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Lawyers Using Facebook Research For Jury Selection
unassimilatible writes "Trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to 'friends only?' Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily 'friending' his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?"
Friend their office? Hahahah, no. If that excludes me from jury duty, so be it.
bah.
If an outside law firm established some kind of quid-pro-quo relationship with jury members I have a feeling any such arrangement would be smacked down by a presiding judge. I can't imagine they will allow this to go forward with the district attorney. The jury should be impartial, and not have any appearance of favoritism of one side over the other. "Friend" the prosecution? I don't think so!
The Jurors aren't on trial and the Attornies shouldn't be able to do anything other than ask specific questions at Voir Dire as they've always done. This is a highly questionable practice they're taking on.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
siting in a room for as low as $5 a day sucks you need something to kill time.
Jurors have no business using wifi while they're serving anyway.
This is only during voir dire - they're not serving yet. They're being picked over like cattle.
granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office
Or, more easily, just offer the entire jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network, and then firesheep their accounts...
You can still restrict comments/information to specific people or everyone but specific people, so I fail to see how this is a good idea. Why not create jobs with your gobs of money by hiring some kind of journalist roles to jury selection that are authorized to follow jurors around? Then after a day of that say, "friend us on Facebook if you don't want this pesky underling following you around." Or better yet, just pay Facebook to have administrative rights to review an user's data.
Is it really that hard to set your information to "friends only" or even "friends of friends"? Unless you hang out with lot of lawyers (I have a couple in my friends list), how much information can they actually gleen from "This person only shares certain information with friends".
I have jury duty on March 10. We'll see how well that goes for them.
But I do know that they're watching twitter.
I sent out a tweet, during one my last jury selection, at lunchtime, that we were in the middle of jury selection.
no specifics, just a "we're at this point in the process"
After lunch, I was called into the chambers and dismissed, because they had seen my tweet and were afraid that I might
engage in "too much" social media and release too much information.
I was surprised that showed up on court that quickly, actually. I don't know how they found it, but I assume
that they're performing near constant searches using jurors names.
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Honestly, I think that a lot of people would do the temporary friending (well in the places that don't allow cell phones with cameras in the court houses...and every cell phone pretty much has a camera in it these days). What I find to be amazing is that people have little regard for personal privacy when it comes to the social networking sites (or just don't understand what it really means to them -- or worse don't care).
This wouldn't work for me, I'm content with my kindle or other e-reader (or a real book) when having to sit and wait. I find it offensive that 'Facebook' among other things can be used during jury selection. While I can understand that the attorneys and the courts want the best representation of unbiased people, I think this will turn into abuse of the system on both sides.
I also would argue that there is nothing "temporary" about friending the office. My guess would be that they will start siphoning down your details and storing them for later. If this is to be permissible, there needs to be strict retention policies set forth by the court on the user data (and this should probably be evaluated in a more formal way).
Granted I didn't read TFA. I should probably do so before posting. But in either case, it worries me that people have so little regard for the data they post online and what is done with it. While I am personally careful to post things that I know I don't mind EVERYONE knowing, I am probably in the minority.
Just my $0.003
Information is not Knowledge.
Sodomy was made legal by the supreme court.
Read a book
I dont understand why they are using and Egyptian newborn to help with this! What does she even know about the legal system?
Until Apple came out with the iANAL!
granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office.
So what if I don't have a Facebook account? Will I be automatically disqualified from serving on the jury?
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't have a Facebook account--nor do I have a Myspace page, LinkedIn profile, or any other social networking connection. I don't even show up in the Google results for my real name until somewhere around the 20th page of results. This is yet another occasion where I'm glad I don't have those potential huge liabilities hanging around my neck, but I have to wonder: would an attorney consider this kind of non-presence a desirable characteristic, or a non-desirable one?
in some places $10 is more then jurys make per day.
Make jury pay more like $100+ per day so you can't buy a vote for pocket chump change.
What's with this assumption that _everyone_ uses Facebook, anyway?
"No, I'm not refusing to hand over my Facebook details; there are none". Won't that be enough?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
That would be called jury tampering were the defense to do it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Let's say I am a juror candidate and at any point in the process a representative from one side of the court were to approach me and says "here is 100,000 dollars, if you become a juror the money is yours if you show favor for my client". Isn't this illegal? What is the different between X amount of money, a wrist watch, a service provided, or free wifi? The answer is nothing in the sense that it is all bribery. If I were a judge make it be known that I would treat this offense to the fullest of my powers.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
"Voir dire" - a French phrase translated as "jury tampering".
Not to be confused with "Very dire" - a common phrase translated as "on trial".
I'm going to set up a Facebook page with a status permanently set to "I can spot a guilty person a mile away!"
That will get me out of jury duty for now... until Facebook is made irrelevant or goes under.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I guess having a Facebook account makes you a more important person in the eyes of this DA...
As others have pointed out, I can't possibly believe that this kind of interaction between DA and potential jurors could be anything but harmful to the DA's court case. It seems like yet another avenue for a defendant's lawyer to as for a mistrial and/or appeal.
coding is life
I don't have any real issue with checking them out on Facebook, or even getting them to friend you if they are dumb enough to do that. I think the line is clearly being crossed by offering them something (in this case internet access) for friending the prosecutor. It sets up a clear divide in the jury pool, as people who have open profiles and those who don't want to allow the prosecutor access don't get internet access. It also puts the defender at a disadvantage, since they obviously now have to offer them something to get the same access.
To me FB is like public records. It is out in the public and if you can see it, then it is fair game. But basically bribing the people to give you access crosses the line.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Just say no, and remind then that they can't access your email, or your home either.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Is this some sort of joke? Lawyers with Ipads? Jurors Tweeting? Please get me out of this alternate hipster universe! Please! I want normalcy!
We may be a bit different here in Indiana, but we don't let the defendants know our names here. The judge was pretty careful about instructing us during the selection process. How could a jury possibly return a guilty verdict in a murder trial if the defendant knew their names and could then extract revenge?
This is just nuts!
Thinking about it, if a lawyer for either side were to ask to friend me or something else, I would immediately tell the judge that I needed to be excluded because I've become prejudiced against that side.
And I would be telling the truth.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
...just mention jury nullification. Prosecutors hate that shit.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Meh. Which is more "fair" in our legal system, a prosecutor or defender who can get intimate and specific details about a potential juror so as to potentially manipulate the outcome, or to accept a jury pretty much randomly?
A "jury of your peers" should not be a studied, exhaustive screening, but a random sampling.
How do you deal with cases like that network admin in California with a randomly selected group of people?
A randomly selected group of people aren't going to understand the nuances of some of the more specialized professions, like IT, unless you define "peers" very narrowly.
If you are called up for jury duty, I might suggest turning up wearing a T-shirt with "GUILTY" emblazoned on front and back. You might spend a day in jail for contempt of court, but I doubt if you'll be admitted to the jury panel.
Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?
Oh yes, because you know we all want to get out of jury duty. No participation in what the government does for me, thanks! Let 'em do whatever they want!
The prosecution bribes potential jurors in exchange for information on their background? There has to be something illegal about that.
I'm a bit curious as to how they are supposed to manage this properly. About half a dozen userIDs pop up if I search my own name under Facebook, and I don't even have an account. It doesn't help that most of these don't post a realistic image of themselves.
...or maybe I turn on the wifi tethering on my unlimited data plan on my phone for everybody to use and carry a couple backup batteries. Being a Texan, I know the courts are corrupt, but... really?
The cheap kindle does wifi only, correct?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
1. jury selection should be done by lot, not hand-picking jurors like drawing a poker hand.
2. so I don't have a facebook account, I guess that makes me some sort of dangerous privacy advocate conspiracy theorist?
3. have you seen what facebook users get into? Heck, having an account ought to disqualify you for being an advocate for the overthrow of the gubbamint.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Except of course that's not the goal of the jury selection process as it stands today. The counsels are not trying to get people who are the most qualified, they are trying to eliminate people who they feel are 'biased' against their position. Where 'biased' frequently means 'having any opinions at all'. And since the prosecution tries to dump anybody who might be sympathetic to the defense and the defense tries to dump anybody sympathetic to the prosecution, you're left with a pool of people who are the wishy-washiest, most indecisive, ignorant, unmotivated, etc. people available. It's a sad state of affairs.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I've never really understood the process of jury selection.
I know the theory is that you 'weed' out people who might have biases... but in the end... is not the process of selecting juries creating another bias.
Better we just stick to true randomness. A random selection of people. Maybe have them at most pass a basic literacy/logic test. Then aim for 80% agreement or something to knock off the oddballs.
In a large portion of trials, especially high profile cases, there will be some evidence that the average person would not understand. That's what expert witnesses are for, not jury selection.
If you are charged with insider trading, you're not entitled to a jury of accountants, MBAs, and I-bankers. You get the same "average" jury as everyone else. Then both sides call experts who explain the technical details in a way a lay person can understand. There is an art to presenting the "right" amount of technical information so that the jury understands the crime, without becoming bored. So, consequently experts who can explain complicated material to lay persons who may or may not have any interest in the topic without sounding condescending, boring, over the top command very high fees.
Even in mundane cases like "possession with intent to distribute" the words don't always comport to a lay understanding. E.g. "Intent" has very little to do with future plans.
Jurors have no business using wifi while they're serving anyway.
This is while they are in selection, before they are serving on a case. Their duties at that point involved sitting there wasting time and being available to answer questions about themselves. There's no reason for them not to be able to use wifi.
Ya but you normally have a few weeks notice for your summons. So I think a person would have enough time to load up on a few books by then.
Lets see. Faust got in a exchange for his immortal soul: Satan himself as his servant.
A facebook befriending gets you a shared wifi hotspot.
Somehow I don't think this will make as good a story.
Probably also at the end God will slap you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They aren't working for the 'citizen' (I assume you mean the one being charged)
in that position, the responsibility of the prosecutor is to represent the values of the community AGAINST the value/decision of the individual.
in a tribe of 10 people, you work stuff out via conversation and with the possibility of expulsion (shunning)
in a tribe of millions, you have a DA who does his best to see the one person at loggerheads is punished.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Does the ability of experts to convince jurors of their views have anything to do with the truth of those views? And hey, Slashdot, why am I typing white on white?
Obligatory XKCD Strip: http://xkcd.com/553 Pirate Bay
http://www.object404.com
That or people who actually want to be on the jury and know how to hide their opinions.
you can do your best without piping the dice, since if you have a good case the conviction should be evident.
The goal of the prosecutor should not be a conviction at any price, it should be justice, and justice is not serve by selecting dimwits to serve on trial.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
The goal of the prosecutor should not be a conviction at any price, it should be justice, and justice is not serve by selecting dimwits to serve on trial.
Right, but in the case mentioned the intelligent people were eliminated by the defense.
So instead of having to forge access, I'm simply given it? Wonder how many facebook IDs I can snoop while waiting for jury selection?
Hmm... wonder if the DA does any online banking?
The point of voir dire is to discover if the potential jurors are predisposed in some fashion (e.g. is a strong advocate of drug use, and it's a drug trial).
If someone has posted repeatedly on the topic (or the person) of the defandant or some of the witnesses in a semi-public forum, shouldn't that be fair game?
Facebook isn't like inviting people into your home, it's somewhere between the newspaper and the watercooler.
Perhaps it's "in scope" or not; obviously someone has to try it, and then the judges have to sort it out (or the Legislative branch has got to get ahead of the curve for a change).
But it doesn't seem Faustian ... and wifi access is sufficiently low value as to no more constitute a bribe than if the Court provides free coffee and water.
it is interesting to know that this is being done; clearly if one does have strongly held beliefs that would influence the selection one might want to actively express it in that forum (or suppress it, depending on one's beliefs about such things)
Seems like the sort of information that the Defense should have as well, so one would think that the Prosecution would have a duty to share redacted results
The same could be said of any profession and their peers, yet no exception is made for them. To make an exception for "technical" professions vs. the rest, you must define tech. How about Moore's Law: any industry that suffers fast depreciation of its assets is allowed to have a jury of only peers.
IT, certainly.
Doctors? Maybe. The human body hardware hasn't changed for a thousand years, but our knowledge of it does.
Lawyers, politicians, managers? Lawyers still use Black's Law Dictionary after a century, and human concepts of fearmongering and cults are still valid after thousands of years. However, a politician could argue with a straight face that the circumstances, within which he uses these tried-and-true methods, change every second.
"How do you deal with cases like that network admin in California with a randomly selected group of people?
A randomly selected group of people aren't going to understand the nuances of some of the more specialized professions, like IT, unless you define "peers" very narrowly."
In San Francisco? You'll be able to find plenty of people who understand it in a trial. They'll definitely be weeded out.
Prosecution wants the defendant to appear to be an unsympathetic obnoxious nerd.
Yeah, we can all play the time machine game and pretend it's still a big likelihood to get a whole bunch of racists on a jury. The simple fact is that right now, today, potential jurors are disqualified because they are screened as not going to tow the line of a particular counsel or even the judge. And peep this dawg, actual examples! Holy shit!
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Ya but you normally have a few weeks notice for your summons. So I think a person would have enough time to load up on a few books by then.
given the issue I'd say you would be better served loading up your fB profile with things like"why prosecutors are evil" and finding some jury nullification advocates to friend... maybe make some pages like this one. You will still have to sit in the jury pool but no prosecutor is going to want you...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
oh, sorry my bad
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Sorry, link failed: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jury-nullification/108547382503300
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
It's worth noting that you have no constitutional right to a jury "of your peers".
The constitution dictates the following regarding juries:
1) Criminal trials must be conducted by jury; (Article 3, Section 2)
2) The right to a "speedy and public trial," by an impartial jury, in addition to some other requirements of the trial; (6th Amendment)
3) Certain federal civil trials (over amounts > $20) guarantee a jury trial; (7th Amendment)
In the ideal sense, a jury of your "peers" would be a random sampling of other citizens - we are all supposed to be equal under the law, and the practice of bringing in "expert juries" is problematic because it could set up protected classes of people for whom specific laws simply don't apply through tacit agreement not to enforce them. Think this could be a problem if a panel of doctors always sit in judgement of malpractice cases, for example? I sure do.
You can argue for a less-invasive voire-dire process, like they have in the UK, where a much stricter justification is required to dismiss a juror, but arguing for expert juries seems like a dangerous road to go down as well. Expert witnesses should be able to explain the issues to lay people. You don't need to know how to perform bypass surgery yourself to understand the facts of a case involving a botched bypass operation. You don't need to know how to construct a routing table on Linux and design a normalized database to be able to understand an issue involving an IT professional refusing to turn over passwords when he is reassigned. Lay people *can* understand these things, and it is the job of the prosecution & defense (along with the expert witnesses they call) to make the facts clear.
I have no Facebook ID.
If they substitute my /. profile, then I guess I'm cool with that. Automatic dismissal from the jury, right?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm sorry, but at what point should people start asking the question "What did we do before the Internet?"
And this "problem" they speak of...a "sudden" need to be able to perform pseudo-background checks instantly and on-the-fly when picking out people for jury duty, is a perfect example of this. If the jury selection process was that broken in the past, then I would have to question the lawmakers reasoning to not revise it sooner, and NOT look towards fucking Farcebook for the "answer".
I see we are not familiar with the concept of an 'example'. OK, lets try this: Executives accused of fraud should be tried by other executives. Record labels accused of not paying artists should be tried by other record labels. Drunk drivers should be tried by people picked up at the local bar.
So you showed a few examples of abuse. So what? No system is perfect. Why don't you show any of the thousands and thousands of examples where the system works like it should. You want to change a system that works the vast majority of the time to one that never works. Sounds like a great idea.
So now prospective jury members are "friends" with the prosecutor, and are in a position to be grateful (read: beholden) to him for getting them special privileges that they would not ordinarily have access to, yet they're still supposed to be impartial?
I imagine the defense attorney will have a ball with this one.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
... no friends, fake personal info, just filled with links to one of the Goatse mirrors...
Because I don't have it and I never will.
It's worth noting that you have no constitutional right to a jury "of your peers".
The constitution dictates the following regarding juries: 1) Criminal trials must be conducted by jury; (Article 3, Section 2) 2) The right to a "speedy and public trial," by an impartial jury, in addition to some other requirements of the trial; (6th Amendment) 3) Certain federal civil trials (over amounts > $20) guarantee a jury trial; (7th Amendment)
In the ideal sense, a jury of your "peers" would be a random sampling of other citizens - we are all supposed to be equal under the law, and the practice of bringing in "expert juries" is problematic because it could set up protected classes of people for whom specific laws simply don't apply through tacit agreement not to enforce them. Think this could be a problem if a panel of doctors always sit in judgement of malpractice cases, for example? I sure do.
You can argue for a less-invasive voire-dire process, like they have in the UK, where a much stricter justification is required to dismiss a juror, but arguing for expert juries seems like a dangerous road to go down as well. Expert witnesses should be able to explain the issues to lay people. You don't need to know how to perform bypass surgery yourself to understand the facts of a case involving a botched bypass operation. You don't need to know how to construct a routing table on Linux and design a normalized database to be able to understand an issue involving an IT professional refusing to turn over passwords when he is reassigned. Lay people *can* understand these things, and it is the job of the prosecution & defense (along with the expert witnesses they call) to make the facts clear.
Best answer in the thread. Thank you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your examples are bullshit. A truly random selection would almost never produce results like that, and the infinitesimally few cases where it might would not outnumber the cases of abuse that are currently happening in every jurisdiction every year. Just doing a hand wave of 'no system is perfect' is bullshit, especially when reasonable changes are articulable and implementable with little effort.
(I also think you're confusing my position with CaptSlaq's. I do not advocate 'qualified juries' of people with certain experience. I merely advocate the removal of subjective barriers to juror selection. A potential juror should not be disqualified because they would make a decision a counsel doesn't like given a set of hypotheticals. They should be disqualified only for a limited set of objective qualities like having been convicted of a felony or having been committed to a mental institution or something of similar substance. Not because they simply happen to have an opinion.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
He's pointing out that your argument seems to be in favor of a "qualified/export" jury of "peers," and that this is a dangerous road to go down.
If you're ever accused of rape, would you want a jury comprised of rape victims and criminal psychologists, who are, after all, "experts" in the particular domains you're on trial for? Likewise, would it be a fair trial if the jury was comprised only of people who had been accused of rape in the past?
If you ever accuse your doctor of malpractice and negligence, would you want a jury to be comprised only of doctors and nurses? Or, if you were a doctor, would you want to see the jury comprised solely of people who had been victims of medical malpractice in the past?
Want only police officers judging your case against a local police department for police brutality, or people who've been subjected to police brutality judging your case if you're the defendant in that suit?
Suddenly, the "disinterested, wishy-washy, no-opinion" doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Given that prosecution & defense counsel both get a set (generally low) number of peremptory challenges, and other dismissals MUST be done "for cause" - e.g., a potential juror has displayed a bias or attitude which would interfere with his or her ability to be impartial - the net result is that you should end up with a group of people who are, at the very least, have professed that they can view the facts of the case with an impartial eye.
The Constitution is a final authority and a starting point, but it is neither the whole of the law nor even, and more importantly, the whole of Constitutional Law. The Constitution and its Amendments have to be examined in light of each other, and in the light of the whole of case law. The Sixth Amendment, after all, has been greatly affected by the Fourteenth Amendment (which you don't even mention as a Constitutional aspect relating to juries, but such important SCotUS cases as Batson v. Kentucky, Taylor v. Louisiana and Miller-El v. Dretke disagree with your omission. Hell, without Duncan v. Louisiana, the Sixth Amendment wouldn't even be incorporated to apply universally outside of the federal court system). Current Constitutional case law does, in effect, constitute a right to a jury of one's peers as developed by the equal protection clause.
I do, however, concur with the rest of your sentiment. It does remain the role of expert testimony to guide lay jurors and that is a far superior arrangement to an 'expert jury'.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Higher standards for voire dire dismissal would certainly be a reasonable thing, but you did seem to be advocating for the notion of "qualified" experts on the jury, as well. I read your initial post that way, it sounds like bws111 also interpreted it that way.
Peremptory challenges aren't an endless process, however - each side generally has a set number of peremptory challenges they can use, and other dismissals must be "for cause" - so, the defense and prosecution both get to remove a few people that they consider likely to be hostile to their case, and then beyond that, they must provide a justification that shows how the juror isn't able to be impartial, and the judge must agree with that assessment.
I'm not sure that your two links to two decisions from 2007 really support your assertion that there's "widespread abuse" going on as a result of the voire-dire process as it stands today --
1) The first is an appellate court decision which remands the case to the trial court for a new trial: in other words, the "abuse" of the voire-dire process was corrected on appeal, and a new trial was ordered. To me, this sounds like the system is absolutely working as designed, and where a court makes an incorrect interpretation of statute, they are overruled on appeal;
2) The second is, again, an appellate decision. In it, several issues are considered, including the dismissal of jurors, in which the defense asserts that several jurors who were dismissed "for cause" should have counted towards peremptory challenges, and that 2 other dismissals should have been disallowed under peremptory dismissal as a result of the defendants' Batson motion. The appeals court disagreed with both of these motions, citing numerous decisions which support the dismissal of the jurors.
So, one decision finds an issue with the juror selection and issues a retrial; another finds no issues, and that the system worked as intended, and in accordance with established precedent. Neither really show that there is some sort of systemic abuse as a result of the voire-dire process.
He's pointing out that your argument seems to be in favor of a "qualified/export" jury of "peers," and that this is a dangerous road to go down.
See above.
Suddenly, the "disinterested, wishy-washy, no-opinion" doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Ever heard of the golden mean? Instead of the false dichotomy between 'expert jurors' who represent a vested interest opposed to the common good and 'ignorant jurors' who don't care about anything and so do not represent a "threat" to either counsel or the court, how about we consider only weeding out juror candidates based on an objective standard (felonies, insanity, etc.), and take the rest warts/opinions and all? That would sure as hell give me more confidence in the process.
Given that prosecution & defense counsel both get a set (generally low) number of peremptory challenges
In federal trials the defense gets ten. That's enough to eliminate effectively an entire jury at a stroke. State and lower courts vary by jurisdiction. And the 'for cause' as I have already illustrated in examples from official court documents is not limited to simple 'impartiality' unless that now includes eliminating hypotheticals that counsels don't like. It's not like those jurors were prejudging specific persons, groups, etc. They were being fed abstract scenarios, and if the counsel(s) didn't like their responses, that was 'cause'. Bullshit.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Sure, that wasn't intended to be a comprehensive review. My point was that there is actually no right to a jury "of your peers" listed in the constitution, since there seems to be a lot of "it's my right to a jury of my peers, and my peers aren't the great unwashed masses, it's smart people in the IT industry," in this thread. The jury is supposed to be impartial, and under the law, your "peers" are your fellow citizens, not whatever narrowly defined interest group people are trying to set up as the only people capable of judging their guilt.
There's no practical way (and no valid rational reason) to limit a peer group to "IT professionals only" unless the argument is made for expert juries, and expert juries come with a host of other possible issues and abuses, and I think we're in agreement that expert juries would be worse than the current system.
When serving on a jury, you can use jury nullification to actually change how laws are enforced, by helping establish precedent, and by helping people being harassed with unjust laws. It happened all the time during alcohol prohibition, and its re-surging right now, as more citizens get sicker of the direct and indirect negative results from drug prohibition.
Direct bribery / campaign contributions / money from corporations was recently deregulated further than before under the guise of the First Amendment protecting citizens freedom of speech. So, the "representative" parts of our government are even less so than they ever were. The executive and bureaucratic realms are, of course, completely unaccountable, and most directors of regulatory agencies have lovely jobs awaiting them after retirement in the industries they regulated.
Serving on a jury is the last and only power afforded the citizens by the government. Any citizen actually aware of this power is a citizen the government doesn't want there. Any citizen capable of rational thought, or with a real sense of right and wrong versus "legal==right, illegal==wrong" is not someone a lawyer wants on a jury... lawyers and prosecutors both work in emotional manipulation and have no use for logical jurors.
During voire dire, if you want on that jury, you keep your eyes wide and your head nodding whatever direction the lawyer / prosecutor wants. Keep your answers in the form that Joe-sixpack would provide. Do not friend them on Facebook. They will take that power away from you with a quickness if they think you are anyone other than Joe-sixpack. You might be someone's only hope of justice prevailing, and you might just impact the enforcement plans or even the validity of an unjust law while you serve on that case.
That I provided examples at all is already magnitudes beyond the idle opinions elsewhere in this thread. Yes, sometimes the system works and self-corrects, but sometimes it doesn't. How many would I have to come up with before you'd be convinced? This is /. FFS. It's not worth the time to dig up hundreds of examples. Neither of us is going to use it productively to accomplish any kind of change.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Sure, as I said elsewhere, I certainly wouldn't disagree with raising standards for dismissal, or even reducing the number of peremptory challenges - make each one count more.
If we were to restrict all challenges to only a small set of objective criteria, however, the question becomes whether or not the jury size is large enough that you can reasonably expect a "golden mean" that's reflective of an impartial public's decision if the jury composition is *entirely* random. The smaller the jury size, the easier it is for a couple people with strong opinions to skew its decision and discussion. So the question would then become - how large should the jury be, and does the minimum statistically valid jury size present logistical and administrative issues that would prevent it from being a reasonable alternative? And if so... how do you address those issues?
This just shows another failure of the Jury System by proxy of the ignorance of the People.
A Jury of your peers in its original meaning is to be a jury composed of people that have a good chance of knowing who or what you are in some fashion and living near or in your area. You are not guaranteed an impartial jury, that is just psuedo law that has brainwashed itself into everyone's legalese. Your are guaranteed a quick and speedy trail by a jury of your peers. The founders had every intention of YOU being JUDGED by PEOPLE that KNOW YOU! So yes, if you pretty much act a douche and break the law, you are at risk of getting your trousers pulled to your knees in retribution!
In all reality it is impossible to get a jury of peers that are impartial! Our legal system needs to start spending a lot more time on ridding itself of the contradictions that litter our entire legal social society!
Also, for those of you who pride themselves on getting out of Jury Duty. You should have your right to vote permanently stripped or deported if possible or just plain shot dead on the spot! Serving on a Jury is your LAST CHANCE to prevent your Government from becoming a Tyrannical Dictatorship! You will NEVER have a more important role or duty to your Nation than to serve as Juror. This role is more important than even service in the Armed Forces! ONLY "We the People, For the People, By the People!" can assure our freedoms! The Military will only protect the nation, there is no chance the Military will assault the Whitehouse if The Constitution is trampled upon to restore our Freedom!
True, though some sort of review that indicates the scope of the problem might be more helpful than a couple individual examples.
As I said above, the question becomes one of logistics and administration: if we were to move to a truly, completely random jury (aside from ruling out a few objective criteria, e.g. prior felonies & mental illness), how large does it need to be to achieve the golden mean? And if the number required for achieving a statistically valid expectation of that desirable "average" opinion is too large - what then? Either we restrict the jury to a manageable size and maintain a more aggressive voir dire process, or we accept that our juries will, at least some % of the time, not reflect "average" sentiment or belief because they are not large enough to assume that they are representative of the population they come from.
on my Facebook page, I'll get high-profile Mafia cases?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I have never used Facebook and do not have a Facebook ID either. So, perhaps I would also be dismissed due to the lack of information about me. I don’t think they would be able figure out my Slashdot ID, and I would not offer it to them in exchange to access to their WiFi network.
How else are they supposed to live tweet the court proceedings?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
with an impartial eye.
Yep, nailed it: left eye doesn't work, doesn't point straight; I am asymmetrical, and therefore am chosen neither for jury duty nor mating rituals.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I'm more into making things
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The prosecutor is under pressure to perform. Not winning cases looks bad because it leaves another crime unsolved/unpunished and wastes public money on a failed prosecution. As some state prosecutors are chosen by elected officials (AIUI, IANAA) there is a direct line from the voters to the person in that job.
Similarly the defender is motivated by having a high win/loss ratio and thus being able to get more work and charge higher fees.
In the UK judges are not directly elected and their failure to match the public mood usually does not reflect on those who appointed them, but in the US where they are elected even they have pressure to put someone away for a particularly bad crime.
Accountability is great, but only if those who you are accountable to understand the nature of your job and why you make each decision.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
She has a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics. She couldn't get out of a summons to Federal court, so she was working all night at the observatory, sometimes two or three nights in a row, then driving over two hours to Las Cruces, just to sit around and never be selected. They have no conception of hardship exclusions where having to make this drive after working like that actually jeopardized her life. Then again, New Mexico has such a small areal population that they might only be able to dismiss people under the most severe of circumstances.
They also don't want people who are too smart or analytical. Myself, I worked for a police department for nine years doing database, that's also pretty much an automatic disqualification.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I do not have a cite, but there was a network engineer on the jury for Terry Childs' case. I think that would almost have had to be a requirement, otherwise the jurors would have been totally lost on the technical aspects of the charges.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.