seriously, what government in their right mind wants jurors not to have resources to research what they are being told?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
How could it possibly be bad for the case for jurors to look up the defender's facebook account, find out they're a douchebag, and then find them guilty? Hell, they might have the stolen jewelry on while posing for a facebook pic. Case solved! lol. But seriously, if there's some copyright troll suing another company and the jury (well okay, juries don't go copyright trials but let's pretend they do) Googles the plaintiff and find out they're a patent troll that's abused laws and caused havoc with other companies, guess what, CASE LOST! Too bad they aren't jury trials! The judge better hop on google!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Free speech. Unless it conflicts with the American Bar Association's right to drum up more business.
Then yr frakt.
If you're supposed to be sequestered, I assume that they remove access to communication devices like phones, PDAs, laptops, etc..., the same way that they don't give you newspapers.
If you're not sequestered, I'm going to assume that the judge/court already instructs you not to read or look up outside information about the case and explains to you exactly what the punishment is for breaking the court's instructions.
Now given the extent to which the court tracks the actions of jurors, I'm going to assume that it's difficult if not impossible to enforce these rules. If courts are having problems with jurors disregarding these instructions, then signing a piece of paper seems like a silly step to take. Just ask the legislature to increase the penalty for breaking the rules and start enforcing the rule when it is broken.
Of course, that doesn't fix the underlying problem of people not wanting to serve on a jury. If the court increases the onus on jurors, I can imagine that many more citizens will try to get out of jury duty. I don't think anyone has a solution for an apathetic citizenry!
coding is life
Not getting outside information about a case is not "advice" to the jury. It is a requirement and can lead to innocent people being convicted, guilty people being set free, and mistrials.
A juror is to make his decision based on the evidence presented in court. He should not be basing his judgments on the opinions, rumors, and other information that may not true or relevant to the case at hand. The judge in a case determines what evidence and information is relevant to the case, not the jurors, not the prosecutors, and not the defense.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
"Listen here, you jurors, this is a courtroom, and I'm not going to tolerate you googling all the time! I DEMAND you stop googling this instant!"
This brings up an interesting point. Seems there's a head-on collision between a mainstream culture that's more and more in tune with the vast amount of information available to them, and a judiciary culture that's more and more likely to lie to jurors, withhold crucial facts (like the right of nullification) and basically make a joke out of the entire judicial process.
Some years ago I opted for jury duty for a civil case because it was going to be more interesting than work.
It was a personal injury case where the defendant had already been stupid enough to admit fault (so it was only figuring how much he was going to be reamed) with a plaintiff that already had spinal nerve damage which may or may not have been made worse by an auto accident (Which by the description the plaintiff was partially at fault and the damn thing shouldn't have gotten to court in the first place).
At that point I was fairly biased to "Both the idiots need to be punished."
Everyone there that actually worked for a living was of the same mindset and we would have loved to know
1) Whether the defendant's lawyer was being paid a percentage based on avoiding the expected payout.
2) What percentage the plaintiff's lawyer was being paid for a win in their favor
3) How much the quack was being paid for his deposition
so we could figure out a paltry amount that would screw all the lawyers.
Here's the other factor. Even though those of us that actually worked for a living were the majority, we rolled with the non-working idiot that kept shrilling "He's entitled" so we could get the hell out of there and go back to work.
Lessons learned,
1) always carry insurance for personal injury.
2) "accidentally" driving over the plaintiff would have worked out better for everyone.
but it's to easy a caveman could do it!
I'm surprised twitter hasn't come up as an issue before this...
"just ruld guilty 4 life LOL pmita prison!"
It has been a factor: http://lanceturner.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/morning-news-twittering-juror-prompts-request-for-new-trial/
Except you can't really fix things. Languages evolve and change no matter what.
Rome tried to fix the language, and basically the result was that it split into two increasingly diverging languages. Increasingly the language of the common folk, the so called "Vulgar Latin" had less and less to do with what you'd nowadays think of Classical Latin. Unless you were of senatorial class (by empire times it had become a hereditary class) or had some other reason to learn the official form, you probably didn't and it would sound as funny to you as your quote above to a modern English speaker.
The Greeks tried the same with, well, Greek and it too split.
English itself is an example of precisely the results of the idiocy of trying to stop language evolution. At one point English was actually phonetic. E.g., "knight" was really read as it's written, i.e., with a short "i" like in "time" and with the "k" and "g" and "h" actually pronounced. I.e., akin to the German "knecht". But language kept changing. From that word it turned into the modern one which sounds like "night". But due to stupidly trying to stick to the old form, the written form didn't change too, and English writing by and large stopped being phonetic. You're back to, basically, words being hieroglyphs that offer you no indication of how it's pronounced. It's using a phonetic alphabet, but phonetic it ain't any more.
And what was the gain? As I was saying, language still evolved anyway. Words changed, meanings changed, constructs changed, etc. That didn't stop at all. Just the orthography increasingly became an arbitrary bunch of letters that are associated with that word for nothing more than historical reasons.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think it would be reasonable to make the jury sign a stipulation to prevent them from researching information from outside sources. I say this because there are too many people in the media that are trying to get their story on top by misleading the public with misinformation.
If the court wanted to fully guard the jury from all outside sources, a simple sequester would not be enough. They would have to lock them in a room with constant surveillance which is unrealistic and unnecessary. Obviously, there is a good chance that jury members are exposed to some outside influences, at least by family members. However, there is a big difference between "researching" it (regardless of the means) and being "exposed" to it.
So, where do you draw the line?
I think most people know that the real facts of the case are going to come out in court; not the media. It's the investigation that holds the evidence; not the reporters. In general, the only evidence that is sometimes held back in the courtroom, is criminal history or a juvenile record that has been sealed. However, in all fairness, it is the current case the jury is to consider and not a person's history. So, although outside exposure may be unpreventable, I believe research should only be done in the courtroom based on the facts of the case presented by both sides.
No, admitting illegal searches but punishing those who introduce the evidence would be a terrible plan. Those in positions of power could create sufficient incentive by means of bribery or blackmail. While gangs, mobs, and corporations are likely candidates the worst offenders by far would be the state and federal governments. You're going to hit me with a $20K fine and 5 years in prison? My labor union owns the governor or has an influential lobbyist with the White House. Good luck making that stick.
.
Bill Clinton issued pardons on far worse offenses as political rewards on his way out of his second term. In our media culture it would probably be a positive rather than a negative to shield cop or agent who conducts illegal searches but manages to put "the bad guy" behind bars. That's an Orwellian nightmare waiting to happen.
.
Repeat after me: LIMITED. ENUMERATED. POWERS.
Would the judge not just find them in contempt if they were doing it in the courtroom?
Another question, can a juror ask to see a law book or reference from a quoted case? Jury duty would be a lot more fun if jurors got to pick the cases that interested them instead of being picked by lawyers as ones that would rule in their favor.
-Xen
The real problem is that we no longer have a jury of our peers. Back in the day, your peer was someone who knew you well and shared a common status. Now it's 12 random people who have nothing more in common than someone who lives somewhere in the same county as you. No wonder jurors are trying to find out more info, they don't start with the necessary information about the defendant.
Well we know that people who post on Social networks have found their personal lives scrutinized. I don't agree with a juror having access to news print, electronic, digital in any form. This too goes for Social Network sites. The idea is to have an un-biased Jury. If jurors are circumventing the guidelines of outside influences by Googling or what not, then I think the juror needs to feel some re-precussion for his/her actions. Reverse the situation for a moment, you stand trial for a crime and while evidence may point in your direction, you're innocent, yet you've lived an adventurous lifestyle that some of the jurors may disagree with, would you want those jurors passing judgement against you based on information that is not relevant to the case? I certainly would scream MISTRIAL.
Conversely, if you were a really rotten stinker, Googling someone and finding out info that has not been brought to light may also help keep a really bad person from roaming the streets. Even though on a personal level I prefer the bad guys to pay their price, I'm not willing to watch those who are innocent have jurors manipulate the system when the information about isn't relevant. The bad guys will likely f'up again and pay their dues some how.
It's an interesting situation.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
The defense attorneys used their peremptory challenges to remove all educated people on the jury, including myself.
Peremptory challenges are generally quite limited - and are not be expended foolishly.
I would have to ask what you mean by "educated." I would have to ask why you were still hanging around after you were excused.
The thing that takes the most time is all the procedure. In effect, the court wants the jury to absorb only the lawful facts and reach a decision based on that. However, the jury is still exposed to many biasing agents.
It just seems that the lawyers and the court should be able to come up with some agreed pre-recorded body of evidence and testimony, show the jury that, and let the deliberation begin. That's all the jury's allowed to consider anyway. It would make the window for outside influence shrink dramatically and make for far more willing (not to mention awake) jurors.
Just a thought.
When I had jury duty 4 or 5 years ago, they took away all electronic devices when we entered the jury room to deliberate. The door was guarded by a bailiff, and she accompanied us to lunch.
to get jurors to sign a form explicitly stating they won't "use 'personal electronic and media devices' [...]"
Yeah. That will stop 'em! Just as swearing on the bible means that presidents will be honest.
Seriously. Is he drunk or is that some type of lawyer disease that makes him believe that that will work?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Independent research is a two way street. If jurors are doing this research on their own, it's not going to be brought up in the court case, and there would be no rebuttal since the defendant had no idea what information the juror was collecting independently.There is also no moderation on the Internet, and any information can be posted online, true, false, neutral, or biased.
Combine those two things and you have a juror who can be grossly misinformed but think they're working with facts, and work to convince other jurors with these 'findings.'
If you refuse to sign, are you allowed to go home?
If you find yourself in the jury box or otherwise being questioned by the judge, make sure you inform him/her that one of your hobbies is surfing the Internet.
You will be dismissed.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Actually, based on my uninformed, mysanthropic and cynical view of the current generation, I figure it might have been more like:
Lawyer: "Mr Burns, can you tell us in your own words what... Err... Your honour, the jury is playing with their phones again instead of paying attention!"
Judge: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I remind you that you're supposed to pay attention? Someone's freedom is at stake here."
Jurror 1: "Sorry. I was paying attention."
Lawyer: "Your honour, please ask her what we were talking about."
Prosecution: "Objection!"
Judge: "Overruled. Mrs Smith, can you tell us what the last question to the witness was?"
Jurror 1: "I can has cheezburger? LOL!"
Witness: "Did she actually pronounce 'LOL'?"
Judge: "Silence, please. Ok, I see. Next member of the jury? Can you tell us what was being debated?"
Jurror 2: "Chewbacca defense?"
Lawyer: "What? Your honour, I must..."
Judge: "Silence, please! Next member of the jurry? You, please?"
Jurror 3: "Huh? What?"
Judge: "What are you using that phone for, anyway? I must remind you that you're not allowed to look up any other information about the case than that presented in this court."
Jurror 3: "Ah, nah, my girlfriend was sexting me her breasts. Sorry."
Jurror 2: "Me too."
Jurror 3: "I hope you mean your girlfriend."
Jurror 2: "Nah, yours."
Jurror 3: "Well, your mom was sexting me hers."
Jurror 2: "Dude, mom is dead..."
Jurror 4: "Geesh, guys, cut it out. I was cybering this hot chick and just wrote "your mom" by mistake. Crap."
Jurror 5 blushes and quickly folds his phone and shoves it in the pocket.
Jurror 4: "Crap, now she logged out."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Just last week I was summoned for jury duty. This is maybe the 5th time I've been called up. Each time I was part of a pool of potential jurors. Roll would be taken, then names, presumably at random, would be called to fill the jury box plus extras. These would be examined and various people rejected and new ones called up till they had a jury plus alternates. So far, I've never even been called up to be examined. But this last time, unusually, it took 3 days for a jury to be selected, and the judge kept admonishing us not to twitter or google him or the lawyers or try to find out anything about the case even when we were being selected. On the 2nd or 3rd day he even said it had come to his attention that some of us were texting during the selection process and he said if we were caught doing that the cell phone or whatever would be taken away from us.
Once I remember I was in a conversation with 4 or 5 other people, one of whom happened to be a lawyer, and the subject of some fairly famous case came up, though I don't remember which one now, but apparently people were surprised at the verdict rendered by the jury. The lawyer said that when that happened he'd be inclined to go with the jury because they would be presented with all the evidence, while everyone else would see slanted opinions and speculation in the papers. This was back in the 1980s by the way. Maybe things have changed since then. I understand there was a lawyer who became famous for perfecting the science of jury selection. I found out about her when I happened to read her obituary in the paper (she had died of cancer I believe). I don't remember her name.
In some of the past cases where I was in the jury pool I could tell people were deliberately saying things to get themselves rejected but generally I thought potential jurors were thoughtful and honest during the selection process. Maybe just showing up was enough to indicate you were ready to do your civic duty.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Jurors actually have rights. If you are on a jury you need to know your rights. I suggest you read this:
http://www.fija.org/
Libertas in infinitum
Actually this is incorrect. Jurors are supposed to try the facts, AND, the law. Why? Because if the law is unjust, then it should not be upheld. You should research something called jury nullification. Here is a good place to start-- http://www.fija.org/
Libertas in infinitum
only informed citizens will be able to understand best the facts and expectations surrounding the trial they are participating in. i believe that juries should be sequestered so the media won't bother them, but they should be allowed to research all they want on the internet. some info will be true, and other info will be false, but it's not like lawyers are presenting the truth on trial -- they're producing their VERSION of the facts in order to influence the jury to decide in their favor.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Japan just started having a jury system, so I'm wondering if any of you have advice to give people there, like those at Slashdot Japan?
I served on a jury for a drug case. It ended up in plea bargain by the 2nd day but we found out afterwards that the guy had 9 priors for drug possession and dealing. That would have been nice to know but of course it was never brought up. You can't dispute facts. I don't think it would sway me as long as the facts back up the accusation the whole process really opened my eyes that the jury system needs some revamping. Everyone claimed financial hardships or that they have babies/elderly to take care of so all that was left on the jury was people in good jobs or retired. they wouldn't let us take notes either and many don't. that's a problem to me. I may have a question or something strikes me as a half-truth but i can forget it by the end. juries should be able to ask questions of the witnesses and some states allow it, others don't. I also feel the accused should HAVE to take the stand. if they want to plead the fifth then let them do that on the stand but let the jury hear the questions from the defense and prosecution along with the answers/half answers/pleading the 5th.
Earlier this year I was a juror in a civil trial about a slip-and-fall in a parking lot. Simple stuff, nothing that would have been in the paper, but the case related to the layout of the parking lot where the accident occurred, and it was very tempting to look at the satellite photos on Google Maps (I did so after the trial). I would bet that most cases are like this: relatively few would make it into the media, but for many some potentially relevant information is out there, and requires zero effort to find.
.sig withheld by request
Really? You'd let someone be convicted of murder because of what was on their myspace page? The information presented in a trial isn't all necessarily true, but it is vetted procedurally, and more importantly both sides know what information the jury is getting and thus have the opportunity to respond to it. What if, for example, one side in a trial intentionally posted false information online so that the jury would find and be influence by it? The current system is not perfect, but you've struck upon what may be the stupidest approach to improving it.
.sig withheld by request
This idiot should be disbarred.
The whole point of a Jury is that it a Jury of the Accused Peers. And that means that the whole point of having them is to bring a life experience, similar to that of the accused, into the court room,
Thus the jury is the last defence, for the accused, against overbearing prosecutors, clever lawers, biased judges, stupid or corrupt scientists hawking snake oil, or simply the politically-correct 'go-with-the-flow'. This is why they deliberate in secret and the result is not appealable This is a foundation stone of Anglo-Saxon Common Law. Autrofois Aquit stops the state venue or jury shopping.
If a juror wants to Google, Wiki, or Britanica, or read the Bible, Quran or anything else that is their right and this idiot should STFU.
Justice requires a juror to be impartial, and use only the facts of the case. Simple to deal with this situation: declare a mistrial, and/or hold Googling jurors in contempt of court, with the appropriate fines and jail time that come with that.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
there is too much technology these days to prevent jurors from accessing this information, signed papers wont do it.
instead, they need to add a section to jury briefing to explain WHY the rule was implemented. at the end of the day, jury decides if they'll go on the net or not.
the jury should have interaction with the judge periodically to clarify anything they need clarify. the judge can decide if these questions need to be addressed to a witness or attorney...
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
OK, This just repeats the damage political correctness has done to common sense, so in the rape scenario, the victim's past history is clearly relevant to the present allegation, to pretend otherwise is simply daft, it moves the balance point of a rape accusation, which is why the politically correct dont like it.
The bottom line is that NO always means NO, even for a practised sex-worker, but the prosecution must prove that he/she did say NO, in the circumstances where consent was likely, (jury of peers). The woman is always right stuff is nonsense. What is needed is common sense not more guess work.
First, when jurors enter the courtroom they're searched for personal electronics and any present are removed from their person.
Second they're installed into individual media isolation pods where the only sensory input is send by a bone conduction microphone and not allowed to leave until the trial is over.
Problem solved.
Is this a quote from Neal Stephenson's new book?
Seven years ago when I was on a jury the judge made it a point to tell us that we were not allowed to do certain things including 1) Visting the crime scene and 2) Looking for old newspaper stories about the crime. Doing this would constitute misconduct and possible contempt of court penalties. Today I would expect the bailiff to take control of cell phones etc.
"I'm not exactly sure why a juror should need to sign something for your iPhone but not a newspaper" ;) How much more of these intrusions will we tolerate?
So the a**h*** can then petition the court for the logging from your account when attempting to form the basis for an appeal. REFUSE TO SIGN. What's the worst they can do, kick you off the jury
The Dutch completely changed the spelling of Nederlands about 15 years ago, so like German spell <--> say
eg Name (English) == Nam - ee (German)
Honestly English spelling is the most inconsistent mess on Earth, and is in urgent need of reform.
The right to trial by your peers goes back to Magna Carta, and was principally the right of Peers of the Realm (Lords) to be tried by other Lords rather than by whomsoever it pleased the King to appoint.
"The bottom line is that NO always means NO, even for a practised sex-worker, but the prosecution must prove that he/she did say NO, in the circumstances where consent was likely, (jury of peers)"
And it is claimed: "Nonsense, consent is an affirmative action, not negative one. That is, the person has to have said "YES" not refrained from saying "NO". As such, it seems consent is an affirmative defense, which shifts the onus of proof somewhat.
You are clearly not a lawyer or you would have known/understood that that amounts to filing an affidavit to that effect, which provides evidence to the effect of that was sworn, but exposes the swarer to a charge of perjury if proven false.
First off, I notice you cannot come up with how a sexual history is relevent to a charge of rape. It seems difficult to make a case for it, so I understand your hesitance.
Secondly, you seem to think that filing an affifavit is in any way different from testifying on the stand to the matter. Of course it is "evidence" in the same way that getting called to the stand and stating you are innocent is "evidence". In both cases you have a clear and compelling reason to lie, and the jury can weigh how much they believe you in determining your innocence.
Thirdly, you seem to not understand the concept of an affirmative defense. Although I am not 100% sure, it seems like claiming an alledged rape was consentual would be analogous to claiming self-defense. In that case, you admit the facts, while disputing the legality. As such, you no longer have the same standard for innocence, as the prosecutor has a smaller burden of proof.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Why bother having a trial, at that point? You've completely eliminated the point (having a group of the defendant's peers evaluate the evidence and determine the likelihood of the claims or charges) by completely removing the rules of evidence.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Informed jurors are harder to manipulate. It is important to keep them ignorant.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Just my opinion, but I'd say the whole point of the jury is not only down to the evidence provided by the court. The jury has an effect on the jury too.
Let me explain:
Say for example you've got a small jury of 3 people. One racist white guy (A), one non-racist guy (B), and a black guy (C).
The case happens to have racial undertones. The judge has said that the verdict must be unanimous
Guy A is probably going to jump to conclusions in the case due to his racist nature. Guy C doesn't like the attitude of guy A and thus takes a stance against him. Guy B is there in the middle watching the guys A and C argue over a point.
At some point guy B is likely going to get fed up with the arguing and try to mediate the two....
In reality, the jury size is much bigger than this, thus increasing the chances of hopefully having at least one decent person in there to use their heads in conjunction with the evidence to *hopefully* come to the right verdict.
Maybe I'm trying to be too positive about jury service, but it is something I noticed at least when I did it a few years ago.
My jury summons said I had to leave any cell phones in my car.
The idea that jurors need to be entirely ignorant of the case is a relatively recent invention and arguably a bad idea. If you go back to a time when people lived in such small towns that everybody was likely to know everybody, you find a different notion: that it was good for jurors to know not just the facts but the people involved, because already knowing a witness made it easier to accurately judge the credibility of that person. Turning courts into fact-free zones like they are today makes lawyers and judges more powerful but it's not clear it produces better verdicts.
I play Nerd-Folk!
I was threatened with moderator abuse here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1375693&cid=29486519