Juror's Tweets Overturn Trial Verdict

D H NG writes "The Arkansas Supreme Court had overturned a murder conviction due to a juror tweeting during the trial. Erickson Dimas-Martinez was convicted in 2010 of killing a teenager and was sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed the case on account of a juror tweeting his musings during the trial and because another juror nodded off during the presentation of evidence. Tweets sent include 'The coffee here sucks' and 'Court. Day 5. here we go again.' In an opinion, Associate Justice Donald Corbin wrote 'because of the very nature of Twitter as an... online social media site, Juror 2's tweets about the trial were very much public discussions.' Dimas-Martinez is to be given a new trial."

Comments

Uh oh.

[Hartree]

I've got jury duty next week.

I'll have to remember not to complain about the coffee.

Re:Uh oh.

[Gunfighter]

Please be sure to read up on the concept of jury nullification before you go. You have more power in the jury box than any other individual in the justice system.

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

Yes, read up on it so you can make sure you and your fellow jurors don't do it. It is anathema to the concept of Justice.

Re:Uh oh.

[hedwards]

That's every bit as much an abuse of the system as the DA that includes questionable evidence or testimony.

When something goes to trial the plaintiff or prosecutor and the defense agree to a set of ground rules which include the jury only acting within their power and on the basis of the evidence given. Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice as the prosecutor/plaintiff has to then worry about the opinions of the jury as to whether or not the defendant should be guilty, not whether or not they did it.

Re:Uh oh.

[rubycodez]

bullshit, whether or not it produces or hinders justice would depend on how it was used.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The possibility of it is actually *required* for the system to be just. You appear to confused about the concept.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice

You clearly do not understand jury nullification. It *increase* justice, it doesn't make it harder to obtain justice. The jury can refuse to convict someone of an unjust law. Many laws are either not just, or are not just when applied to a particular circumstance where other factors were involved. In such cases, the jury has the power to nullify the unjust law.

It's disturbing that so many people are unaware of their moral and ethical obligations in this space.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with judging the law as well. If someone doesn't think drug use should be illegal then why should it be desirable to help the DA get convictions of drug users? You talk about that as if that wasn't the whole point!

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

Nullification is a jury ignoring the law in favor of their personal preferences. That is not what a jury is there to do. They are not charged with weighing what the law says, only whether it applies and whether the defendant is guilty of it.

If nullification is used, then the defendant goes free and nothing is changed. The next guy who breaks that unjust law might not be so lucky. That's not justice. "The system" has the appellate process for determining the rightness and wrongness of laws. The only way to change a wrong law from the jury box is to vote to convict so that the case can be appealed up the chain.

Re:Uh oh.

[munitor]

Jury nullification is a myth. The practice became widespread during Prohibition. When it saw a resurgence during the War On Drugs, judges quickly clamped down. It doesn't exist.

Re:Uh oh.

[TheLink]

If nullification is used, then the defendant goes free and nothing is changed.

At the very least the defendant would disagree with you ;).

Re:Uh oh.

[VAElynx]

Bullshit.
The precise reason the jury is allowed to do this is to make sure the law stands up to the scrutiny of the common people ,as well as to make sure whether he's guilty or not.
The next guy who breaks the unjust law has a precedent on his hands in the case you described above.
But I don't wonder.. the above opinion is exactly the sort the lawyers and judges want you to have, because they don't want any common sense injected into their meddling with justice.

Re:Uh oh.

[theshowmecanuck]

Are you one of those guys who argues about everything so you can say "it depends" when that is implied in just about everything we state? Is life just one big set of edge cases to you? Some people generalize because generalizations work most of the time, let us get on with our lives, and don't make us look like putzes by arguing about everything with "it depends." Should I look both ways before crossing a busy street? Uhhhhh, let's see, it depends. Stop talking like you're 'tarded enough to need to wear depends.

Re:Uh oh.

[xouumalperxe]

Jury nullification can serve a higher sense of justice, and that was indeed its intended purpose. But it can just as easily be used, say, by a white jury to pardon a white man for murdering a black man.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, read up on it so you can make sure you and your fellow jurors don't do it. It is anathema to the concept of Justice.

"It is not only his [the juror's] right, but his duty . . . to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.--John Adams

"The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."--John Jay (Joint-author of the Federalist Papers and first U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice)

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."--Thomas Jefferson

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction...if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong.--Alexander Hamilton, 1804

"....it is usual for the jurors to decide the fact, and to refer the law arising on it to the decision of the judges. But this division of the subject lies with their discretion only. And if the question relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact."--Thomas Jefferson

Re:Uh oh.

[theArtificial]

When something goes to trial the plaintiff or prosecutor and the defense agree to a set of ground rules which include the jury only acting within their power and on the basis of the evidence given. Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice as the prosecutor/plaintiff has to then worry about the opinions of the jury as to whether or not the defendant should be guilty, not whether or not they did it.

We have a legal system, not justice. A very important distinction. Otherwise we wouldn't have DAs who are measured by their conviction rates, "success" stacked towards those with the most money, innocents executed, being held without a trial etc.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's every bit as much an abuse of the system as the DA that includes questionable evidence or testimony.

When something goes to trial the plaintiff or prosecutor and the defense agree to a set of ground rules which include the jury only acting within their power and on the basis of the evidence given. Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice as the prosecutor/plaintiff has to then worry about the opinions of the jury as to whether or not the defendant should be guilty, not whether or not they did it.

Jury Nullification is part of the rules and upheld by the Supreme Court, not an abuse of power.

Re:Uh oh.

[_0xd0ad]

Nullification is a jury ignoring the law in favor of their personal preferences.

Correct.

That is not what a jury is there to do. They are not charged with weighing what the law says, only whether it applies and whether the defendant is guilty of it.

Wrong. Absolutely and unarguably false, and quite frankly a dangerous lie.

"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." -- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone

It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams

Jury nullification is our last defense against tyranny. When the legislative branch creates unjust laws, the judicial branch allows them to stand, and the executive branch enforces them, it is the juror's moral duty to refuse to convict. That is the sole reason for juries to exist. -- Me

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That assumes that the judges in question are willing to vote for what's 'right'. That doesn't always happen. The idea of a Jury of one's peers is that you are tried not just on the law, but also on public opinion. It's not black and white, and that's the point.

You may not think it's right, but these powers weren't put in place to be 'right'. They were put in place because they are a fundamental part of human society and nature.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's usually, "Well I feel like I need to offer something insightful here so I can be the brilliant contrarian and net some mod points... and the only way to do that is by puking out some bizarre edge case."

The really bad ones don't even get as far as to offer the contradictory situation. It's all just noise, and the folks that do this in the real world end up friendless.

Re:Uh oh.

[DarkOx]

Like anything it can be abused. That is why there are 12 or more members of jury. It provides a pretty adequate check on the power of any one juror. So one crazy that thinks practically every law should never be enforced is not easily able to run away with nullification.

Nullification is rarely needed but very important to justice in those situations where the law as written fails to fairly describe a situation. Most likely because the legislators did not envision it or perhaps because a special interest *bought* it. I am glad I live in a nation where if I stood trial and 12 of my peers can agree that if they had been in my situation they'd have done the same and it would have been the right thing, I would go free.

Yes a prosecutor can decide not to bring charges, but \s?he is one person who faces all kinds of varying pressures, from different places. The jury on the other hand is 12 unknown people who's identities are hopefully not widely knowable at least until after the trial is concluded.

Re:Uh oh.

[VAElynx]

What else will you say, Mr. Demagogue?
Quite opposite - a just law must stand up to the scrutiny of the people, it must be clearly just. Only people with behind the scenes agenda and lawyer cliques are against such a factor entering the game , because it makes subverting Justice to further their goals harder.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's explicitly given in the Georgia state Constitution that the Jury may determine both the facts and the law.

Re:Uh oh.

[rubycodez]

As we move towards a police state, jury nullification can be a valuable weapon in the war for liberty against oppressive laws that should not be enforced. That is just one example out of many situations where jury nullification is a great thing.

Re:Uh oh.

[Attila Dimedici]

You are wrong. The point of a jury is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty". There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. A UID dick size comment? You epitomize the sheer shittiness and fuckheadedness of geekdom. You are geek filth to many decimal places.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the law. It doesn't matter what the case is, who it is, what they're being done for: vote not guilty, don't let them convict them. We need this kind of solidarity. Imagine if jurors refused to ever convict anyone because everybody collectively realised that the justice system is a load of bollocks?

Re:Uh oh.

[orphiuchus]

... Then criminals would be able to do whatever they wanted all the time. You know, the reason that every society on earth going back to Ur has had a justice system?

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends.

Re:Uh oh.

[grumling]

It's unlikely the OP will be seated on a case that has anything to do with constitutional law.

If the OP's experience is anything like what I've had happen in the past, it involves a lot of waiting around and a general loss of faith in humanity.

Re:Uh oh.

[bhcompy]

Yes, but people on the internet argue for jury nullification for drug dealers and the like, because marijuana being illegal is a "crime" itself.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jury Nullification is why we even fucking HAVE juries in the first place. When the British didn't like American juries refusing to convict obviously guilty parties under terrible fucking laws, they fought against juries. Having juries was one of the big reasons we had a revolution, and it remains the final and real check on the limitless expansion of government and tyranny.

The fact that you can be thrown off a jury for mentioning it is fucking disgusting.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong. The point of a jury judge is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury judge does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty".

FTFY.

There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."

You already practically say it yourself: This arbitraryness is exactly the problem of a legal system with a jury. It breaks the concept of legal certainty and introduces peer pressure and a risk of discrimination to the court room.

Re:Uh oh.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

But I don't wonder.. the above opinion is exactly the sort the lawyers and judges want you to have, because they don't want any common sense injected into their meddling with justice.

Not true. "Common Sense" is given a ridiculous, unjust, and unjustified weight in the courtroom. Jurors are expected to rely on their "common sense" in making their evaluations, to a point where courts will rarely let you present any evidence showing that "common sense" is wrong. Courtrooms are about narrative, about selling a story, about appealing to common sense. It doesn't matter if everyone on the jury is wrong because they have an unjustified belief in the fidelity of eyewitness testimony or of a written document. It just matters what they think. What does their "common sense" tell them about what happened?

Interestingly, laypeople and engineer types sometimes diverge significantly in their verdict. I remember one guy who was on a jury where the defendant incinerated his wife's body. Hung jury because the laypeople didn't believe he'd killed her.

Re:Uh oh.

[theshowmecanuck]

And the OP was saying make sure to read up on the concept so that the person going on jury duty doesn't do something nullify the jury. Having unnecessary retrials is also a bad thing, both in terms of justice and as waste of a lot of people's time and money. Doing the kinds of things that nullify a jury is anathema to justice. For example, like making and receiving tweets about a trial you are on the jury for. YOU are the one who is supposed to listen and make the verdict based on the fact of the case in front of you, not your twitter followers and their opinions (which have the possibility of influencing you). But we already know that nullification can be good or bad depending on how it is used. Just about everything we talk about depends on how 'it' is used, it is generally implied. So to argue 'it depends' all the time is pointless.

Re:Uh oh.

[canajin56]

The system has no process for determining the rightness and wrongness of a law. Only it's constitutionality. So if there was a law putting to death all people not of the "correct" faith, that would get overturned. But if there was a law putting people away for 10 years for possessing a gram of marijuana, that's fine. Already been ruled on, you can carry physical objects across state lines, so the federal government has unlimited power in regards to anything involving any physical object. No grounds for appeal whatsoever.

The Jury is there to decide on the facts of the case. One of the core facts in dispute in any case is that "This law should apply to this situation" and if you take that away from them, you might as well do away with the Jury entirely.

Re:Uh oh.

[History's Coming To]

It's anathema to justice by a rigid written framework. It's entire purpose is to allow natural justice, a get-out clause that allows a jury to say "yes, we understand that as the law stands you're guilty, but the exceptional circumstances or our belief that the law is not just in this case allows us to find you not guilty."

It utterly relies on jurors taking their role seriously. The alternative is a very hardline system with no give in it, and we regularly see where that takes us. (Hint, Godwin et al)

Re:Uh oh.

[_0xd0ad]

Know what they got Al Capone for? Tax evasion.

Re:Uh oh.

[brain159]

He's ignorant - but, as someone with a lower UID than you, I find you guilty of being a cockbag.

Re:Uh oh.

[Hartree]

One of the most common uses of jury nullification over the history of the US in some areas was to insure that if a white man killed a black they would have little chance of being convicted.

Interesting to know that you support that, Gunfighter.

Re:Uh oh.

[jonbryce]

Jury nulification means finding the defendant innocent regardless of the evidence against them. This is something jurors have a constitutional right to do. If you don't think the act the defendant was charged with should be against the law, you can find them not innocent even if it is absolutely obvious they did it.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "not guilty"

Re:Uh oh.

[TrekkieGod]

Jury nullification can serve a higher sense of justice, and that was indeed its intended purpose. But it can just as easily be used, say, by a white jury to pardon a white man for murdering a black man.

I've heard that argument before, but that's not a problem with jury nullification. It's a problem with jury selection. If you're dealing with a racially motivated crime and the jury all belongs to the same ethnicity, you have a problem.

Re:Uh oh.

[chrb]

It *increase* justice, it doesn't make it harder to obtain justice. The jury can refuse to convict someone of an unjust law.

It is not logical to conclude that because a jury is empowered to override laws, then the level of justice must be increased. The jury could refuse to convict someone who is guilty of a just law, or convict an innocent person because they have some (racial, ethnic, gender) bias against that person.

However, I would be willing to accept the hypothesis that in the majority of cases a jury empowered to override the law would use it to increase justice, if you can provide evidence that this is the case. Is there any research on jury nullification that classifies the jury result into "more/less justice", and if so, what is the ratio of juries that do the right thing, versus juries that do the wrong thing?

Re:Uh oh.

[FatdogHaiku]

Jury nulification means finding the defendant innocent regardless of the evidence against them. This is something jurors have a constitutional right to do. If you don't think the act the defendant was charged with should be against the law, you can find them not innocent even if it is absolutely obvious they did it.

Please, please do not find me "not innocent"...

Your Honor, We the jury find the defendant "Not Innocent" by reason of dyslexia!

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

i get into this argument all the time. while it may be technically correct to state 'juries are only finders of fact' the reality is that the 4th amendment and double jeapordy laws give rise to jury nullification. Regardless of what the jury is told they are at trial for, embodied in each individual is a sense of justice, and manditory minimums for people dealing MJ, stealing food for their families, or any other punishments that are not held to be just can and will be declared VOID by juries regardless of the facts of the case.

nullification can be used for good and bad, it was a factor in repealing prohibition and in prolonging the civil rights crisis. It truthfully cannot be denied without removing an essential part of the constitution. The fact that juries are not told about their powers to nullify is an indication that the public at large isn't trusted. Stretching further it likely means that there are a number of laws on the books which would not be found to be just, and judges/lawyers do not want the public input regarding 'their laws'. it is legal elitism, which is nonsense at its face because the legal process is achieved down through our elected representatives. It is one of the only ways to say, enough with this BS, and to make it stick, even if it only helps one person!

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

NOW we see what your problem is. You don't know what jury nullification means. Maybe you should just shut up.

Re:Uh oh.

[joocemann]

So I tell my wife on Monday "this sucks, I'm going down to the courts for some jury selection process... I hope I'm not selected".

On Friday, she says "have a good day at work", to her I reply "oh, I'm not going to work, but I can't talk about what I'm doing." Concerned, she inquires more deeply about what I'm up to.

Unfortunately, because of a mention of the quality of coffee, and mere presence at a jury leading to cases being overturned, I am now legally obliged not to tell her anything at all.

Two weeks go by, my workplace is inquiring about where I've been. I would like to be paid during the time I serve jury duty, as some laws have supported, but I can't even tell them. trials have been overturned for a simple mention of being on jury duty.... there is too much at stake for anyone to know where I am.

After a few weeks my wife files paperwork for divorce and I receive termination letters from my employer! If only it was permitted to say where I was going! I'm doomed! I just can't break the Dimas precedent!

Re:Uh oh.

[Just Some Guy]

Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice as the prosecutor/plaintiff has to then worry about the opinions of the jury as to whether or not the defendant should be guilty, not whether or not they did it.

I want this. I want prosecutors to hesitate before bringing charges against someone who may be guilty of breaking a law without actually having done anything wrong.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but people on the internet argue for jury nullification for drug dealers and the like, because marijuana being illegal is a "crime" itself.

As a person who uses the internet, I agree. Marijuana should not be illegal and I could not, in good conscience, vote to convict someone of breaking the law that prohibit marijuana possession or sale. Such action would directly conflict with my own moral standards, and in my opinion, it would be a crime against humanity to allow another human being to be imprisoned for marijuana, regardless of what the law suggests. This would be exactly the type of situation where jury nullification is necessary. It takes a long time to change the law; why should we, as citizens and jurors, facilitate the destruction of innocent lives for trivial nonviolent "offenses" simply because these unjust, outdated laws are still on the books?

Re:Uh oh.

[westlake]

Please be sure to read up on the concept of jury nullification before you go. You have more power in the jury box than any other individual in the justice system.

Oregon --- for example --- no longer requires a unaminous verdict even in the most horrendous of murder cases.

You want to play the lone hold-out?

Get yourself a job in dinner theater.

The system is weighted against jury nullification because nullification freed the Klansman and hanged the black man.

It always favors the home town boy against the outsider.

The oddball, the dork, the nerd and the geek get it in the neck. Every time.

Re:Uh oh.

[Ixokai]

Or, more often -- at least historically -- "this guy should not be punished because he's white, and he killed a nigger".

Jury nullification is an important power; its a check on Government power and authority. The government can pass all kinds of laws based on weak justification and they can be challenged only on Constitutionality and not /rightness/, and can enforce those laws in all kinds of ways; both fairly and unfairly. The People have only two direct checks on that power: the ability to vote for someone else, and the ability to nullify a law that the Government has passed by refusing to convict.

Unfortunately, its also a power which can and has been used for VERY bad reasons, and its a power which throws a wrench into the legal system itself -- so the legal system tries to steer people away from it. As it should, in my opinion. Its too easy to abuse. People can still do it, they just don't need that pointed out in every trial or forum.

Not every right needs to be stated upfront. If you're not intelligent enough to know that no matter what the Judge says, you can say "not guilty"; that no matter what the law says, you need to follow your conscience -- then I'm terribly afraid that you're probably going to say "not guilty' for the wrong reasons.

Re:Uh oh.

[Baloroth]

If we exist in a police state, jury nullification will do nothing whatsoever, as if it works then it isn't a a police state. If it doesn't work, then it is a police state... but again, nothing happens. Jury nullification is only good for overturning specific unjust laws, not for reversing the course of the entire nation.

Re:Uh oh.

[mysidia]

Only read up on jury nullification / subscribe to that legal theory, if you are prepared to get removed from the jury. Judges have firmly rejected jury nullification.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Judges almost unanimously get around this by requiring people to swear an oath to the effect that they will follow the judges instructions. The judges then interpret the law for the jurors and instruct them to use that interpretation in determining guilt or innocence. So to make it to the jury and use jury nulllification you have to lie.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

OTOH you had southern juries who'd refuse to convict people of murdering blacks back in the bad old days.

Things are never as simple as Internet Libertarians think they are.

Re:Uh oh.

[Brett Buck]

Be sure to read the part where jury nullification is illegal.

Re:Uh oh.

[Errtu76]

Totally off-topic, but this seems like a good place to ask. Since I'm not a US citizen, I wonder if you can object to this jury duty thing. For example, I'm a Buddhist and don't want to make a decision that impacts someone else's life drastically. Can I object using this reason?

Re:Uh oh.

[Attila Dimedici]

I would agree with that summation. Although, I believe there are times when the government gets to the point where people need to be reminded of this power. I believe that we are in one of those times because government overreach is such that enforcement of many laws has become, for all intents and purposes, arbitrary.

Re:Uh oh.

[Tacvek]

Judges rule on Law, but Juries do not rule on facts in criminal cases. [1] If juries ruled on facts they would be required to give their verdicts like so:

We find that there is no reasonable doubt that the defendant physically caused the death of Jane Smith, that there is no reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to cause grievous bodily harm or death, and that there is reasonable doubt that the actions were premeditated. Therefore, in accordance with the law as outlined by the Judge, on the charge of first degree murder we find the defendant Not Guilty. In accordance with the law as outlined by the Judge, on the charge of Second Degree murder, we find the defendant Guilty.

We however do not require juries to state a verdict like that, which means that juries inherently rule on both law and facts, since there is nothing to prevent them from doing otherwise.

Footnote:
[1] They do frequently do so in civil cases, since special jury verdict forms can be used, which require them to explicitly rule on individual facts.

Re:Uh oh.

[bryan1945]

I don't know what state you're in, but as far as I know you can tell people (wife, boss) you are on a jury. Can't tell them for what. They don't make you just disappear. If this is sarcasm, bad attempt. If you're being serious, let's see a citation.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a problem with jury selection.

The jury is selected randomly. There is a ~30% chance that a 10%-minority will not be represented on the jury.

Re:Uh oh.

[russotto]

When something goes to trial the plaintiff or prosecutor and the defense agree to a set of ground rules which include the jury only acting within their power and on the basis of the evidence given.

Everything the defendant "agrees to" is under duress. If he refuses to co-operate with the system, the system will simply continue to operate to convict and sentence him. There is no deal.

The way I look at it, if I am placed on a jury (under duress, as jury duty is compulsory) where the defendant is unquestionably in violation of the law, but the law is something I feel is unjust, I really have only two choices -- I can ratify the injustice by voting "guilty", or I can deny or delay the injustice by voting "not guilty". To me, the choice is easy; I will not willingly facilitate injustice.

Re:Uh oh.

[bryan1945]

You can't reject out of hand. You need to show up, and maybe they'll call you into the courtroom. If you get selected, you're normally asked various questions by the prosecution, defense, and sometimes the judge. If you say something like "I can't judge this fairly," there's a good chance you're not going to be on the jury.

Re:Uh oh.

[heinousjay]

There can be no certainty in the law by its nature, since the entire system is arbitrarily constructed by capricious individuals. Legislators are just barely held to the Constitution, never mind logic.

Lawyers and lawmakers are a sort of engineer, excepting that the natural physical universe does not constrain them to reality, so they can get as crazy-stupid as they like with it. I'd say they're celebrating that fact.

Re:Uh oh.

[Above]

There are 4 boxes to protect your democracy.

Soap box, ballot box, jury box, and ammo box.

Please use them in that order.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually "historically", jury nullification was used by jurors in free states to deny prosecution of those who harbored escaped slaves. Jury nullification is not "law x is good but I don't want person y to be convicted". It is rather an address of law x.

Prejudice is not jury nullification. The only way it is related to jury nullification is that the constitutional structure requires the offer of juries so that jury nullification can occur. The actions of courts to suppress the notion of nullification is just another end run around the constitution. A panel of experts would be better for determining facts. The original authors of the constitution were not stupid and knew this. The question is not whether nullification can be misused. It is whether we have a more just society with it or without it. I say we are better off with it as misuse can be addressed by public debate and awareness but where we destroy nullification the government can more easily force immoral justice in opposition to the moral accomplishment of the society. If is a fundamental question of whether the government is an expression of the people or an entity in and of itself that rules people. I hope you see that the original authors were particularly sensitive about such matters and gave them considerable consideration.

Re:Uh oh.

[ravenshrike]

Anathema to the concept of pure Law perhaps, but integral to the concept of Justice, which is by definition something more than just Law.

Re:Uh oh.

[ravenshrike]

Also, when the cops are obviously corrupt and reading scripted lines in order to properly follow even Law one must resort to jury nullification.

Re:Uh oh.

[Wrath0fb0b]

You clearly do not understand jury nullification. It *increase* justice, it doesn't make it harder to obtain justice. The jury can refuse to convict someone of an unjust law. Many laws are either not just, or are not just when applied to a particular circumstance where other factors were involved. In such cases, the jury has the power to nullify the unjust law.

Yeah, how dare those prosecutors think they can convict a white man for killing a negro as murder? There are obviously particular circumstances (he whistled at a white girl) and factors (negros have been particularly uppity since the end of WWII, thinking that because we fought for democracy in France they ought to have it in Alabama) that make the conviction particularly unjust.

Remember, it goes both ways -- if a jury has the power to nullify because they believe that the law shouldn't prohibit the act in question for reasons that you approve, then they have the power to do so for reasons you find repugnant. Be careful what you wish for.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should learn to read before commenting? The poster you're replying to didn't say you live in a police state - even if I would argue you are far closer to being a (neo-)facist plutocrature than you realize. He said you're moving in that direction. In his world, all is not lost yet.

Re:Uh oh.

[hedwards]

It cuts both ways, if we allow the jury to do anything more than measure the evidence we introduce all sorts of bias into the system. Folks these days forget that back in the early party of the 20th century there was little point in charging white defendants with killing black people as it was unlikely that they would get a conviction even with ample evidence.

In most jurisdictions they already consider that when deciding whether or not to charge. They will take into account whether or not it serves the public good as well as whether they have sufficient evidence to go to trial.

Jury nullification just represents an end run around justice and is banned around here with good reason.

Re:Uh oh.

[zippthorne]

Likely or not, once you're in the box, it's too late to start browsing fija. Why go in unprepared on the assumption you're going to get a case where fit won't come up? You're gambling with others' justice...

Re:Uh oh.

[TrekkieGod]

It's a problem with jury selection.

The jury is selected randomly. There is a ~30% chance that a 10%-minority will not be represented on the jury.

The jury candidates are selected randomly. The jury itself is selected by the defense and prosecutor in the jury selection process.

Re:Uh oh.

[tibit]

Nope. Jurors decisions are pretty much like acts of God: the court can not question them. Sure, Jury has to abide by some rules, but the reasoning they followed while reaching a verdict is not up for question. IANAL.

Re:Uh oh.

[bhcompy]

Which is why I said dealers, not people caught on possession(that doesn't even go to court in most locales). Dealers and violence go hand in hand.

Re:Uh oh.

[fsckmnky]

As we move towards a police state, jury nullification can be a valuable weapon in the war for liberty against oppressive laws that should not be enforced. That is just one example out of many situations where jury nullification is a great thing.

The justice system is highly aware of jury nullification. At my one and only ( so far ) jury duty case, the attorneys during juror selection, and the judge, asked all jurors if they could "apply the law(s) as written by the State of {A} to the case at hand." I'm not an attorney, but if a juror were to answer "yes" or remain in the court room after being dismissed for failure to agree to apply to the law(s) as written, then the juror who attempted an overt nullification may force a mistrial.

Jury nullification is but 1 aspect of the law, and the people who deal with it every day, have made it not so cut and dry to apply by way of process.

Re:Uh oh.

[_0xd0ad]

Dealers and violence go hand in hand.

That wasn't true when you could buy heroin in drug stores. Why do you suppose it's true now that you can't?

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

What you describe is a mistrial, not an example of jury nullification.

Jury nullification is when a jury refuses to pass a guilty verdict, despite the law. It's the jury judging the law, rather than the defendant. Jury nullification is the last defence against an unjust law.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'd expect the engineer people to demand evidence that the accused actually had killed the victim rather than just cremated the body, rather than acting on belief..

Re:Uh oh.

[cowboy76Spain]

IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.

Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices"

The only "fundament" to jury nullification is that, in order to grant that the jury can not be pressed into a veredict, it effectively has immunity. That means that no matter how misguided the veredict is, the jurors can not be prosecuted by that. Claiming that there is a right to jury nullification is like claiming that if you find a wallet in the street and nobody is watching you, you can keep it for yourself.

Re:Uh oh.

[sco08y]

Jury nulification means finding the defendant innocent regardless of the evidence against them. This is something jurors have a constitutional right to do. If you don't think the act the defendant was charged with should be against the law, you can find them not innocent even if it is absolutely obvious they did it.

It's not a constitutional right, it's a consequence of a practice that derives from common law. Basically, the issue is that juries must be free from intimidation to present their verdict, and that the possibility that they will reach a verdict not in concurrence with law is a possibility that we live with. It's much the same as the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty: it's not some fundamental right, it's just a compromise we make because our legal system is naturally imperfect.

The only operative rights here are the defendant's right to due process, and the right of the people to have their elected representatives draft the laws they live by and of the courts and police to execute those laws faithfully. As a juror, being drafted into judicial service, you don't have any right whatsoever to unilaterally overturn those laws, instead, you have the *power* to do so without repercussions. You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.

tl;dr: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

No, they argue for it because marijuana being illegal is an unjust law - in other words, for exactly the same reasons as the GP said..

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

Which is the result of a system that is inherently and deliberately biased to letting the guilty go free, rather than punishing the innocent. Would you rather it be the other way around?

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's usually, "Well I feel like I need to offer something insightful here so I can be the brilliant contrarian and net some mod points... and the only way to do that is by puking out some bizarre edge case."

The really bad ones don't even get as far as to offer the contradictory situation. It's all just noise, and the folks that do this in the real world end up friendless.

"Some people provide for alternatives when they argue and some people don't! In either case it is all just noise."

Logically we can reduce this argument to "All people are just making noise."

Is that what you were trying to say? It seems a bit too broad and unsupportable.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

That's somewhat true. It was widespread before prohibition (American independence and civil war saw a lot of nullification). And judges clamped down on educating people about their rights regarding nullification, but not the exercise of those rights.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Things are never as simple as Internet Libertarians think they are.

Conversely, Internet Libertarians are *always* as simple as I think they are.

Re:Uh oh.

[Theaetetus]

The precise reason the jury is allowed to do this is to make sure the law stands up to the scrutiny of the common people ,as well as to make sure whether he's guilty or not.

On the contrary, the reason the jury is allowed to nullify is that it's an inherent power that we can't remove. We do not ask a jury why they vote to acquit, because to do so places the jury in an adverse position to the State, and has the possibility of a chilling effect: vote guilty, and we let you go home in peace; vote innocent, and we'll put you on trial.

But, because we don't ask them why they vote to acquit, we cannot stop them from doing so when they feel a law is unjust, or when they feel the defendant should go free regardless. Theoretically, with an unjust law, this can be good... but in practice, jury nullification has primarily been used to acquit lynch mobs and murderers in the south during the civil rights era. And that's evil, but it's an evil we cannot prevent for the reasons above.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

convict an innocent person because they have some (racial, ethnic, gender) bias against that person.

No, they can't. That's why it's called jury nullification, not jury creation - they can set aside existing laws, but they can't establish new ones. A jury verdict of "guilty" can be set aside by the judge if there's no law broken; a verdict of "not guilty" cannot. The system is deliberately skewed to prefer the guilty go free, rather than risk the innocent being punished. That's why the standard of proof in criminal trials is "beyond reasonable doubt" rather than the "preponderance of evidence" you get in civil cases.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

Jury nullification is designed to be a check on the power of the state, not a check on the power of the jury. There are other tools for dealing with those sort of biases - jury selection, change of venue, etc. If an outcome like the above is given, the question should be "why was there an all-white jury in a race crime" and "if no suitable jury could be found locally, why wasn't the trial moved to an area where a dispassionate jury could be recruited?"

Re:Uh oh.

[_0xd0ad]

It doesn't take a jury to decide whether someone broke the law. In fact... if you want to decide whether the accused broke the law, a bunch of random people dragged in off the street who are likely to be completely ignorant of the law would just about be the last group of people qualified to decide that.

Re:Uh oh.

[rubycodez]

A case doesn't need have anything to do with constitutional law to have nullification applied as a good thing, only unjust law for a situation

Re:Uh oh.

[kqs]

And freedom of speech was (and is) used by both the KKK and the civil rights movement. Just because some rights are abused doesn't mean that they are bad or should be removed.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, please do not find me "not innocent"...

Unless you're being sued by the MPAA for piracy of Brittany Spears songs. In which case we shall merely find you "not that innocent".

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

No, we have juries so that the justice system has the appearance of fairness. If a prosecutor can't convince 12 [purportedly] regular folks that a suspect is guilty of violating a law, then he should go free. On the converse, it shows the defendant and everyone else that it's not some crooked judge throwing the convicted in jail, but 12 people who had to weigh the evidence and agree on a verdict.

Jury nullification is the OPPOSITE of an impartial jury, and which is why we have a voir dire process- to weed out people with preconceptions about the law or the defendant or the circumstances. Rendering a verdict is not a popularity contest, and based on some recent high profile cases, a lot of people seem to think it is.

What we need, frankly, is a way to legitimize jury nullification, so that a jury who refuses to convict on the grounds that they disagree with the law can say so, and some kind of appellate process can occur, even if it is just the citizens telling their legislators to change the law.

Re:Uh oh.

[joocemann]

TFA is the citation. Source had tweeted "The coffee sucks here" and "Jury Day 5" (paraphrasing), which resulted in the trial being overturned.

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

And probably even more juries who would convict because they didn't like the race/gender/swagger of the defendant. Encouraging people to bring their beliefs and preconceptions into the jury room is pretty much the opposite of a just society.

Re:Uh oh.

[Dhalka226]

Jury nullification is not designed to be anything because it was not designed at all. It is an unintended consequence born from exploiting a loophole created by a legal concept too important to risk mucking around with.

In the US, if an attorney suggests nullification, they run afoul of their bar associations. Judges are prohibited from informing juries about it. A Second District appeals court decision supports removing a juror if they intend to nullify, and many judges will declare a mistrial if it has been mentioned.

The power of jury nullification certainly exists, and nobody is claiming otherwise -- but it is not an intended power, not in the US. It is a de facto power created by the loophole that a jury's findings of fact can not be re-examined and as long as they can get away with it until decision time, whatever they say and for whatever reason they say it stands.

Re:Uh oh.

[petsounds]

The precise reason the jury is allowed to do this is to make sure the law stands up to the scrutiny of the common people

The law is made by the legislative branch of government. If you don't like the laws, get new people in there to change them, appeal to a higher court which can strike down the laws, or start a revolution I guess. The purpose of the jury is to make sure a single judge doesn't bring bias into the case against the defendant or accuser. If the law as written can't be respected, then the fragile social contract which John Locke argued for is broken and gives way to anarchism.

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." -- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone

Assuming that quote is real, this would require the jury to inform the court of what they are doing. Which means a mistrial, because The People didn't get a fair trial. See, the laws (in the US) derive their power from The People as a whole, via their elected representatives. So in addition to being unjust, nullification is anathema to democracy. 12 yahoos in a jury box deciding that their opinions are more important than the will of The People. Just a different kind of tyranny...

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, now you've done it. According to /. law, we're guaranteed to see a parade of lower and lower UIDs calling the prior UID a cockbag, most probably until the site collapses into a cockbag singularity.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH you had southern juries who'd refuse to convict people of murdering blacks back in the bad old days.

Things are never as simple as Internet Libertarians think they are.

Which is worse, living under tyranny from unjust laws or letting the occasional guilty person go free? The system isn't perfect, that is part of the price of freedom.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anachragnome]

"It's unlikely the OP will be seated on a case that has anything to do with constitutional law."

Some of the most seemingly-insignificant of cases have turned out to be land-mark cases, further down the road. Roe v. Wade is a good example. All the more reason to take juror selection seriously. You may be sending a case right on up to the Supreme Court. Act accordingly.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. You are asked if you can apply the law to the facts. Not if you will. Learn lawyer speak.

I will not be a part of injustice. If that means nullification so be it.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming that quote is real

Don't assume. It makes an ass out of you. If you doubt it, feel free to look it up.

this would require the jury to inform the court of what they are doing

Ooh lemme guess... cause YOU SAID SO?

The jury is required to inform the court of one thing and one thing only: its verdict.

12 yahoos in a jury box deciding that their opinions are more important than the will of The People. Just a different kind of tyranny...

No, one guilty person goes free at the very most. Those "12 yahoos" ARE the people. And if "12 yahoos" consistently decide that your law is unjust, then your law is unjust.

Re:Uh oh.

[the eric conspiracy]

The problem is that some cases of jury nullification can be viewed as encouraging undesirable behavior. For example see "Lorena Bobbitt".

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically, he said he supported the idea of jury nullification. He didn't say he supported whites killing blacks with no consequences, stop putting words into people's mouths.

Re:Uh oh.

[russotto]

The power of jury nullification certainly exists, and nobody is claiming otherwise -- but it is not an intended power, not in the US.

Given that the writers of the Bill of Rights were almost certainly aware of the 1670 trial of William Penn (where the whole jury went to prison rather than convict him -- now that's mass moral fortitude), it seems hard to believe it was unintended.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

Wrong. It was the result of deep racial bias.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

False dichotomy. The Southern example was born of endemic racism; the innocence of a white who killed a black was irrelevant, what was relevant was that blacks were killed for being black, and the guilty whites were found innocent because they had killed those who were regarded as subhuman.

Re:Uh oh.

[uncqual]

then the juror who attempted an overt nullification may force a mistrial.

But if, once the jury begins deliberations, that juror convinces enough (generally "all") of the other jurors to follow their lead and return a "not guilty" verdict, it's completely over for that charge. The defendant can't be tried again for the same charge even if it becomes clear that one or more jurors contributed to the "not guilty" verdict for the "wrong" reason.

If, during deliberations, other jurors report to the judge that the "jury nullification guy" is refusing to deliberate, he may be kicked off the jury and replaced by an alternate and the deliberations would start over.

Re:Uh oh.

[fsckmnky]

So the question becomes, what are the odds 12 or more people are going to commit perjury, by proclaiming they will in fact apply the law as written, then not apply the law as written ?

Re:Uh oh.

[uncqual]

Interestingly, laypeople and engineer types sometimes diverge significantly in their verdict. I remember one guy who was on a jury where the defendant incinerated his wife's body. Hung jury because the laypeople didn't believe he'd killed her.

Proving someone incinerated someone's body doesn't prove anything about who (if anyone) killed that person. However, the act of incinerating the body may, when considered with other evidence, contribute to a guilty verdict on the murder charge.

For example, suppose the prosecutor makes a very good case but the defendant claims (but can offer no evidence beyond his own word) that he was at home watching TV when the murder occurred and he didn't even know the victim was dead until after the police cuffed him and arrested him. In this case, if the prosecutor proves that the defendant in fact incinerated the body before being arrested and knew whose body it was (disproving the defendant's claim that he had no idea the victim was dead), the jury is well within its "rights" to attach little if any weight to the remainder of the defendant's alibi (that he was watching TV at the time of the murder).

Re:Uh oh.

[uncqual]

Of course there was that O.J. thing.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I said dealers, not people caught on possession(that doesn't even go to court in most locales). Dealers and violence go hand in hand.

And you must not have read my post carefully enough.

I could not, in good conscience, vote to convict someone of breaking the law that prohibits marijuana possession or sale.

If he committed acts of violence, then so be it. I would fully support sending that man to prison. But if he were brought up on charges of selling marijuana and no other "crime", then I would use every ounce of my own power to prevent the injustice of imprisoning or otherwise punishing this man. The law is wrong here and must be changed.

Re:Uh oh.

[Just Some Guy]

How does one "ban" jury nullification anyway? I'm not aware of any requirement that you explain your reasons for voting "not guilty" or "not liable" to the judge.

Re:Uh oh.

[VAElynx]

Untrue. Because the same purpose is accomplished by appeals, so if it was as you say, nobody in their right time would waste time devising a system which has a jury.
The purpose of the jury is also to hold the results of work of the legislative branch to scrutiny - scrutiny of the common people. See, the problem with all your suggestions is that they are far, far easier said than done.. getting new people in the position, carrying out certain sorts of appeals (most realistic) or a bloody revolution.. Therefore they provide a safe shout-out since it's pretty sure none of that is likely to happen.
On the other hand, if you serve on the jury, you have the right to vote against enforcement of a law you perceive unjust, and if you all agree on it, to strike down such action, providing a precedent for the future. I don't have to be a lawyer to say having a few cases of a jury liberating a guy guilty of something despite overwhelming evidence he did do it (pointing to lack of will to enforce such law) would be a gold mine for the defense lawyer in any further case.
This sort of "arguments" are particularly insidious.. they make it a social standard for people "not" to use their full range of legislative rights, and make them "police themselves" like some posters suggest here... but those same rights are surely mentioned in any other case as a hallmark on freedom and "how can you say the people don't have a word"... That's the difference from most "totalitarian" governments which make the .. perhaps say, blunder of making such things explicitly illegal or impossible. After all, you don't feel caged if you don't notice the bars and are persuaded world ends behind that steel grid over there.

Re:Uh oh.

[uncqual]

Perjury (under Federal law) is:

1621. Perjury generally

Whoever—

(1) having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or

(2) in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;

is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States.

Suppose a juror, under oath (assuming jurors are under oath during voir dire in the jurisdiction), declares that they will apply the law as explained by the court and intends to do so at that time. If, during deliberations, a juror changes their mind and decides to engage in "jury nullification", there was no perjury because he has offered no statement that he did not believe to be true at the time he made the statement -- a complete defense against a perjury charge.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only for whiny self important children who were not raised with the concept of responsibility, and acting like an adult. Unfortunately, you self serving attitude will be passed along with the rest of your failed genes.

Re:Uh oh.

[petsounds]

Imagine if police officers also took this kind of subjective stance with the law they are sworn to uphold. Hell, they already are -- we're seeing them violate the rights of individuals in the US en masse. When someone in a position to uphold the law disregards it, it ceases to be something the populace can depend on. If a potential juror has a problem with the law, he or she can refuse to participate, but to swear to uphold the law and then sabotage the trial because he or she doesn't like the law is breaking the social contract. If a juror can refuse to act on a law that's bad, then another juror can also refuse to act on a law that's good. And that's trial by mob, not by jury.

The proper way to change laws is through the legislature. At least in the US system, the law can only be struck down if it violates a state or federal Constitution. So no, the appeals process is generally not a way to change a law you don't like. Yes, unfortunately changing the law often takes time in a democratic system. But if a government is consistently producing bad law, the problem is that the public is failing to elect good representatives. In the US, the two-party system has been completely corrupted while Americans were asleep, and no one woke them up. A thriving democracy cannot exist without an educated public and a strong press. In the US, both of those things are ceasing to exist. Those things must be fixed or the democracy has no future. This jury vigilantism you suggest does nothing to tackle that problem. The legal system is flawed, but it's one of the last parts of US government that generally works. What you suggest is to make a mockery of it by trivializing the oath as a citizen to uphold the law as a juror, and at the end of the day still have a broken government.

Re:Uh oh.

[fsckmnky]

+1

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly. jury nullification is a great idea if you think your average american is an intelligent, noble, well-informed individual as opposed to a brain-dead hick. guess which one he really is?

Re:Uh oh.

[hairyfeet]

Yes but you CAN save a life. When my mom was on jury duty she came in after it was over white as a sheet and said 'Don't you EVER get a jury trial always ask for a judge!" and when I asked her what was wrong here was what I was told:

The case was arson of a restaurant, there was NO motive, as the guy didn't even have enough insurance to cover what he owed and had to file chap 11, there was NO evidence as even the fire investigator said he couldn't say with any certainty WHAT had started the fire and the place had already had two close calls thanks to wiring shorts, yet the jury wanted to convict and it was only my mom that hung them up, why? "Because he is Italian and Italians are in the mob and burn buildings, didn't you ever see goodfellas?"

That's right folks, your system at work. the man nearly lost 20 years of his life because of a ray liotta movie. the jury didn't care about a thing said in the court other than the fact he was Italian. If it hadn't been for my mom it really would have been "12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty". Now would you REALLY want to bet your life on the hope there is a single smart one in the pile of morons? I'm glad the guy is gonna do his jury duty but I bet when its over he too will have a nice horror story about how fucking DUMB the American public has become. it is truly "March of the morons" out there folks. Scary huh?

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

As far as the jurors were concerned, yes.
As far as the system was concerned, then it's as I stated.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

I see that you think so, but you're doing an inadequate job of stating /why/ you think so.

Re:Uh oh.

[VAElynx]

Ah ,but the role of police in the system is different - they are to physically enforce the law, while the jury is there to review judge's decision - therefore your analogy is a total red herring.
A juror refusing to participate would achieve precisely nothing .. which is i guess just the reason why you are suggesting it.
Furthermore.. a single juror doesn't decide the case.. precisely why the judge isn't allowed to decide without jury's approval. And if juries are consistently finding a law bad, then it likely isn't a good law, because it doesn't represent public interest. The jurors are ,after all, randomly selected from the public, unlike the judges and lawyers. Furthermore, in common law system, the judges themselves can take some liberty at interpreting the law and things such as precedents matter , which separates them from civil law courts which investigate whether the letter of the law was upheld - in other words, jury isn't in a very special position with regards to this, they just have the final word.
Calling exercising your rights "jury vigilantism" is rather amusing as well as mentioning a couple dozen irrelevant hurrah concepts such as educated public and strong press being necessary, as if citing evident truths that are at best tangential to your argument somehow added weight to it.
Lastly.. Jury nullification is like antipyretics. It doesn't help with the cause of the problem, but it sure as hell deals with some dangerous symptoms. After all, a bad, broken government can do a lot less evil if its unjust laws are refused by the citizenry.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

The system isn't inherently racially biased. In some subset of cases (including some where jury nullification is used) the racial bias of the participants derails justice. Yes, racial bias can be shown in the courtroom. No, its not a result of jury nullification. Absent nullification, a racist judge, or legislators can still abuse the system.

However, jury nullification can only be used to excuse someone from the law - jury nullification doesn't allow the jury to insist on a guilty verdict absent any laws to charge the defendant with breaking. A guilty verdict can be appealed - a not guilty verdict cannot be, due to double jeopardy. The standards of evidence require "beyond reasonable doubt", not "preponderance of evidence", meaning that it's easier for a defendant to defend than it is for a prosecutor to prosecute.

The system is setup to prefer not guilty verdicts, in order to reduce the likelihood of ever convicting an innocent. Unlike, say, the Jim Crow laws, jury nullification doesn't exist for the purposes of racial discrimination, even if its been used that way on occasion.

Re:Uh oh.

[gmanterry]

I spent four months on a County Grand Jury recently. The prosecutors I dealt with didn't want to discuss "Jury Nullification" at all. After going through a thousand cases, I believe that Jury Nullification is indeed justified and needed sometimes. In some cases it seems that conviction is far more important to some ADAs than justice. With mandatory sentences and truth in sentencing some people are treated far too harshly in the system. And to clarify, I am not a bleeding heart liberal, I'm very conservative.

Re:Uh oh.

[AxeMurder]

I was on a jury once and was pleasantly surprised at my fellow jurors' intelligence. Everybody there seemed interested in following the process correctly and to the best of our ability. Our discussions were insightful and I feel the experience was a very valuable one for me.

Re:Uh oh.

[mysidia]

Jury nullification is only good for overturning specific unjust laws, not for reversing the course of the entire nation.

Jury nullification doesn't overturn the unjust law, if successful, it just prevents the unjust law's penalty from taking effect against that specific defendant in that specific case where the jury decided the law was unjust and found innocent on the basis of law.

If the person does it again and gets arrested again, they could still be tried and convicted by a different jury, in the very same jurisdiction, for violating the very same unjust law.

Their exoneration by jury nullification once doesn't change the law, or protect anyone else.

There's no strong likelihood that jury nullification over the same injustice will be repeated consistently.

Re:Uh oh.

[gnapster]

Are jurors asked if they can apply the laws as written, or if they will apply the laws as written? You used both words in this thread. I am capable apply the laws as written, but I may not if they seem unjust. If it's the former, and then I nullify the law while on a jury, I am not convinced that is perjury.

Re:Uh oh.

[NormalVisual]

My experience with jury duty was similar. All of the jurors were intelligent and genuinely concerned about arriving at a just verdict. It was a DUI case, and while every single one of us thought the defendant was a scumbag and was pretty sure he had in fact been driving drunk, we also unanimously agreed that the state had failed miserably to meet the burden of proof and that there was enough reasonable doubt to justify a "not guilty" verdict. It wasn't a "CSI" kind of thing either, and wasn't so much for lack of evidence as that the cops dropped the ball pretty much every step of the way and destroyed what should have been a solid case.

Re:Uh oh.

[NormalVisual]

You are violating the trust society put in you

No more than a cop enforcing a bad law violates the trust society places in him. Jury nullification is part of the checks and balances of our three-branch system of government. The legislature can choose not to pass a bad law, but if they do the executive can choose not to enforce it, and if all else fails the judiciary (via the jury) can choose not to convict under it.

Re:Uh oh.

[WorBlux]

To willingly declare someone guilty of an unjust law is an anathema to the substance of Justice. Jury nullification is black letter law, a concept embedded in the very roots of common law and enshrined in the Magna Carta. One of the pre-eminent works on the subject: http://librivox.org/essay-on-the-trial-by-jury-by-lysander-spooner/

Re:Uh oh.

[joshuac]

You tell him! ;)

Re:Uh oh.

[nedlohs]

Of course. But the benifit is worth the cost. It's the old standard "better a guilty man go free than an innocent man be convicted".

It should very rarely be used (though we do seem to have a large number of unjust laws these days...) since it's the last check when everything else has failed to precent tyrrany.

Re:Uh oh.

[WorBlux]

Roe v. Wade never touched a jury. Lower courts dismissed the case for lack of standing, it was appealed several times. Supreme court agreed that yes the plaintiff lacked standing, and even asserted that nobody is likely to have standing on that set of facts... however they claimed a public interest exception and handed a ruling down anyways. Seriously go read the actual opinion.

Re:Uh oh.

[WorBlux]

Tails I win, heads you lose.

Re:Uh oh.

[NormalVisual]

They are not charged with weighing what the law says, only whether it applies and whether the defendant is guilty of it.

John Jay seemed to think differently.

Re:Uh oh.

[nedlohs]

And why is that invariable wrong?

Jury nullification played a role in the end of Prohibition. Though I guess to be consistant you must think Prohibition was a great thing.

Re:Uh oh.

[nedlohs]

Lost some of my text when I had to copy-n-paste to login...

Those southern juries were really an issue of jury selection anyway. Given the community wasn't all white (a black person was murdered after all), the jury shouldn't be either. So you should end up with a hung jury after hung jury rather than not guilty verdicts.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

...except that lone black juror's going to be intimidated into finding the perp innocent, lest he be next.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

Of course. But the benifit is worth the cost

Maybe. Tell that to the next black to be lynched by the same people or others like them, though.

I'm not saying that nullification doesn't have its place--it does--but it's an extreme step that should be taken with extreme care, and its applicability must be limited.

Re:Uh oh.

[Nimey]

This. This is probably the most sensible stance on jury nullification I've seen, that it should be part of institutionalized checks and balances.

Re:Uh oh.

[gmhowell]

He's ignorant - but, as someone with a lower UID than you, I find you guilty of being a cockbag.

Ditto.

Cockbag.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Some people provide for alternatives when they argue and some people don't! In either case it is all just noise." Logically we can reduce this argument to "All people are just making noise."

You changed what was said, offered your own fallacy and based an illogical conclusion on it. But thanks for playing.

Re:Uh oh.

[bhcompy]

Just because I disagree with a law doesn't mean I should use nullification to disrupt the legal process. I think jury nullification is properly used in a setting where someone's rights are being trampled on, like I feel hate crime laws are in violation of the 14th amendment(as an easy example of something that violates the equal protection clause on its face).

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. Shit.

A judge is likely to find you in contempt for even mentioning the words jury nullification.

In theory and on paper its a real thing.

In the real world.. No fucking way. It's not going to be allowed to even be talked about.

Re:Uh oh.

[dave87656]

I checked out the site, which I find encouraging. It makes it all the more discouraging that some members of our government are pushing for indefinite incarceration if they accuse you of being a terrorist. No jury or your peers, no due process and no change to refute the charges in anyway. All they would need is the accusation.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideally DAs would not take cases to court which didn't have a plethora of (non-manufactured) evidence which points to the defendant being guilty. To do otherwise is a waste of resources and a miscarriage of justice.

A DA with a low conviction rate is either a very bad prosecutor or someone who just frivolously takes cases to court.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

My jury seemed reasonable too. The state had failed to make the case that the defendant had stolen the car he was accused of stealing.

We had no doubt that he was driving it (defense admitted this) but we kept waiting for them to give us the option of receiving stolen property or something.

Unfortunately right before closing arguments a mistrial was declared. The reason was that 1 or 2 jurors had made comments after the trial. "I bet he [defendant] understands English when he wants to" and "It sounds like the car had been on a week-long joyride".

These seemingly prejudicial comments were made by people who also agreed that the state had not made their case.

The judge was upset with us because she had told us not to discuss the case, but she had failed to make clear that we should not discuss it with each other. The emphasis was NOT to discuss the case with people outside the courtroom.

We thought the guy was a scumbag, but we didn't believe he had stolen the car nor did we believe that he should have known the car was stolen. Even if I'm wrong about the way my fellow jurors would have voted, I could not have voted guilty to the charge of auto theft.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.

A crooked cop gets paid in return for looking the other way. Jury nullification is more like a cop saying: "Well, the law says that I should arrest you for driving with your left indicator broken: but since you're on your way to have it repaired, I'm going to let you off with a warning.". The cop, or the juror, makes a judgement that a literal enforcement of the law in this case is not in the best interests of justice.

Re:Uh oh.

[shentino]

bingo!

You just figured out how prosecutors stop jury nullification.

Re:Uh oh.

[shentino]

Justice is imperfect becuase PEOPLE are arbitrary.

The only way to have perfect justice is to have someone who knows everything and isn't biased make the decision.

Not only does such a person not even exist, but such a person would never make it into the jury box without being kicked out by court officers with an axe to grind.

Re:Uh oh.

[shentino]

They can also refuse to convict someone of a just law when they happen to hold a low opinion of the victim.

Re:Uh oh.

[shentino]

Jury nullification isn't illegal, but lying during voir dire about your intentions to do so is perjury.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem being that the described problem is actually the origin of law.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Start Here http://fija.org
If your honest and pass voir dire and are selected,
you can then judge both the facts and the law.

But not only don't Judges tell you this, they attempt to get you to judge only the facts of the case; it's a bluff.
The juror however should look inside their own heart and judge both the facts and the law, because you are the last stop for...

a good law, being used bad - keep the law, drop the charge
a bad law being used to harm - drop the law, drop the charge

Generally speaking, most cases won't need to be nullified. A car thief is a car thief.
But, do you really put people in jail for 40 years for weed, I don't.
Do you allow the RIAA to sue a 12 year old's parents for everything they own? I don't.

I urge all Americans to look heavily into jury nullification, it's in their best interest to know about it, in the bigger picture, the life you save might just be your own because if someone else learned and judged the facts and the law for your case you would only be saved by their education and willingness to jump through the judge's hoops..

I'm sorry but people who argue against becoming an informed jurror are flat wrong and ought to be modded right the fuck off slashdot.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disturbing that so many people are unaware of their moral and ethical obligations in this space.

Don't take it personal. That's cause they are trolling for you on slashdot. Your a good guy. Good guys are the enemy of this fascist nation now.

I don't give a fuck about the six digit number like hedwards, he's a dip shit if he thinks all laws are good laws. The guy's more interested in who's tweeting on his iPad than the corruption down at his local city hall. He's the exact profile of the juror that fucked up in the main story. Ya know, jury duty awe fuck, where's my iphone, I have to have games to play while I'm there to waste time, I hear they have free wireless!! Cool! As opposed to just showing the fuck up with a book or nothing at all like you or I would.

While it's true most cases you probably won't need to nullify and so hedwards will likely never face it.

But when (not if) marital law get's declared after the upcoming monetary system collapse, and hedwards caught is sentenced to the gas chamber for being labeled a domestic terrorist by big sis for storing 7 days worth of beans, or stealing an orange, or by any number of bullshit unconstitutional fucking dhs and fema camp crap, he'd (and the rest of these motherfucking trolls) be wise to remember these facts, and this discussion.

Every day our officials are cranking out bad laws! These laws don't just go away. You have to make them go away. People more concerned about their iPad or iPhone and dancing with the stars don't tend to be very helpful in this situation. They are used like cattle at the courthouse.

However, If it's honor, justice, compassion and rule of law like the US Constitution which you stand for then jury nullification is for YOU, and the best place to start is http://fija.org

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think turning family members into the Nazi's increased justice just because it was the law?

Re:Uh oh.

[fsckmnky]

It may not be perjury. I'm not an attorney, or a judge, so I really can't say. However, the process ( jury selection of jurors who will not use or don't know about jury nullification ) can be and imo is extremely effective, in making people think and perceive that it might be perjury to provide false statements during jury selection.

Regardless of the jury nullification issue, my overall opinion of the process, from the 1 time I reported for jury duty, is that it appeared, from the point of view of a juror, to be fair and equitable and just. This is of course, only my 1 experience, which is a statistically insignificant amount of data. Perhaps others who have been to jury duty can chime in.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an attorney, but if a juror were to answer "yes" or remain in the court room after being dismissed for failure to agree to apply to the law(s) as written, then the juror who attempted an overt nullification may force a mistrial.

Only an idiot would attempt an "overt" nullification. They'd simply be removed from the jury and an alternate would be appointed in their place. Who knows - the judge might even attempt to punish them.

Somebody who wanted to nullify a jury would simply do their best to persuade their peers of there being reasonable doubt and deliberate until the end of time or until everybody else has something better to do with their time. When questioned as to their motives they would simply say that they didn't find the evidence persuasive. Jury nullification is purely a matter of internal motivation so the only way you can prove that somebody is doing it is by extracting a confession.

Lots of people got themselves shot up 200 years ago to ensure that ordinary people would have more power in convicting criminals than a judge. Unfortunately, it seems like more and more infractions against the law result in some kind of punishment that is not subject to a jury trial. You can be sentenced to 100x4 months in prison and not be allowed a jury trial. Your speeding ticket can't be taken to a jury. If the government seizes your property you don't even get invited to show up at the trial, assuming there even is one. And we all worry about whether "the other guy" will win the election.

Re:Uh oh.

[fsckmnky]

persuade their peers of there being reasonable doubt

If there is reasonable doubt, then the process has worked as designed and intended.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

a white jury can just as easily convict a black man on flimsy evidence. No one ever said any part of the jury system was perfect.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jury nulification means finding the defendant innocent regardless of the evidence against them. This is something jurors have a constitutional right to do. If you don't think the act the defendant was charged with should be against the law, you can find them not innocent even if it is absolutely obvious they did it.

It's not a constitutional right, it's a consequence of a practice that derives from common law. Basically, the issue is that juries must be free from intimidation to present their verdict, and that the possibility that they will reach a verdict not in concurrence with law is a possibility that we live with. It's much the same as the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty: it's not some fundamental right, it's just a compromise we make because our legal system is naturally imperfect.

The only operative rights here are the defendant's right to due process, and the right of the people to have their elected representatives draft the laws they live by and of the courts and police to execute those laws faithfully. As a juror, being drafted into judicial service, you don't have any right whatsoever to unilaterally overturn those laws, instead, you have the *power* to do so without repercussions. You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.

Very well put.

Re:Uh oh.

[Errtu76]

Thanks for responding. I always wondered.

Re:Uh oh.

[GrumpySteen]

I don't think you understand what the term jury nullification means.

Jury nullification doesn't refer to the jury being nullified for doing something wrong like tweeting during a trial. It refers to the jury's right to make a decision that goes against written law if they feel that the application of that law to the defendant would be an injustice.

Re:Uh oh.

[j-beda]

... Then criminals would be able to do whatever they wanted all the time. You know, the reason that every society on earth going back to Ur has had a justice system?

Smaller tribal based societies justice systems were typically rather limited. Bow down to the people with power, don't make waves, blame the victim (usually those with little power). "Justice" is a luxury of being in a rich society with abundant resources.

Not that any of that invalidates your point that while there are many cases of the justice system being a negative force in society, there are also many cases where it acts as a positive force. It is nice to know that if someone starts pounding on my neighbour, the police and the courts are likely to be of some use and I don't have to round up a mob to take care of the problem myself.

 

Re:Uh oh.

[swalve]

Are you talking about the US? Because juries in the US actually decide the case. The judge just runs the trial, quite like referee.

Re:Uh oh.

[The Rizz]

Low UID = better than you?

I'm up for that fight.

Bring it, bitches.

Re:Uh oh.

[The Rizz]

Just because I disagree with a law doesn't mean I should use nullification to disrupt the legal process

Jury nullification is part of the legal process. In fact, it's arguably the only reason juries exist in the first place.

If all you're trying to establish is if a law was broken, a judge or tribunal can do that. The entire point of a jury is to ensure that a law is not unfair or being used unfairly.

Re:Uh oh.

[rk]

You'll have to pardon me if I take my view on jury nullification from the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court over some random asshole on slashdot.

Re:Uh oh.

[rk]

Agreed. I was on a criminal jury once and most of them were mice looking for a leader and two hang 'em high guys (one of them a minister more interested in talking about Promise Keepers than actually deliberating). While we did find the guy guilty (carjacking), I made them go through all the evidence and I told them "if you try and railroad this guy, I will vote not guilty until the day I die." At least one of the meek ones thanked me afterward. We found the guy guilty in the end, but I *know* he got a fair trial at least. I decided then and there to always waive my right to a jury if I'm ever accused of a crime.

Re:Uh oh.

[Kalriath]

My understanding is that only the Supreme Court can set a binding precedent... being not from the US, I am not 100% certain of the veracity of that, is it not the case?

Re:Uh oh.

[Kalriath]

Having seen the impact of drug dealers on the lower socio-economic echelons of society (by which I mean my entire family) I thank the gods that you do not have the power to write laws, and I pray that if you ever got onto a jury and performed the action you describe (knowing he's guilty but letting him off anyway) that you personally are prosecuted for perjury or something. Drug dealers are criminal scum.

Re:Uh oh.

[Kalriath]

Two problems there,

1. in your weed scenario, you don't know what the sentence will be until the verdict is issued. It could be six months community service for all you know. All you're doing is allowing someone to break the law without repurcussions.
2. in your piracy example, they don't go to jury trials. And if they do, the jury actually sets the award. If there is evidence (real evidence, not the flim flam shit we hear about) then you really have no choice but to declare for the plaintiff, but then you can always argue for a minimum fine (you can't find them not guilty, it's a civil case).

Actually declaring not guilty when someone clearly is should be considered contempt of court.

Re:Uh oh.

[Kalriath]

In most countries (I'm in New Zealand) you're also offered the opportunity to apply for exemption when you receive the summons, if you can provide a reason. I believe our country recognises religious views as a valid reason for exemption (especially since religious views can very easily prejudice verdicts).

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: last defence. It's not something that should be done casually just because you can. Really, in the whole of the USA, I doubt if more than two or three cases per year are so egregiously unjust that jury nullification is the appropriate way to deal with them.

The chances that the OP will just happen to end up judging one of them are pretty slim.

Re:Uh oh.

[LordLucless]

If you're on the jury, on a case based on an unjust law, then all the other defenses have already been defeated.

That means that the choice to nullify is going to be subjective, based on your own morality. That's as it should be; nullification is based on an appeal to morality of the ordinary citizen.

Personally, I'd vote nullification for any count that involved consensual or victimless crimes (drug possession, sale, sexual deviancy - although that last one's not being brought to trial much lately)

Re:Uh oh.

[Shotgun]

Ever had a policeman let you off with a warning after he caught you speeding? That's the policeman using nullification.

And it is trial by mob, but only one trial at a time. If the law is truly bad, lots of people will escape its clutches. The point is that people will basically come to a consensus that is against whatever it is that the legislature is doing. And that is the point.

Re:Uh oh.

[Shotgun]

Just a nitpick, but these drug laws are not "outdated". They were just as stupid when they were written as they are now.

Re:Uh oh.

[Shotgun]

It can also be used by a black jury to pardon a black man for murdering a black man.

Re:Uh oh.

[petsounds]

The potential for abuse is a greater evil than the potential for goodwill is a blessing. I understand your perspective, but we are at a philosophical divide. The law is no place for interpretation and subjectivity. If a law is ill-formed, then it should be modified or struck down. The one exception to this tenet is Constitutional law, for laws in this case must be crafted with paternalistic broad strokes; the genus to a specific law's species. But even then, a Constitution which is worded with vague intentions can cause no end to interpretative problems.

Re:Uh oh.

[cowboy76Spain]

You are wrong. The point of a jury is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty". There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."

The question is: how do you allow jury nullification with your first meaning without opening the door to the second one?

Also, in democratic countries, even the first meaning implies a small group of a few men overturning the law passed by the representatives of all the people... creepy. Every group of twelve people have the right to decide which laws are right and which laws must not be obeyed?

Re:Uh oh.

[cowboy76Spain]

The question is not if in your particular case the jury was competent, the question is if you are in risk of being judged by someone who is not...

I would go for judge trial everytime. Not that I believe that anyone of them is a beacon of insight, impartiality and love for justice... but at least they may be held accountable to some degree.

Re:Uh oh.

[cowboy76Spain]

Not that I believe that *everyone* of them is ....

Re:Uh oh.

[cowboy76Spain]

You are violating the trust society put in you, and you're really not any better than a crooked cop.

A crooked cop gets paid in return for looking the other way. Jury nullification is more like a cop saying: "Well, the law says that I should arrest you for driving with your left indicator broken: but since you're on your way to have it repaired, I'm going to let you off with a warning.". The cop, or the juror, makes a judgement that a literal enforcement of the law in this case is not in the best interests of justice.

Which justice? As others have posted out, jury nullification has been massively used to give a free pass for lynching black people or harassing those who do not fit in a community.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, yeah, it's totally the drug dealers' fault that your entire family are worthless good-for-nothing losers.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

Yeah, but murder as in this case is not an unjust law, unless you really are an extreme liberterian.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

I'd love to know exactly what all these unjust laws are tht everryone here is so upset about. I mean, most criminal trials are about violent assault or theft.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

There are 4 boxes to protect your democracy.

Soap box, ballot box, jury box, and ammo box.

Please use them in that order.

* rimshot *

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

As we move towards a police state, jury nullification can be a valuable weapon in the war for liberty against oppressive laws that should not be enforced. That is just one example out of many situations where jury nullification is a great thing.

Yes, because police states rely heavily on the jury system.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

So because of one anecdote, you think we should just abandon the whole idea of juries?

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

Yes, but people on the internet argue for jury nullification for drug dealers and the like, because marijuana being illegal is a "crime" itself.

Then why don't those people get the fucking law changed? The occasional jury nullification won't make any difference.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

Who goes to prison for possessing a bit of marijuana except in places like Saudi Arabia?

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

Just because I disagree with a law doesn't mean I should use nullification to disrupt the legal process. I think jury nullification is properly used in a setting where someone's rights are being trampled on, like I feel hate crime laws are in violation of the 14th amendment(as an easy example of something that violates the equal protection clause on its face).

By that, I take it you mean you don't believe in people being convicted of hate crime? In other words, you place the freedom of speech of the person delivering the hate speech over (a) the law and (b) the rights of whichever minority is being threatened?

Just want to be clear.

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

OTOH you had southern juries who'd refuse to convict people of murdering blacks back in the bad old days.

Things are never as simple as Internet Libertarians think they are.

Most libertarians wouldn't particularly care about the murder of poor black people from what I've heard,, they'd probably blame them for not being rich enough to afford armed security guards and a n armoured personnel carrier..

Re:Uh oh.

[tehcyder]

As far as the jurors were concerned, yes. As far as the system was concerned, then it's as I stated.

You can't differentiate the jurors from the jury system. If the result was that white people could get away with murdering black people, "the system" was fucked up.

Re:Uh oh.

[DetriusXii]

Nullification is a jury ignoring the law in favor of their personal preferences. That is not what a jury is there to do. They are not charged with weighing what the law says, only whether it applies and whether the defendant is guilty of it. If nullification is used, then the defendant goes free and nothing is changed. The next guy who breaks that unjust law might not be so lucky. That's not justice. "The system" has the appellate process for determining the rightness and wrongness of laws. The only way to change a wrong law from the jury box is to vote to convict so that the case can be appealed up the chain.

You know it was used as a last resort to prevent union strikers from going to jail merely for being union strikers. During the 1930s, police would harass and beat socialist protesters for expressing the view that the government needs to intervene in the economy. It's not justice to have the government arrest you for expressing a dissenting opinion and jury nullification was used as a form of judicial protest against overbearing states.

Re:Uh oh.

[bhcompy]

Beating up a homosexual is the same as beating up a heterosexual under the 14th amendment(battery is battery), but hate crime laws see the crime as unequal, which is a prima facie violation of the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th amendment.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to this, the concept of checks-and-balances among the various branches of government kinda breaks if jury nullification doesn't exist. What if congress makes a law that makes it illegal for anyone to say the word "unicorn"? (odd example, but I needed an example that sounded stupid) Someone breaks that law, and it goes to jury. They have the power to overturn that stupid law which congress has screwed up. Without nullification, congress is the most powerful branch of government, and can control the entirety of it.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Supreme Court has 3 times upheld jury nullification and made statements that jurors do indeed have the right and obligation to evaluate the law as well as guilt or innocence. So I'd say you're factually incorrect.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh. dude... this has nothing to do with a movie.. This has to do with reality, and your reality of the justice system must be flawed if you're gonna base a judges decision on a movie. That HAS to be the most fictitious story I think ive ever heard just to spam a "system change" message into slashdot. An entire 12 man jury would never base their verdicts on a movie once seen. If being a concern troll is your motive here, heh, Its really annoying.

Re:Uh oh.

[hairyfeet]

Thank you, and notice how one of the cowards accused me of trolling, for what? Like anything i say here is gonna make a difference one way or the other. sadly you seem to be the ONLY one that got the point of that TRUE story, which was not that movie was so important but that the jury was so clueless that frankly all they needed was something they'd seen on a movie to change their opinion!

It LITERALLY came down to being THIS simple "There are no Italians here, the only Italians I've seen are in mob movies, therefor Italians are mobsters and do crimes" and that was pretty much their line of thinking! and I wish I could find a link for it but I saw a great video where they gave the same jury two cases, both cases were IDENTICAL, they had the prosecutor and defense going from scripts, the ONLY difference? They had the same defendant in a scruffy beard and Army jacket, and the other clean cut in an expensive 3 piece suit. guess what the outcome was? You guessed it, when the ONLY difference was the appearance of the defendant they voted to convict solely on his look! And afterwards they said things like "He just looked like a criminal" or "he looked like a thug".

So I'm sorry but after seeing that and hearing about that guy nearly losing 20 years simply by being Italian I would never trust a jury! And as you said mom said there was one "hang 'em high" that tried to bully everyone into a guilty verdict and the meek just wanted out of there and didn't care. Frankly i can't even imagine throwing someone under a bus like that simply to get out of jury duty faster, but they voted 11 to 1 until the judge finally acepted there was no way my mom was gonna back down and declared a mistrial. i just hope like hell that guy took a judge trial on the second or he might be in PMITA prison as we speak!

Re:Uh oh.

[Kalriath]

Hell no. But if the drug dealers didn't exist then those family members would just be useless good for nothing bastards rather than useless good for nothing bastards that are constantly bludgeing off the three successful members.

And frankly, I've never met a successful drug addict, they're all whacked out losers with no money - thanks to the aforementioned dealers. Drug dealers harm society - get the fuck over it.

Re:Uh oh.

[russotto]

I'd love to know exactly what all these unjust laws are tht everryone here is so upset about. I mean, most criminal trials are about violent assault or theft.

Drug possession and distribution, prostitution, solicitation, and (for us nerds) violation of the DMCA.

Re:Uh oh.

[rubycodez]

I said we're moving toward police state, and presently we still have courts and juries

Re:Uh oh.

[bryan1945]

I guess I was not clear- I was talking about how you were saying you disappear for 2 weeks and get fired and divorced because you couldn't tell anyone that you had jury duty. TFA was in-trial stuff. You get called to be a juror, I know of no law that say you can't tell your boss and wife "I have jury duty." Sure, you'll have to prove it after the verdict since you can't give any details during the trial.

Does that make more sense?

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

And frankly, I've never met a successful drug addict, they're all whacked out losers with no money - thanks to the aforementioned dealers. Drug dealers harm society - get the fuck over it.

I never mentioned any addictive drugs anywhere, so why are you talking about drug addicts? We were only talking about marijuana here, until you started talking about addiction. People who sell meth to children are scum, I agree. I'd convict a meth dealer under the right circumstances (was he actually dealing meth to large numbers of people for profit, or did the police just say he had "intent to distribute" because he had more than a gram or so on him and it was for personal use?). But that is why I specifically said marijuana before, because growing a harmless plant and casually sharing/selling some of its fruit absolutely should not be a crime and it is disgusting to me to think otherwise. In other countries (the ones that aren't as much under US influence), marijuana isn't even a drug, it's nothing more than a fucking vegetable. For fuck's sake, no one has ever, in thousands of years of history, died directly from smoking marijuana, so how can someone rationally explain why marijuana should be illegal while alcohol is readily available and socially accepted? We've been slowly stripping away the 1920s-era propaganda from people's thought processes in this country and we are finally starting to make headway. It will be legal in our lifetimes. So stop trying to compare marijuana "dealers" to those who sell actual harmful and addictive drugs. It doesn't help your cause.

Addiction is a problem, that much we can all agree upon. What are you proposing we do about the addiction problem? Throw all the drug dealers in prison? Guess what, that's exactly what the US government has been trying to do for decades and they utterly failed at reducing the harm to society from drug use. All they have done is created a police state and a prison economy. The war on drugs has royally fucked this country over.

If drugs were not illegal, there would be no illicit drug dealers . Have the fucking FDA regulate them and ensure quality controls, tax the shit out of them, make them 21+ only, whatever you want to do, but do NOT make them impossible to legally obtain. You know, just like the two most harmful drugs (by number of deaths), alcohol and tobacco. You can't make people stop doing drugs by making users into criminals. That only creates more criminals. People who know they are already committing one crime, so it's not that big of a leap to start committing a few more. Education and medical treatment and NOT imprisonment -- these are the remedies that this country refuses to accept. Look at Portugal in the last 10 years, and compare their progress to the US.

I know this is an issue that you feel strongly about because it affects you personally. You might hate those specific drug dealers, because they sold drugs to members of your family, and maybe those specific people may, in fact, be scumbags who deserve to be in prison. But you should try not to let that prevent you from understanding the big picture.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. in your weed scenario, you don't know what the sentence will be until the verdict is issued. It could be six months community service for all you know. All you're doing is allowing someone to break the law without repurcussions.

And in your weed scenario, you fail to understand that there should be no punishment, period. The law is a relic of 1920s propaganda and is absolutely fucking outdated, unjust, unconstitutional, a crime against humanity. I do not have enough words to throw at this, but I implore everyone, every last potential juror in this country, to do your duty as human beings and nullify the marijuana laws. Every last fucking one of them. In all cases. So it's a violent drug dealer? Not paying any taxes? CONVICT on the violence, CONVICT on the taxes, ACQUIT on the marijuana. You still put away the people that need to be put away, and you make a stand in showing that the people do NOT want marijuana to be a criminal offense.

Re:Uh oh.

[joocemann]

So it was a satirical story placing the premise by which the trial was overturned as the reason the satire went awry.

None of that happened to me, but a trial was overturned for the petty and irrelevant reasons I made spectacle of.

Re:Uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the fucking law changed. Wow, why didn't I think of that before? Oh thats right, our legislators are bought and paid for and have no interest in doing anything the constituents want, like legalizing marijuana. The average person is powerless to do a fucking thing about it, except vote and serve on a jury. Voting doesn't do much good because the alternative, even if he wins the election, won't want to change the law, either. But voting is the only tool we have so it's still necessary. Jury nullification has the potential to save one person one time from a ridiculous unjust law that our legislators refuse to even CONSIDER changing, so there is some directly tangible benefit to doing so.

Re:Uh oh.

[Shotgun]

The potential for abuse is great; but, so is the potential from an unrestrained legislature. The law is nothing but interpretation and subjectivity, and that is why the final interpretation must always be left to the people, and not rulers that would deign themselves our protectors.

Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phones?

[Osgeld]

Obviously this is becoming a problem because you don't need to be on the phone to be on the phone anymore, simple solution is to give the juror's an emergency hotline number to pass out (if the mom dies or something) and take away the damned phones during trial.

Contrary to popular belief you will not die if you are not able to operate a telephone computer device for the length of a day.

So what?

[pla]

I can understand why jurors shouldn't receive outside information about the trial (though have a personal bone over expecting experts to magically forget everything they know for the purposes of serving on a jury).

But non-detail-bearing outbound messages? Seriously, so what? That has no effect on the actual trial or the defendant's ability to enjoy the due process of law leading to a more-or-less fair verdict.

Re:So what?

[Attila Dimedici]

That was my thought as well. Not only that, but the tweets in the article did not seem to reflect anything about what was actually going on in the trial. I half expect that if the defendant is convicted in the second trial his lawyers will appeal based on the jury pool being compromised because of the tweets by this juror.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to say.. Isn't a "discussion" a two-way connection? If Buddha speaks alone in the woods, does he have any followers?

Re:So what?

[orphiuchus]

A good defense attorney might argue that the very fact that the coffee wasn't very good lead to jurors not drinking it, and thusly not paying close attention during the trial.

Hopefully this guy still gets the death penalty if hes found guilty. It really does look like he murdered a 17 year old over the money in the kids pocket.

Re:So what?

[Torinir]

However, the judge has to consider the possibility that the juror may have received DMs on Twitter that may actually impact the trial. This is why jurors are sequestered in the first place, to prevent outside communications from impacting the jury's decision.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because twitter is obviously send only. Nowhere within twitter can you actually see other tweets, much less tweets related to to your own.

And I am sure that this has no effect on the actual trial either:
"another juror nodded off during the presentation of evidence."

Re:So what?

[Nidi62]

I can understand why jurors shouldn't receive outside information about the trial (though have a personal bone over expecting experts to magically forget everything they know for the purposes of serving on a jury). But non-detail-bearing outbound messages? Seriously, so what? That has no effect on the actual trial or the defendant's ability to enjoy the due process of law leading to a more-or-less fair verdict.

How do you know the juror hasn't already been compromised, and is sending out information regarding the direction of deliberation in a predetermined code? For all you know, "the coffee here sucks" could mean that the deliberation is going against the way the tampering party wants. Hell, it could even be code aimed at a news outlet so that they can get the scoop, by knowing what the verdict is trending towards beforehand? And if information can go out, information can be going in as well. If a juror has access to his twitter account, he has access to anyone who associated them with that account (like a follower), or targets him with a post. The goal of rules such as this is to attempt to avoid any appearance of impropriety or impartiality, whether there is any or not.

Re:So what?

[Registered Coward v2]

(though have a personal bone over expecting experts to magically forget everything they know for the purposes of serving on a jury).

You don't have to - you are given a set of facts and make your decision based on that; but your experiences and knowledge is part of the deliberation process. What you can't do is use prior knowledge about the case to reach a verdict - so saying " I read that you couldn't get from A to B in 30 minutes" is not OK, using your knowledge of how fast a car can go to decide someone couldn't have done that is OK.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you get a fair verdict when one of the jurors fell asleep and the one looked at a murder trial as some mundane routine. Those jurors had someone's life in their hands and that's how they approached the trial? It's disgraceful and both of them should seriously rethink their entire lives. It's pathetic and the defendant absolutely deserves a second trial with jurors who take their responsibility seriously.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the judge tells jurors not to make public statements while the trial is underway, and they post ANYTHING on Twitter, they should face jail time. It isn't for jurors to decide for themselves what statements may have an effect on the trial or the defendant's due process rights. And yes, the scumbag defendant gets a new trial too. The idiot juror who caused this mess should be real proud of themselves.

Re:So what?

[khr]

But a juror publicly talking about what's going on with the jury, outside whatever is obvious in the courtroom, might affect how lawyers for either side present their case.

Re:So what?

[hedwards]

Because it gives the parties involved a way of gauging the status of various jurors. But mostly because it's easier to order a jury not to discuss, investigate, avoid hearing about or speaking about the case at all than it is to set up a set of rules that govern where exactly the line is.

Ultimately it was presumably in the judges instructions and orders from the beginning that they were not to engage in that activity and report any accidental exposure to the bailiff. Or at least that's how it was when I was on jury duty.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the same time, though, serving on a jury doesn't make you give up every right you have. It would be like saying, "Because you are serving on a jury, you cannot use the phone, send any email, or login to Facebook during the trial. I'm sorry if you will be fired because you can't respond to your boss's emails or calls." A judge cannot deny you your basic rights entirely. He can only prohibit you from doing something that will compromise the trial. Posting about coffee at the courthouse doesn't do that, under any reasonable person's definition. Would complaining about warm water from a water fountain or that the Coke machine ate his money be grounds for dismissal too?

It's why sequestering juries is done only under extreme circumstances, and judges are loathe to do it. They understand that sacrificing your freedom is not an ordinary part of jury duty. Your rights and the rights of the defendant are not mutually exclusive.

Re:So what?

[hey!]

Simple. Juror is ordered not to post anything on the Internet. Juror *disregards* the order, therefore juror has shown he can't be trusted to follow instructions the judge has given him.

You can't undo an execution, nor can you compensate the executed person if the conviction was in error. If you're considering killing a man, common decency demands you at least provide him with a jury that can be trusted to follow instructions.

Re:So what?

[grim4593]

Eh, Jury Duty does not pay enough to own me for the entire duration of a trial. Sure, I will go out of my way to avoid finding out information about the trial in the name of impartiality but I will be damned if they want to make me a prisoner in my own body while I get an unpaid vacation from work.

Re:So what?

[swalve]

It's the same reason why cameras and recording devices aren't allowed in most courtrooms. It is purported to cause the people in the courtroom to behave differently.

And the reason why experts are asked to "forget" what they know is because all that is relevant is the facts and evidence as presented in the courtroom.

Re:So what?

[pla]

How do you get a fair verdict when one of the jurors fell asleep and the one looked at a murder trial as some mundane routine

For one, it very clearly shows that they had no emotional involvement in the outcome. If I ever found myself as the defendant in such a case, I'd take disinterested jurors over passionate ones in a frickin' heartbeat.

As for falling asleep, I will agree that goes a bit too far. That said, I don't know that I'd do any better listening to lawyers babble for hours on end in a language that sounds like English but has only a superficial resemblance thereto. After a week, or three, or more, of that - Could you honestly claim that you'd give "let's ask the same question again with one word changed" your full attention, just after lunch and after the asshats in the hotel room above yours partied until 2am?

Re:So what?

[Alex Belits]

It would be like saying, "Because you are serving on a jury, you cannot use the phone, send any email, or login to Facebook during the trial. I'm sorry if you will be fired because you can't respond to your boss's emails or calls." A judge cannot deny you your basic rights entirely.

Why not? Formally, you act on the behalf of the whole population of the country, so if it is not compatible with exercising your rights, rights have to lose.
Practically, if you are in a position when being on a jury has such severe consequences for your life, just tell the lawyers something they really hate to hear when they choose a jury.

Re:So what?

[Anonymus]

Jury duty is not a paying job, it's your duty (hence the name) to help keep a just society functioning.

If anything, your payment is living in a land that isn't (yet) totalitarian. Avoiding jury duty is as bad for society as skipping out on paying taxes.

Re:So what?

[Anonymus]

At the same time, though, any boss who would fire someone for serving on jury duty should themselves be fired and put in jail.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah like "I've heard about this trial on the news, and I really hope we can put that scumbag 'Blank' away."

Re:So what?

[RobertLTux]

"I'm sorry if you will be fired because you can't respond to your boss's emails or calls"

and im sure the Labor board would love to hear about somebody getting canned over Jury Duty since i think that is one of the things IT IS A FELONY TO FIRE OVER.

Re:So what?

[DriedClexler]

Paranoid much?

How do you know that the who-could-fall-for-this ads in Time magazine aren't code for sleeper agents?

Re:So what?

[pla]

and im sure the Labor board would love to hear about somebody getting canned over Jury Duty since i think that is one of the things IT IS A FELONY TO FIRE OVER.

Nobody actually gets fired for serving on jury duty... or taking maternity leave... or putting in their obligatory National Guard time.

Funny, though, how much discretion your employer has on who gets promoted, who gets raises, who gets sacked when hard times come.

Re:So what?

[dlthompson81]

If you were on trial for murder, would you want the person in the jury thinking about what his next tweet would be, or would you want him thinking about if you are guilty or not? I think it's pretty simple, but that's just me.

Re:So what?

[_0xd0ad]

If the slightest indication is made that your boss is in any way upset about your having to serve on jury duty, document it meticulously and you'll have a very solid case later if, say, you're let go without an extremely good reason.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't undo an execution, nor can you compensate the executed person if the conviction was in error. If you're considering killing a man, common decency demands you at least provide him with a jury that can be trusted to follow instructions.

"Common decency" mentioned in the same sentence as execution.

We really live in a fucked up country.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you don't give intelligent answers at other times.

Re:So what?

[Quiet_Desperation]

My bro in law is an engineer that specializes in fault analysis and other types of "WTF went wrong" tasks whete he works. He get excused very quickly after stating his occupation.

I find just stating engineer as my job gets me the stink eye from the defense side, although I have been excused by the prosecution. Six trips to jury duty, never actually sat on a jury. I think if you just use words of more than one syllable during selection questioning, you're gone.

Re:So what?

[DarkOx]

Disinterested in the outcome, absolutely disinterested in the process not so much. I know I am splitting hairs here but honestly they way some people are on their smart phones they might as well be asleep. I have been to meetings where someone was doing something on their phone and essentially tuned everything else out. I know this because in the following days they did things that proved they took exactly nothing away from the presentation I gave.

This to important to give someone the benefit of the doubt, they are capable of multitasking effectively enough to literally do justice to the job. All to many of them might just as well be asleep when they are tuned into their phones as far as their awareness of what is happening around them goes.

Re:So what?

[grim4593]

I never said I avoided it. Last year I was on jury duty for two weeks and took it very seriously. However, what the courts gave me hardly covered gas and lunch and my work didn't give me jury pay for the two weeks. By the time I got back to work I was broke and people were unhappy with the mindset as if I took a two week paid vacation.

When it comes down to it the jury consists mostly of people that have decent enough jobs that pay for jury duty and those that are retired. Other people generally find ways to get out of it or are thrown out by the attorneys/judge by acting like people with common sense or intelligence rather than puppets.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

no emotional involvement != disinterested

A disinterested person is likely to NOT be listening to the evidence. They want to get out of there ASAP and will just throw in a Yes or No depending on whatever the rest of the group wants. On overly passionate juror is also likely to not listen as they've already made up their mind. I'd prefer an interested juror with enough maturity to think about the evidence before making their mind up. Not some idiot who doesn't listen and just tows the line.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I might agree that a tweet about the coffee could be fairly innocuous but that changes once you get into tweets like, "Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken... We each define the great line." Phrases like these imply that the juror is more concerned with making a "profound" statement for his Twitter audience than he is in paying attention to the trial. Even the guy who kept nodding odd may have been paying more attention than Twiitter sitting there trying to come up with great tweets.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because these are 2 completely different things. Please do the society and this world in general a favor and castrate yourself and anyone related to you, you stupid mutt.

Re:So what?

[Trepidity]

I don't see why we can't pay jurors some modest amount, though. Surely it's in all our interests to keep a justice system functioning. Occasionally, trials take a long time, so a jury may be sequestered for weeks. Why should the cost be borne entirely by the people who, by random chance, end up on the jury for such trials, especially since they're already sacrificing in other ways (e.g. not seeing their families or attending to other business for weeks)? The financial burden, at least, seems like it could be generally shared by taxpayers, at least to the level of reimbursing them at minimum wage.

Re:So what?

[chrb]

But non-detail-bearing outbound messages?

The trial wasn't overturned for sending messages. It was overturned because the juror went against the judge's explicits instructions and therefore failed to follow the law. There is an important difference there. The supreme court finding says: "First, the procedural posture of this case is not that Appellant was prejudiced by the fact that the juror tweeted; rather, Appellant avers the prejudice results from the fact that the juror admitted to the misconduct, which proves that he failed to follow the court’s instructions, and it is the failure to follow the law that prejudiced Appellant."

The circuit court judge gave the jury clear instructions "When you’re back in the jury room, it’s fine with me to use your cell phone if you need to call home or call business. Just remember, never discuss this case over your cell phone. And don’t Twitter anybody about this case. That did happen down in Washington County and almost had a, a $15 million law verdict overthrown. So don’t Twitter. Don’t use your cell phone to talk to anybody about this case other than perhaps the length of the case or something like that.". This guy used Twitter, despite being explicitly instructed to not use Twitter.

Even if there hadn't have been explicit instructions not to use Twitter, the supreme court judges may have still come out with the same finding. One of the judges said, ""Even if such discussions were one-sided, it is in no way appropriate for a juror to state musings, thoughts or other information about a case in such a public fashion. One potential problem is that there is no way to know that outbound messages are "non-detail-bearing" and "one-way", unless you monitor the phone of every juror for the duration of the trial. How did this Twitter juror know that nobody was going to reply to his tweets? There is no way to guarantee that the communication is "only one-way". There have been several cases now where jurors are seen texting during the trial, and they deny they are talking about the trial, but when the phones are examined it turns out they were in fact talking about the trial. That is illegal, and will cause the trial to collapse if discovered. And a new trial costs the tax payer money.

The other big problem, is that if you allow outbound messages, an industry will grow around it. Jurors will become syndicated, they will be posting updates on their blogs and receive income from advertising etc. If an activity is allowed, then it will be difficult to stop it being commercialized if there is a demand for it. And, if you were being judged, would you really want to know that there was a constant flow of one-way information being broadcast from the jury to the rest of the world? Who is going to monitor and judge whether or not the details they reveal go too far? Surely it is far simpler, and cheaper, just to instruct them not to talk about their jury duty - like every other juror has had to do in legal history. I don't see why owning a mobile phone should make modern citizens exempt from these rules. Is it really so hard for people to control their actions on social networks?

Re:So what?

[Grygus]

I will admit that I've only worked for a dozen or so organizations in my whole life, so maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never had a contract that stated any reason had to be given in the first place, extremely good or otherwise. I was once "downsized" from a company in the midst of all-time high profits: the very soul of being fired for no reason at all. Even if I could prove that the employer had made a disparaging remark about perfectly legal behavior in the past, there should be no way to prove a connection between that statement and the termination unless the employer is a complete moron.

Do most jobs not work this way?

Re:So what?

[_0xd0ad]

Those so-called "disparaging comments" create a hostile work environment, which alone constitute illegal retaliation. Given that your employer was already retaliating against you, any judge or jury would likely take a rather dim view of him firing you without very good cause.

Re:So what?

[Rick17JJ]

It is quite likely that the one juror who fell asleep could not help falling asleep. Despite taking my civic responsibility of jury duty seriously, I had trouble staying awake, when I was once on a one day jury trial. I did not get a good nights sleep the night before, and getting to the courtroom in time meant that I had to get up earlier than normal.

When filling out the jury duty questionnaire that I received in the mail, I had warned them that I sometimes had trouble with insomnia, but they selected me anyway. During jury selection, I did not try to use my only having had a few hours of sleep as an excuse to try and get out of jury duty, because I was wide awake and alert at the time and thought I would be OK.

During each of the breaks, I quickly walked up and down the steps from the basement to the top floor and back several times to try and wake up. At one point, the judge probably noticed me getting tired, and without singling me out, he asked everyone to stand up and stretch for a minute or two.

Fortunately, the questions and discussion about laws and correct procedures for bicyclists and cars on city streets, was interesting enough to help keep me awake. But unfortunately, during the afternoon, there was some boring stuff that was making me even more sleepy.

I took my civic duty as a juror seriously, but still had trouble staying awake. If it had been a longer trial, some days would have probably been worse. I would have been unable to focus on what they were saying because of the mental effort required to try to stay awake. I no longer have insomnia or any problems with tiredness anymore, by the way.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they excuse you because you use profanity way too often in normal conversation. :)

/usually gets excused from jury duty based on honest statements about complete distrust for cops

Re:So what?

[stephanruby]

May be, he could just take a look at the Twitter account on the phone itself and ask the juror in question to swear (or he'll go to jail) if he deleted any DMs. At some point, the judge has to be pragmatic about this. No judge can't have any absolute guarantee that a juror wasn't tampered with.

This is why jurors are sequestered in the first place, to prevent outside communications from impacting the jury's decision.

Yes no doubt, this kind of sequestration will only make more jurors nod off during a trial. That's clearly what we want.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like it, move to Massachusetts. You'll get to serve on plenty of juries, but only for about one day every 3-10 years.

Re:So what?

[mortonda]

I was on a jury just a few months ago, and they requested that we leave all phones and such turned off in the jury room until after the verdict was given. Doesn't seem too hard to understand.

Re:So what?

[mortonda]

I got $10 for the time I was on a jury. WOo hoo

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It gives the lawyer(s) inside information about how the jurors are thinking about the case. During the trial, what happens in the jury room is supposed to stay there until the end.

Re:So what?

[Dan541]

Well if the juror has internet access then it's likely they also have email, skype, facebook etc..
This is more about the juror accessing the internet during the trial. Just updating twitter is one thing but the juror could also be googling for information on the defendant, the judge has no way of knowing how the phone was used.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if Jurors talk, this could help attorneys figure out how the trial is going and they could make decisions based on this, which compromises justice.

I once saw an episode of The Practice which imagined an interesting example: a juror confessed to the defense attorney that the trial was going well for her client and that he'd most likely be found not guilty. Before she could tell the judge about this breach of the rules, the state attorney offered her a compromise: if her client plead guilty, he'd get only 5 years (instead of 10-20 if found guilty by the jury). The defense attorney then rejected the offer because she knew she was going to win. Now that right here is an example of how a trial could become unfair to one of the involved parties if jurors are allowed to speak to anyone.

Then again, those out of court settlements and deals that attorneys make don't serve justice either. Even the whole thing about pleading guilty or not guilty works against justice. Lots of people plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit because 3 years are better than the risk of 10 and/or because court-appointed attorneys don't have time to build a case and often encourage them to plead guilty.
The government should not entice innocent people to agree to a few years in jail by using the threat of a harsher punishment. The reason the government does this is because they have a weak case to begin with; the government should not attempt to jail anyone unless they have a strong case against them!
And the act of pleading guilty in order to save society time and money on a trial should not allow you to escape the sentence you deserve for the crime you committed.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, federal jury duty pays $40/day. States pay different amounts; it may vary if your job pays your salary during jury duty. Finally, some jobs will dock your pay for the amount you're paid for jury duty.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

A good defense attorney might argue that the very fact that the coffee wasn't very good lead to jurors not drinking it, and thusly not paying close attention during the trial.

A good defense attorney wouldn't need twitter to find out the coffee sucks.

Re:So what?

[shentino]

How do we know that all messages were outbound?

The mere presence of a device CAPABLE of contact the outside world, even just to send a message, is a breach enough.

The tweets themselves might not have nailed the jurors but they blew the whistle on the contraband electronics that were used to send them.

Re:So what?

[shentino]

Jurors are only human.

Re:So what?

[shentino]

I wonder what it says when lawyers don't want geniuses on the jury to begin with.

Re:So what?

[Rich0]

I'd go a step further and pay them whatever a public defender would be getting - if not their own normal wages plus 20%, with an additional compensation to their employer for the deprivation of their contributions.

Sure, it would cost money, but it would probably suddenly give everybody incentive to actually be on a jury and attentive to the case.

The judge and lawyers are essential to the process of justice, and yet for whatever reason they don't have to do it for $5/day.

We might want to note that the reason the payments are crazy figures like $5/day is that they were probably codified into law at a time when that actually was a significant compensation (you know, back when bread and milk cost a few pennies despite farms requiring 50% of the population to keep them running).

Re:So what?

[Rich0]

And that is exactly why nobody with an IQ about about 110 ends up serving on a jury - at least not more than once. I'm not sure that we're better off for it...

Re:So what?

[Rich0]

If you're considering killing a man, common decency demands you at least provide him with a jury that can be trusted to follow instructions.

I think the greater travesty is that we apparently live in a society where "follow instructions" somehow is equated with "uphold justice."

Frankly if I were on trial for murder I'd be a lot more interested in jurors who can do the latter than the former. If you want something that follows instructions you'd do better to use a jury of court employees or computer programs.

Re:So what?

[SonnyDog09]

When I was on Jury Duty, I asked how they could get away with paying less than minimum wage. They had no answer. I told them that "no one is above the law."

Re:So what?

[gl4ss]

only use homeless people for the jurys.

seriously.

Re:So what?

[gl4ss]

it seems to me that for most people jury duty is a _negatively_ paying job.
you either lose vacation time doing it or have to miss work.

unless you use just the unemployed and homeless as jurors - which might actually be a good idea, especially in case of some high rank bank cases..

if it was always "your peers" then logically mobsters would have mobsters in the jury and so forth anyways.

Re:So what?

[Jonner]

But non-detail-bearing outbound messages? Seriously, so what? That has no effect on the actual trial or the defendant's ability to enjoy the due process of law leading to a more-or-less fair verdict.

Do you really think the juror made a post without reading anything else on Twitter or elsewhere? Should judges be required to know enough to distinguish between posting only vs. reading the web site du jour?

Re:So what?

[Builder]

I will admit that I've only worked for a dozen or so organizations in my whole life, so maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never had a contract that stated any reason had to be given in the first place,

That's just because you live in America. Those of us who live in the free world know that we can do our civic duty and our livelihood will be safe.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet none of that changes the fact that if the trial lasts a month, I find myself with no food for money or rent. It's not my duty to forced into homelessness and starvation.

Not everyone is rich enough to take a month long unpaid vacation. A ridiculous ton of people still live paycheque to paycheque. You suddenly erase a few of those in a row, and suddenly you find yourself having to choose between eating that week and having a roof over your head. Or neither.

Your work may still legally have to have a job for you when you return, but that's not going to put food in your stomach for the 2 weeks before the next paycheque.

Re:So what?

[pla]

Should judges be required to know enough to distinguish between posting only vs. reading the web site du jour?

"Know", no.

"Prove", yes.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disinterested is fine. Uninterested isn't, there is quite a significant difference between the two, one which the two other posters who replied to you are also unaware of.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

Or sentence the jurors to the maximum sentence possible, based on the criminal charges against the defendant.

Need a new law

[Nidi62]

Any type of incident such as this should be considered obstruction of justice, or at least contempt of court, and should come with a fine and/or jail sentence(if only a few days). Jurors not paying attention or disregarding orders can cost lives (either by sentencing an innocent man to death, or freeing an actual murderer and allowing him to kill again). Jury duty is not something that should be taken lightly, and is one of the few things the government asks you to do in regards to civic duty. A lot of people can't even do this right, or don't want to. People want so much from the government, but they can't even be bothered to do one simple thing like pay attention and do your duty.

Re:Need a new law

[pla]

Any type of incident such as this should be considered obstruction of justice, or at least contempt of court, and should come with a fine and/or jail sentence

Sure - Just as soon as jury duty becomes purely voluntary (and don't give me "then just don't register to vote"), or at the very least, easily deferrable to any convenient time within the next year or so once notified. What we have now amounts to nothing short of indentured servitude if you want to actually exercise your right to vote. At any time, they can call you in and unless you have a damned good reason, you can find the next few weeks of your life suddenly unavailable to you (and Zeus help you if you actually get called for any sort of high-profile capital case, unless you like the thought of effectively living in solitary confinement for six months).

Re:Need a new law

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's what bothers me more than the tweeting per se(yes, they might have been discussing the case in some covert way, and a phone would certainly give them the capability to be influenced during the case from the outside, which would be bad): If you are falling asleep, or twitting away about the coffee, you aren't even paying basic attention to the case, which is your job(or you suck so badly at paying basic attention to presentations of data that you should probably be excused from jury service and allowed to clear trash from the highway median for an equivalent length of time...)

Even if there was no jury tampering, as seems reasonably likely, there was definitely a bunch of jury-just-not-giving-a-fuck...

Re:Need a new law

[Nidi62]

Any type of incident such as this should be considered obstruction of justice, or at least contempt of court, and should come with a fine and/or jail sentence Sure - Just as soon as jury duty becomes purely voluntary (and don't give me "then just don't register to vote"), or at the very least, easily deferrable to any convenient time within the next year or so once notified. What we have now amounts to nothing short of indentured servitude if you want to actually exercise your right to vote. At any time, they can call you in and unless you have a damned good reason, you can find the next few weeks of your life suddenly unavailable to you (and Zeus help you if you actually get called for any sort of high-profile capital case, unless you like the thought of effectively living in solitary confinement for six months).

You are provided with police service, fire service, protection from foreign enemies, insurance against money loss, unemployment if you can't get a job, medical assistance for those that are retired/too poor to afford it, food if you cannot afford it, infrastructure, and various environmental and consumer protections, to name a few. The government asks of you only 2 (or 3, if you are male) things: pay your taxes, enter the selective service (for males), and participate in jury duty. For all the government does, and all the people that sacrifice years of their lives (if not all of their lives) so that you can have all of these things, I think you can sacrifice a few weeks. Like I said, this is what is wrong with this country, at all levels. It's not "give and take" anymore. It's "see how much I can take, and how little I can give".

Re:Need a new law

[pla]

The government asks of you only 2 (or 3, if you are male) things: pay your taxes, enter the selective service (for males), and participate in jury duty

Which I consider two (as a male) too many, and would further argue about how much tax we really need to pay.


Like I said, this is what is wrong with this country, at all levels. It's not "give and take" anymore. It's "see how much I can take, and how little I can give".

We allow the government to exist because it facilitates us getting about with our daily lives. We do indeed bear a price for that, but when that price means "can't get about with my daily life", the price has grown too high to bear. Conning people into believing in some BS nobility of the "social contract" counts as one of the greatest evils ever perpetuated by the oligarchy on human society.

Re:Need a new law

[Quiet_Desperation]

All well and good, but can they maybe call people I know who have NEVER gotten the summons whereas I've had six? They are all registered to vote and drive. There's something wrong with the selection algorithm.

Re:Need a new law

[halln]

At no point in the article is it stated that these tweets were made while the trial was in progress. Do jurors only drink coffee while listening to testimony? They are given breaks and can drink coffee when they aren't in court. While I agree that jury duty is just that, your duty, I don't believe these instances should fall under anything other than being stupid.

Re:Need a new law

[ctid]

How do you mean "the price has grown too high to bear"? Has something changed to make it higher?

Re:Need a new law

[the eric conspiracy]

You are free to argue that these should be changed. If you find them unbearable you are free to move to some place that imposes less on it's citizens. Like say Somalia.

Now WTF is your problem?

Re:Need a new law

[pla]

You are free to argue that these should be changed. If you find them unbearable you are free to move to some place that imposes less on it's citizens. Like say Somalia.

Ah, the eternal refrain of the Loyal Citizen - "If you don't like it, GTFO".


Now WTF is your problem?

"Lord, save me from your followers!"

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

Weighted towards /. usernames? "Quiet Desperation" is a great pick for juror. Doesn't tweet and and is quick to convict.

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

...or at the very least, easily deferrable to any convenient time within the next year or so once notified.

Two months ago I got called for jury selection (I'm in Toronto, Canada) which was supposed to be for the entire week. The very first thing was that we were given the option to come back at a more convenient time. There was a calendar with dates highlighted and basically there were dates available for about 70 percent of the calendar.

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooo! "I only hit you with an open hand! If that hurts too much, how about you try your luck with the guy who uses brass knuckles?"

Now WTF is your problem?

YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Re:Need a new law

[cheekyjohnson]

enter the selective service (for males)

That sounds awful.

Re:Need a new law

[bmo]

>or at the very least, easily deferrable to any convenient time within the next year or so once notified.

There was one time I was called for jury duty and was in school at the time and finals were coming up and it was going to be a hardship.

I made a phone call. That's all it took to re-schedule. It's far easier than people think it is.

--
BMO

Re:Need a new law

[LordLucless]

You pay for police service, fire service, protection from foreign enemies, insurance against money loss, unemployment if you can't get a job, medical assistance for those that are retired/too poor to afford it, food if you cannot afford it, infrastructure, and various environmental and consumer protections...For all the government does, and all the people that sacrifice years of their lives in return for compensation which you have already provided so that you can have all of these things, I think you can sacrifice a few weeks without any reasonable compensation.

Fixed that for you.

I believe in jury duty. However, it's obvious that governments don't. If they did, they'd require employers to continue to pay their employees throughout the jury process, and compensate them for the money thus spent at tax time. As it is, you can see precisely the import that government places in jury duty by looking at the money they spend on it - diddly squat.

Re:Need a new law

[bryan1945]

So what you're saying is you want all the goodies without any of the work? Gotcha.

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with the sentiments, but let's be for real here. Most people do everything they can to avoid jury duty in today's more relaxed method of dealing with contaminated juries. Imagine how much the pool would shrink if folks started doing jail time. And yes - I have performed jury duty once.

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

>>You are provided with police service, fire service, protection from foreign enemies, insurance against money loss, unemployment if you can't get a job, medical >>assistance for those that are retired/too poor to afford it, food if you cannot afford it, infrastructure, and various environmental and consumer protections, to >>name a few.

The police are corrupt and dangerous. I'm afraid of them.
The fire service is something I MUST PAY FOR DIRECTLY MYSELF or they will watch my house burn down.
The forigen enemies would not be enemies if the goverment would stop fucking around and giving them guns and power.
The insurance aginst money loss? LOL too big to fail. Yeah that shit worked out well for us little guys right. We got stuck holding the bag anyway.
The Unemployment. That i paid into. And my employer paid into. The goverment is not involved except for making fucked up rules and screwing it up.
The medical assistance.. Well i might give you that one. We'll see if theres any money left in it when i get to be old enough to use it.
The US Infastructure. That is completely falling apart and now starting to kill people because it has not been maintained worth a damm by the goverment.
The environmental protections? Like what was supposed to prevent BP from killing an ocean?
The consumer protections? ahahahahaha yeah right. seen prices lately? safety? responsibility? roflmao...

Come on now... We're getting royally completely boned here.. While jury duty might be our duty.. These things you say we get in return all suck ass in seriously sad fucked up ways.

-x-

Re:Need a new law

[pla]

I made a phone call. That's all it took to re-schedule. It's far easier than people think it is.

Interesting... Then I suppose I need to withdraw that objection.

I wonder if that varies by state, though.

Re:Need a new law

[Anonymous Coward]

Jurors not paying attention...

Have you ever sat on a jury? Have you ever studied Supreme Court cases? There are documented cases of justices falling asleep during arguments. It's only human, regardless of the importance of your position, for one's attention to wander when you are presented with hours of tedium. That is why there are 12 jurors, hopefully at least one was paying attention at any given point. Failing that, jurors can ask to re-hear testimony.

A bigger concern is how easy it is to get out of jury duty or for a potential juror to get thrown off a jury by either the defense or the prosecution. You are supposed to be judged by a jury of your peers, not by a bunch of morons that couldn't get off or are so uninformed that they threaten neither the prosecution or the defense.

Re:Need a new law

[bmo]

Oh shit, it's pla.

I didn't even see the name I replied to earlier.

Hi.
--
Dan

Re:Need a new law

[PlatyPaul]

It's (pseudo-)random. Just because a particular sample is nonuniform in distribution does not mean that the governing process was flawed.

Re:Need a new law

[PlatyPaul]

You clearly do not live in New York. New York State Consolidated Laws-Judiciary Law Article 16 521 states that all employers of 10+ employees must pay for full employee wages, at least for the first three days of service (with the state picking up the tab thereafter).

IANAL, and this does not constitute legal advice.

Re:Need a new law

[Quiet_Desperation]

OK, so maybe an extra field with "number of summons" and set the algorithm to pick people with "0" in that field first? And then "1", then "2" and so on?

Re:Need a new law

[LordLucless]

No, I don't. Does the state also pick up the tab for those employed in businesses smaller than 10 people? Or the self-employed?

Re:Need a new law

[pla]

Oh shit, it's pla.

Hi there!

No worries - I made a factual error (in at least some states), you called me on it. I wouldn't have it any other way! :)

/ Lacking USENET access at the moment. And any year now, I hope to have a "real" ISP available out here in the middle of frickin' nowhere.

Re:Need a new law

[bmo]

I haven't been on alt-ri in a very long time, myself. I ragequit after some not-so-nice comments by certain individuals about muslims (and blacks, and mexicans, and you know, non-whites).

I am bubo sibiricus on g+, facebook, and twitter. Mostly facebook, though. I don't check the other two very often. Friend me.

As for usenet, there is always eternal-september.org. It's free.

--
BMO

Re:Need a new law

[Uzuri]

That would eventually tend toward juries made up of mostly 18-year-olds.

That said, though, I feel like they ought to at least give you X years between. So say you get the call and serve, you get 5 years off, get the call and get turned away after coming in you get 1 year off, and get the call but get turned away before you even have to come in and you're back in the pot.

Racially Biased Decision

[Baldrson]

Obviously the Arkansas Supreme Court is packed with crackers who let Erickson (probably related to Leif) off because he was white.

Re:Racially Biased Decision

[hedwards]

No, they did it because the trial was compromised and they couldn't be sure that the defendant had received a fair trial. If they wanted to let a white man off the hook they could have ordered him freed without a new trial.

Correct outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Juror misconduct SHOULD be taken very seriously, even to the point of giving new trials to clearly guilty individuals. The integrity of the system is more important than the inconvenience and expense of trying some dirtbag twice.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Tsingi]

Contrary to popular belief you will not die if you are not able to operate a telephone computer device for the length of a day.

My daughter disagrees with you. She has lost several phones. Each loss is superceded by a grave illness, the cure for which can only be the acquisition of another phone.

...what.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know you were allowed to have your phone with you. I haven't personally had jury duty, but the rest of my family has and they said they were told to leave their phones in their cars. In fact, my family didn't even tell each other about any details of the case until after the trial, and we never asked. None of our business.

It boggles the mind that people think these things are okay. I don't know when or where I learned it, but I have it ingrained in me that until the trial is over, what happens in court, stays in court. Including how bad the coffee is.

That juror is a moron and deserves punishment. If I was the family of the murdered kid, I would be furious and incredibly upset. I'm sure he'll get convicted again anyway, but that's not the point. Having to go through the process again, especially after hearing the first time the guilty verdict. That has got to suck.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Nidi62]

Or sentence the jurors to the maximum sentence possible, based on the criminal charges against the defendant.

No, that's too harsh. I say that, if you are caught doing this during the course of a trial, you are removed, your replacement comes in, and you are confined for the rest of the trial. If it comes out after a trial that you did this and there is a mistrial/retrial, then you should be confined for the duration of that trial. That way people realize that this is a serious duty.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, the fact that the jurors had their phones with them provided valuable evidence of them absolutely not giving a fuck about a fairly important matter(It's only some guy being charged with murder, this isn't going to be on the test, right your honor?). In a way, it might be more valuable to leave people the means to easily and verifiably show that they are slacking off, rather than force them to slack off in more silent ways...

Seriously, tweeting about coffee and falling asleep during presentation of evidence, in a case about something slightly graver than a parking ticket?

I suppose the downside of a jury of one's peers is that one's peers are dangerously likely to be fuckwits with an attention span challenged by most commercial breaks...

a serious duty should pay more as well

[Joe_Dragon]

why not at least min wage + Travel costs + free lunch and if you are sequestered then at least min wage + over time pay for all hours sequestered + all meals free

jury duty pays way to low for people to care and they just want it to be over.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[wisnoskij]

Because minimum wage is know for how well it motivates the workforce?
It would be even worse, because then people would think that they are getting paid to do a job and since it is only minimum wage that they do not have to try very hard.

But they are not, they are performing a duty to their government.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[DarkOx]

I don't think you understand the word duty its something you must do. Even if you were not compensated at all it would still be your duty. Occasional jury duty is just one of the many prices we must pay for living in a free society.

Look at this way unlike your taxes, which are all to often stolen by some corporate welfare fat cat, at some justice will be done when you serve on jury.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand the concept of "I'm working a minimum wage job and can barely feed my family, and if I'm forced to do jury duty we'll have no income and starve".

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[Nimey]

This. Employers are required to give you time off to go serve on a jury, but I don't believe they're required to pay you.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[King_TJ]

I don't agree that minimum wage pay makes any sense for performing jury duty. (Many people called in were earning FAR more than that, doing whatever it is they were called away from doing.) I do think it should include a few "perks", though. Free meals would hardly be too much to ask. Heck, vendors regularly offer me free meals if I'm willing to attend some kind of sales presentation for a few hours. And plenty of people take them up on those offers, too. (A good, free meal isn't a bad trade for getting out of work for a little while, right?)

So yeah, I do think jury duty should include free meals, certainly free parking, and probably other "bonuses" to thank people for performing their civic duty in what's generally considered an undesirable situation. Maybe give people a $100 gas card at the end of the trial, for example? Covers their expenses to get to and from the court plus some extra to compensate them for their time.

I think you'd be surprised how many people would see the experience a lot more positively -- and you wouldn't even have to pay them some specific "wage".

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[bryan1945]

They're not required, but some will cover the balance for a short period of time.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[drsmithy]

The proper solution is a law requiring employers to treat Jury Duty the same as paid leave.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[Anonymous Coward]

...But they are not, they are performing a duty to their government.

They are performing a duty for themselves. The people (in the US) are the government. If people do not educate themselves about issues, if people do not participate by voting and by informing elected officials of their positions, if people do not comment and participate in the formation of laws, then our government fails. You can easily see the results of our failures as people by the poor performance of the government in Washington.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[Anonymous Cowpat]

so that rather than individuals being expected to bear the loss of however much work time, by having to take time off without pay, we shift it to requiring employers to bear the cost by paying someone who isn't working?

Why is it perfectly normal for public funds to pay the judge, the balliff, the clerk, the chap who maintains the building, etc., but everyone suddenly baulks at using them to pay jurors?

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[drsmithy]

so that rather than individuals being expected to bear the loss of however much work time, by having to take time off without pay, we shift it to requiring employers to bear the cost by paying someone who isn't working?

Yes. It's a cost of doing business in a stable society with a functioning legal system.

Why is it perfectly normal for public funds to pay the judge, the balliff, the clerk, the chap who maintains the building, etc., but everyone suddenly baulks at using them to pay jurors?

I don't baulk at it at all. I merely recognise that someone on anything resembling a decent income has a strong financial incentive to avoid jury duty, and that disadvantages the system as a whole. The proper solution there is that people should not have that disincentive, and should be paid the same while on jury duty as they would be otherwise. Requiring the employer to do this directly, rather than through multiple layers of taxation and bureaucracy, is a simpler and more efficient way to achieve this result.

You can consider the employer paying his employees while they are on jury duty as a form of taxation if that helps you understand.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[Anonymous Cowpat]

I'll take it as a form of taxation so long as you're prepared to stomach the introduction of other randomly allocated taxes to plug other budget holes.

Re:a serious duty should pay more as well

[drsmithy]

a) It's not random.
b) It's not plugging a budget hole. It's fixing a problem in the system.

Poor Reasoning

[Fulminata]

"Associate Justice Donald Corbin wrote 'because of the very nature of Twitter as an... online social media site, Juror 2's tweets about the trial were very much public discussions.'"

A discussion, by definition, requires the participation of more than one person. So, Justice Corbin is incorrect. The juror made a public statement, but did not engage in a public discussion. It may be mostly a matter of semantics, but in this case it's also the difference between something that could have changed the outcome of the verdict and something which obviously did not.

The juror behaved inappropriately, but not in such a way that could have influenced the outcome of a verdict, so the verdict should have been upheld.

Re:Poor Reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely agree with you.

Complaining about the coffee, and saying "here we go again", is not discussing the trial, or any of the evidence. Was the Jury even sequestered? I suspect the fact that the coffee sucks, and the juror was doing Jury duty, were common knowledge to any of his followers.

The Judge erred in giving a new trial on these grounds.

Re:Poor Reasoning

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know? For all you know, saying the coffee sucks was code for something else. It's also reasonable to assume that if someone is sending tweets that they are also in a position to receive them. When a Jury is told to can-it for a few weeks then that's exactly what they should do. No grey areas, just STFU. This Juror was an idiot without the self control of a 5 year old and was totally disrespectful. Now the victims family have to go through the whole thing again. Nice one Juror #2!

Re:Poor Reasoning

[uncqual]

Responding only to the "the coffee sucks" tweet...

So, if a juror's wife asks "Where is the trial you are serving on in case I go into labor and need to get in touch with you?", is answering this question grounds for mistrial because it might help her figure out which trial you're on or the response might be a code phrase (perhaps through some carefully prearranged scheme, "Downtown Courthouse" might be code for "we're going to fry the guy" while "Main Courthouse" might be code for "the guy's gonna walk")?

What if she asks "Is the coffee any good at the courthouse, do you want me to make a thermos of coffee for you in the morning?" Is responding "Yes, thanks, please make me a thermos of coffee in the morning." grounds for mistrial because it implies that, indeed, the coffee sucks and this could be a "code" for something?

Re:Poor Reasoning

[shentino]

The fact that he was capable of even sending the tweet implies access to contraband electronics which very well could have also been used to receive information.

Re:Poor Reasoning

[Rich0]

Unless the jury was sequestered the guy goes home every night and can browse whatever he wants, and talk to whoever he wants to.

If I were in charge I'd just let the jurors gather whatever information they care to. Sooner or later we'll get to the point where every crime is captured on camera anyway - that's just the information revolution. Trying to control information just sounds like something out of the dark ages.

Law =/= Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

It is anathema to the concept of Law, not Justice.

No coffee tweet mentioned in the opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

From the opinion:

THE COURT
: Okay. It’s says: Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken. Weeach define the great line. About 20 hours ago via text. Now what does that mean?

  JUROR
[2]: What it means was, um, not only like to pertain to this case butalso to future stuff. Um, obviously, whatever we as a jury decide – you know, I’m notnecessarily saying I know what’s going to be decided, but we have to decide – makea huge decision. Either way, you know, if we do decide something like it’s just gonna – a lot of people are either going to be mad about it watching the news because, youknow, people have expressed to me you’re on that court case, right? I can’t talk aboutit. So I leave. So there’s a ton of people watching this. And either way we decide,people are either going to be angry or people are going to be hurt either way. Sowhat I was meaning by that was, you know, we have to define the great line of, youknow, where we stand on a subject and, you know, what we have to choose – decidein the future. And also “Define the Great Line” was an Underoath album, and Ithought I’d throw that in there along with my tweet.

THE COURT
: Well, have you already made up your mind in this case what you’re going to – how you’re going to vote?

JUROR
[2]: No, because I’m waiting for the other 11 to help me come to aconclusion.

THE COURT
: All right.

The opinion never mentioned the coffee tweet, but it did mention what tweets were much more of a flagrant violation of do not discuss the case outside of the court room. I do agree that it seems like Juror 2 was having a tough time with the case, and with the possible verdict and punishment. I think the court correctly overturned the conviction.

Re:No coffee tweet mentioned in the opinion

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Well, have you already made up your mind in this case what you’re going to – how you’re going to vote?

Thankyou for putting this bit in. The judge's problem is foremost that the juror had not been able to retain an open mind before the end of the evidence.
This is why everyone arguing for jurors to be punished for this sort of thing are wrong - the problem is that they were unable to do the job properly and it's grossly unjust to force someone to do a job, and then punish them for not being any good at it.

Actually, we should probably be glad that the electronics revolution has done this for us - we can now more readily detect the incompetent jurors when they tweets about it and weed them out before they make their decision.

Re:No coffee tweet mentioned in the opinion

[Rich0]

I'd assert that it is completely impossible for a human to avoid forming an opinion the instant they receive stimulus of any kind. If that's the standard you're pushing for, then human juries are just out. I'd also assert that it is impossible for a human to be completely without bias: that's just how our brains work - we use our experiences to evaluate our sensory input.

I think what matters more is that somebody can appreciate their own bias and holistically consider the entire situation before issuing a verdict.

The only thing new with Twitter is that people actually do their communications in the open, rather than just chatting with friends in some hard-to-monitor forum.

but they pay less then minimum wage

[Joe_Dragon]

also some people can't take time out of work to do jury duty and others make up stuff to get out of it.

But at least paying more will make it go a long with it being a serious duty.

If WE want better jurors why can't we at least pay min wage or higher?

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[_0xd0ad]

also some people can't take time out of work to do jury duty

Their employer is required, by law, to give them time off for jury duty.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Joe_Dragon]

even if they do some times they don't have the manpower to cover for the loss. It's more of the work load is to high to take the time off.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to tell that to your employer who needs you during crunch time and you suddenly need to disappear for days.

They're required by law to let you go, but it can still leave a bad taste in their mouth that you couldn't get out of it.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[dead_user]

While this is true, it does not have to be PAID time off. HUGE difference. I'm not sure about you, but I can't afford to take 2 weeks off w/o pay. Now, of course you are allowed to use vacation time, but that is really for... Vacation. In fact, around here, jurors even have to pay for parking near the court. So deduct that from the pittance they give you to serve. While I would love to serve, there's no fucking way I'm not coming up with an excuse since not doing so could cost me about $6k in lost income.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the employer is not required to PAY them for their time off.

You have no way of knowing until you show up if it is going to be a two hour or two week trial.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

You make $6K every two weeks (that'd be $156K/year), but can't afford two weeks off? You should probably reevaluate your savings and expense management plan.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't afford to take 2 weeks off w/o pay ... about $6k in lost income

I could easily absorb $6k in lost income, and I make a hell of a lot less than you apparently do. I award you no sympathy and may God have mercy upon your soul, because God knows I certainly won't.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no god.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

You hope.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

And in a non contract position in an at will state....

They can also FIRE YOUR ASS for going to jury duty.
They just say it was because of 'insert any made up infraction here'.
And boom. You are gone. You could try to sue them. But honestly. not going to work out for you 99% of the time.

I've seen it happen. The guy was fired for 'improper dress'. (he wore blue shorts of a denim type. complete bs. but he was still out of a job.)

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

also some people can't take time out of work to do jury duty

Their employer is required, by law, to give them time off for jury duty.

But not required to pay them for that time off. May vary by state or even county, but where I am in Louisiana paying employees who are out for jury duty is up to the employer.

Re:but they pay less then minimum wage

[Anonymous Coward]

why should he have to, when Joe Blow who lives next door wasn't called, and wasn't expected to lose 2 weeks pay?

YAWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the full opinion. The trial decision was reversed and remanded for many reasons, only one of which was juror misconduct. The juror misconduct charge came about from the juror not following the judge's direction not to use social media. The judge actually determined that the tweets did not harm the defendant.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[xouumalperxe]

Fine. Leave it at home.

Consider this

[Anonymous Coward]

While I tend to agree with you about jury nullification, what about this?

Muslim man kils his wife because she attempts to divorce him. Jury picked from the local population, which just happens to be a mostly Muslim community, refuses to convict him of murder because they believe, contrary to the law of the land, that his actions were justified.

Food for thought.

Re:Consider this

[DJ Particle]

Also keep in mind that lawyers do have the right to screen jurors. If they feel a juror won't be impartial, they *can* dismiss him or her, even without stating a cause. So your scenario will likely never come to pass, as the prosecution would likely discount the majority of those jurors.

The defense also has this right.

The result is a jury that BOTH sides can feel confident will reach a fair and impartial decision.

Re:Consider this

[Jane_Dozey]

That's certainly a possibility. I would prefer the occasional unjust (unjust IMHO anyway) outcome that sets nasty men free provided it also allows outcomes that allows good men from having their lives destroyed :)

Re:Consider this

[makomk]

In practice it was usually more like "white men brutally kill black man for existing whilst black. Jury picked from the local population, which just happens to be entirely white, refuses to convict them of murder because they believe, contrary to the law of the land, that blacks aren't human". It is kind of a problem though.

Re:Consider this

[Anonymous Coward]

Also keep in mind that lawyers do have the right to screen jurors. If they feel a juror won't be impartial, they *can* dismiss him or her, even without stating a cause. So your scenario will likely never come to pass, as the prosecution would likely discount the majority of those jurors.

The defense also has this right.

The result is a jury that BOTH sides can feel confident will reach a fair and impartial decision.

Good fucking luck keeping misogynistic Muslims off the jury of a wife-killer in today's PC white-European-males-are-evil environment, where even acts of terrorist murder are whitewashed as "workplace violence".

Yep - communicate with an Al Qaeda cleric, attack and murder 13 people, and get the "workplace violence" label because we can't call Islamic-inspired acts of murder what they are.

Re:Consider this

[bryan1945]

Change of venue is an option.

Re:Consider this

[Ihmhi]

I have no problem letting guilty people go free in exchange for making sure an innocent person never ends up in jail. Moreover, I have no problem with jurors using nullification to overturn your example because they can also use it to protect other people from insane laws.

Re:Consider this

[Theaetetus]

That's certainly a possibility. I would prefer the occasional unjust (unjust IMHO anyway) outcome that sets nasty men free provided it also allows outcomes that allows good men from having their lives destroyed :)

The primary use of jury nullification has been in acquitting lynch mobs and murderers in the South during the Civil Rights era. That said, it's something of a necessary evil.

Re:Consider this

[mrmeval]

Perfectly within the rights of the jury to acquit for any reason or no reason. There are those who think otherwise and I will not convict anyone who kills them.

Re:Consider this

[gumpish]

Unless all twelve jurors were of that persuasion the result would be a hung jury, not an acquittal.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[theArtificial]

We're on /. it's not stealing, it's sharing!

Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

On television, you get a lot of people who don't say "it depends." I'd rather have my friends say "it depends" about most things--there is nuance in life.

Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.

On the other hand, jury nullification is most often used as a tool of a racist to show solidarity with a defendant from his or her race, rather than for a reasoned moral purpose. This is blatant racism and is bad.

Though the latter is more frequent than the former, the importance of the former--and the administrative problem with preventing jury nullification while still allowing the jury to have any meaningful power--is significant.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[VAElynx]

> Though the latter is more frequent than the former, the importance of the former--and the administrative problem with preventing jury nullification while still allowing the jury to have any meaningful power--is significant.

That's like saying "the administrative problem of abolishing the armed forces while still allowing extensive international military presence" except that can be solved by having a mercenary legion.
Also... i'd like something to support the above claim about the main use for it.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Administratively, you can't prevent jury nullification without policing jury decision-making. But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.) In effect, the jury right now gets to make a decision which basically can't be reviewed. The alternative is to give someone the power to say that a jury which held someone had not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is lying.

You could police that jury decision by allowing someone in the jury room to listen to how they made the decision and prevent them from making it based on something other than law. But that person would have effectively more power than the judge, and the jury would effectively have none.

You could also retry people. Double jeopardy presents issues, though.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[cowboy76Spain]

Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.

IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.

Now to your points, which are not very precise:

• police being abusive: I do not get what you mean. Are you talking about profiling, or about obtaining evidence illegally?
  • If it is the first meaning, do you mean that you would free someone who is culpable because he was being watched more closely than someone else?
  • If it is illegally obtained evidence, it is the judge who should decide about it. If the judge finds that a registry was legal, who are you to decide that it was not?
• prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting: So, you think that drug traffic should be more thorougly investigated than, say, prostitution. Then you have to be jury for someone in a prostitution crime, and you free him because you feel like so? Does that even make sense? If you want prostitution to not be treated as a crime, vote someone who proposes it, create a grassroots movements, whatever. It is a political issue. But a jury is not where you should show your political sympathies.
• your legislature is passing unjust laws: the democratic process may not be perfect, but if you consider yourself free to apply or not laws at your discretion while on jury duty.... why should not I do the same while I am outside your hourse?.
• your judge is not giving someone a fair trial: that's what retrials and appeals are for. And (unlike the jurors) a judge has no immunity, if he clearly is altering the course of justice he may find himself in a lot of trouble.

Jury nullification means "fuck the democratic process from where our laws come from, we (a bunch of people in a room) will make the laws based in our sympathies/prejudices". It is not strange than most of the time it serves to protect hate crimes.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[LVSlushdat]

But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.)

Actually it happened right here in the good ole' USA about 6 years ago. Federal Judge Kent Dawson, who presided over the trial of Irwin Schiff, a well-known "income tax" protester, instructed the jury that they MUST find Mr Schiff guilty on all counts or THEY would would be personally guilty of a federal crime. NONE of the prosecutions allegations were proven, and all defenses Mr Schiff's attorney provided were disallowed by this judge. Since I live in Las Vegas, which is where the trial was held, I attended as much of the trial as I could. I nearly became violently ill when I heard this black-robed monster give these jury instructions. Several months after the trial, it came out that several jurors on the trial who were aware of jury nulliication stated they would have voted to acquit, but for the chilling effect of that jury instruction. Apparently none of these jurors had the cojones to ask the judge to please quote the law that he would charge them with should they vote to acquit. I guess I really don't blame them since these black-robed terrorists have all the power (in their mind). Several other high-profile tax protestor cases were found not-guilty despite the same "kangaroo-court" atmosphere during their trials. Trials like Mr Schiffs I would have expected to see back in the old soviet union days in Russia, NOT the USA...

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

It depends on the facts.

Prosecutorial discretion is very large. Frequently the wrong decisions are made. Prosecuting a child when a group of children are playing with a gun, it goes off, and someone dies. Prosecuting someone who is insane as if they were not. Prosecuting someone for political reasons rather than because it makes sense. Sometimes a verdict of not guilty is the right result even when someone is guilty, because the consequences of a guilty verdict are more harmful than helpful.

The political process is deeply flawed, and legislative bodies will almost never vote to reduce sentences or decriminalize activities because that is rarely politically popular.

There is a difference between ex-post and ex-ante decisionmaking. In front of a house, one makes a judgment between alternative acts, and the law is one factor that weighs heavily in those alternatives. In a jury, one decides what the consequences of that choice should be beyond those already encountered.

A judge has plenty of immunity. He also has a massive amount of "discretion." If a judge applies all of his discretion in favor of one party, it effectively creates an unfair trial--at the very least an unjust one--even though there is no room for review on appeal.

Where is your hate crimes claim from?

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Kjella]

Federal Judge Kent Dawson, who presided over the trial of Irwin Schiff, a well-known "income tax" protester, instructed the jury that they MUST find Mr Schiff guilty on all counts or THEY would would be personally guilty of a federal crime. (...) Several months after the trial, it came out that several jurors on the trial who were aware of jury nulliication stated they would have voted to acquit, but for the chilling effect of that jury instruction.

I'd love to see what would happen if a juror said "By the fifth amendment of the US constitution, specifically the right against self-incrimination, I refuse to render a verdict." That would have become a funny process....

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, jury nullification is most often used as a tool of a racist to show solidarity with a defendant from his or her race, rather than for a reasoned moral purpose. This is blatant racism and is bad.

A single juror can not bring about a nullification. It follows the same rules as a jury reaching any verdict. Which also includes jurors that may be racist like you are describing.

So your whole point has nothing to do with nullification.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Renraku]

You can pretty easily prevent jury nullification by ensuring that your jury is comprised of only the most ignorant people that answer the selection questions favorably enough that you can subconsciously feed them a verdict before they even deliberate at the end of the trial.

For example: Using definitive words. The defendant murdered the woman. When the defendant entered the house. When the defendant stabbed his wife. When the defendant buried her. Etc. Sometimes a judge will pick up on them and shoot it down, but many times they do not.

Or simply allowing the brainwashed to convict based on faulty evidence because the crime was so bad. Example: I don't want drug dealers hanging around on the street corner near my house, do you? The defendant was clearly about to set up shop. What else could you do with an entire GRAM of marijuana?? Why, after even smoking a little bit of it for 'personal consumption' you would no longer be allowed to drive or do many other things because you would be so impaired!

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

A single juror can not bring about a nullification. It follows the same rules as a jury reaching any verdict. Which also includes jurors that may be racist like you are describing.

So your whole point has nothing to do with nullification.

Actually, that's not true--in criminal cases, juries render unanimous verdicts. Thus a single person can prevent someone from being found guilty.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[gnapster]

Good point. If I were given those sorts of instructions by a judge, I would be inclined to walk out of the courtroom.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[geminidomino]

IMO jury nullification is wrong because it breaks one of the basic tenets of Western democracies: separation of powers. The Government or the Legislative can't jail you (at least could not before 9/11), but the judiciary can't make laws.

Except that along with "Separation of powers" we use said separation for "checks and balances," to keep any of the individual powers from becoming too, well, powerful. This is where jury nullification comes in. It is the judiciary (including the jury) putting the kibosh on bad/abusive/unjust laws that got by the others.

This is where the "activist judge" bullshit got started. One of the most overtly abusive administrations in recent history got tired of being told "Oh, hell no," and decided to make it a political bullet point to turn the echo chamber against it.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Anonymous Coward]

>In effect, the jury right now gets to make a decision which basically can't be reviewed.

To be clear, acquittals cannot be reviewed. Convictions, however, can still be set aside by the judge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_verdict

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[shentino]

Someone human has to make the decision, either by himself or with 11 teammates.

As long as that holds you will always have avenues for bias.

And don't even try replacing jurors with robots, because who is going to program and maintain them?

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[tehcyder]

Since I am not American and do not know what an "income tax protestor" is, a link would have been handy, but Google reveals that he refused to pay his income tax and was convicted for it. Big deal. Payment of tax is not optional, or else no one would pay it.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but if that's the best example you can find of why jury nullification would have worked, you have zero sympathy from this tax payer.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I am not American and do not know what an "income tax protestor" is, a link would have been handy, but Google reveals that he refused to pay his income tax and was convicted for it. Big deal. Payment of tax is not optional, or else no one would pay it.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but if that's the best example you can find of why jury nullification would have worked, you have zero sympathy from this tax payer.

You are missing something. The judge told the jury to find the guy guilty or the jury would face serious criminal charges. Doesnt matter if the guy is guilty or not, the judge cannot threaten a jury to get the verdict he wants.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Miseph]

How about we split the difference and call it contempt of court?

You know, that crime that already exists, and doesn't run afoul of the 8th Amendment?

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

I really enjoyed the first part of your comment, but then got bored and nodded off during the second part.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[bestoffrm]

Or sentence the jurors to the maximum sentence possible, based on the criminal charges against the defendant

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[chrb]

The problem is that it costs money to run a trial. When convictions are overturned because of jury behavior, then you have to order a new (possibly expensive) trial, or give up and let a convicted criminal go free because of what to many appears to be a technicality. Either is undesirable. It does seem like this kind of thing is becoming more likely to happen, e.g. this case from only a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what the answer is, other than to come down hard on jurors who do this.

Juror pool

[p51d007]

Considering most people that have jobs, are dependent on their jobs, etc, a lot of people will do what they can to get OUT of jury duty, due to the monetary loss associated with missing work anywhere from a day, to a month. Would you want your fate determined by 12 people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty? If I found myself in that fate, I'd ask for a bench trial.

Justice is napping

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a great example of why there should be no death penalty. A juror fell asleep during the presentation of evidence, for fuck sake. Human beings are just too damn incompetent at everything to be trusted to get such an important decision correct.

Re:Justice is napping

[shentino]

The only time a person should die for committing a crime is from a lethal, heat of the moment encounter with self defense by the victim.

Getting the needle on dubious evidence? Not cool.

Getting your heart skewered for trying to rape or rob someone? Fair game.

re: jury didn't believe he killed her

[King_TJ]

Frankly, I don't see any problem with the scenario you described?

A court case involving a jury *should* be about what they believe took place (or didn't take place), based upon all of the evidence and arguments brought before them. If the engineer types are fixated on scientific evidence showing a person incinerated his wife's body so want to find him guilty, but nobody else on that jury is sold on it for whatever other reasons -- then perhaps the guy should go free?

It's the job of the prosecutor to convince the jury that the evidence supports his claims. Not everyone has a technical background, and not everyone who does is very good at thinking "outside the box" either, in cases where maybe there's an alternate explanation for the events to the one they're so certain took place by focusing strictly on the technical details?

Scientists and engineers are wrong sometimes, after all. We have bridges that collapsed shortly after being built, presumably by engineers who were confident they constructed it in a sound manner.....

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds a bit harsh. Jurors who behave this poorly should be held in contempt of court.

Re: jury didn't believe he killed her

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The problem lies in the fact that courts are relying on popular misconceptions to determine the guilt or innocent of a defendant.

It should be about what the jury believes took place, yes, but there should be a process by which a prosecutor or defendant can correct applicable misconceptions.

Yet this is almost never allowed--the only counterexample that comes to mind is for some courts that allow testimony on Battered Woman Syndrome. That has other empirical problems, but is often brought in to deal with a popular misconception that a battered woman will not go back to an abuser.

The engineer issue was more of an interesting side note.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's a problem with you. You're the one that has brought here up to be dependant on phones...

Bad decision

[laing]

I don't tweet, but I have served on several juries. The judge always admonishes the jury to not discuss the trial until after it's over. The judge does not prevent any and all contact with other people, only contact related to the proceedings. Tweeting is not much different than talking and this juror was not sequestered and not talking about the case. I see this as a bad decision. (I cannot read the whole decision itself. Only the first few pages appear at the link from TFA.)

American best practice since Burning of the Gaspee

[D4C5CE]

Yes, read up on it so you can make sure you and your fellow jurors don't do it. It is anathema to the concept of Justice.

Fortunately this is not the juries' view since 1772, prescribing a medicine that may well have to find its next application against exaggerated convictions for the sole benefit of some MAFIAA.

wtf

[snero3]

i am outraged. What was this guy thinking. You're on a murber trial that will decide what will happen to someones life and all you can think about is the crap coffee. put down the fucking phone and pain attention dickhead

The tweets weren't relevant to the case.

[ZorinLynx]

This seems a bit overboard. He didn't tweet anything about the case, so why should it have any bearing on the outcome? All he did was bitch about coffee and mention that he was on *a* jury (not even which one he was on!)

If he had been tweeting things like "Aww man, $defendant is a scumbag" and the like, that would have been a whole other story. But these were just random tweets about irrelevant minutiae! I agree with the first judge, that the tweets weren't out of line at all.

Re:The tweets weren't relevant to the case.

[RockDoctor]

The duty of the juror is to listen to the evidence presented (including the demeanor of the defendant, how convincing the witnesses are, etc). If jurors are paid for attending in your jurisdiction, then that is what they are being paid for : to pay attention, to be awake.

At the very least, the juror should have forfeited his right to his attendance allowance (whatever it's called) for the days that he tweeted. Potentially, if he'd been ordered (along with the rest of the jury) to pay attention, to say nothing about the case outside the jury room, to put aside his prejudices , to disregard anything about the case he hears outside the court room (and jury room) etc etc ad nauseam, and he then didn't do what he'd been told, then he's guilty of contempt of court. Which attracts unlimited fines and/ or unlimited jail time (at least, it does in this jurisdiction). Although I don't think it would go that far unless the buffoon in question was to compound his contempt - which he's getting close to from the reporting of the case that I've heard.

Someone else (probably some-several else) asked why all the juror's mobile phones etc weren't confiscated on entering the court room. Which is a damned good question. If (when) I get called for jury duty again (last time I was sent abroad, which is an acceptable excuse in this precise area because there are a lot of people who work all over the world ; OTOH, I'm back on the list for duty), I'd certainly volunteer my phone (or just the battery) before being asked, in order to make it difficult for the other jurors to decline.

Can the Juror be made to pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the misbehaving juror be put in jail or at least made to pay back the cost of the first trial?

Re:Can the Juror be made to pay?

[bussdriver]

No I don't believe so, after the trial has concluded the judge is not allowed to mess with the jury because that is a form of tampering - this is why jury nullification is possible. If a judge could punish a jury member after the a verdict was given that judge could make shit up to punish juries who don't conclude what the judge wants. Plenty of judges are quite untouchable within their domain and could/would abuse such a power.

Sue the judge

[shoehornjob]

for not having the baliff collect all the cell phones prior to the jury taking the box. Aparently justice really is blind... or stupid.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[LordLucless]

Have you ever been on jury duty? I was on a case that ran for a week. For about 80% of the time, we weren't in the courtroom - the lawyers were arguing about legal technicalities that the jury wasn't allowed to hear before the judge ruled who was right. On a number of days, we came in, went into the court for its opening, went straight to the jury room, and stayed there for the entire day, returning to the court only for its close at the end of the day. It was even a fairly open and shut case as far as the jury was concerned. And it was bloody boring. If I hadn't had some sort of way to pass the time, I would have gone bonkers. As it was, I brought a book. These days, since I tend to read ebooks on my phone, I would not be impressed if they took it away and made me sit and stare at a wall all day.

Re: jury didn't believe he killed her

[smaddox]

In all of the instances I can think of in which bridges collapse or shuttles explode, it is precisely the engineers that warned against faulty materials, etc. It is always upper management that brushes the warnings under the rug, and continues on in order to keep budget/schedule.

That sword cuts both ways

[LrdDimwit]

Jury nullification is also a great way to enact tyranny of the majority. How many white people went to jail for lynching black people in the thirties? And then there's this case where it's kind of hard to avoid the implication that the jury thought it was okay to kill gays.

Jury nullification yes, can be used to fight oppression by the system, like the Fugitive Slave Law. But it's also great for trial-by-popularity-contest. The entire point of jury nullification is "screw the rules, I'm going to do what's 'right'". Sometimes that works, but jury nullification makes no distinction between good parts of the system, and bad parts.

Many parts of the system are there to protect the fair interests of justice. Juries can nullify them too. The rules over what evidence is admissible, for example - most juries aren't physically sequestered in a room with no phone and no internet the entire duration of the trial. They can easily search the internet for all kinds of half-baked "evidence". The judge is supposed to keep all that out of court, because it's unverified, or scientifically dubious, etc.

Jury nullification is an incredibly dangerous thing. It is not justice at all, because it is fundamentally capricious in nature. Justice is supposed to be the same for everybody.

Re:That sword cuts both ways

[WorBlux]

Failing to do justice is not the same as doing injustice. It is better to let many guilty men go free than to punish an innocent one.

And your argument is fairly weak in a republican or democratic forum. They are the same people who make the laws directly or indirectly in the first place, if they can't be trusted to do the right thing most of the time, we're all fucked anyways.

Re:That sword cuts both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

...Jury nullification is an incredibly dangerous thing. It is not justice at all, because it is fundamentally capricious in nature. Justice is supposed to be the same for everybody.

I would be willing to bet that there are far, far more cases of a prosecution fighting to convict someone that is actually innocent, or defense attorneys knowingly working to avoid a conviction for someone they know is guilty, than you will ever find cases of jury nullification being abused.

Justice isn't the same for everyone. Far too often, it is a function of money and politics instead of truth and justice.

Re:That sword cuts both ways

[cowboy76Spain]

So, someone burns your house because you are not of the right color of skin, or because your political ideas don't fit in your community. That man is arrested and judged, and the jury (made of pales of that buddy) use jury nullification to set him free. That would not be an injustice?

Also your second argument is rather absurd. You seem to think that everyone supporting a party has identical views. Do all dems think as Obama? And all reps as Bush? They never disagree internally? Not to mention, that 12 people elected at random are hardly more representative that a few hundred elected in base of the infor provided to us.

It seems to me that you have never been in the wrong side of a community. Good for you, but at least try to have a little more imagination and empathy.

Re:That sword cuts both ways

[WorBlux]

The first part is, the second part isn't. I have a right to an unburned house, but none to see any particular person thrown in jail. Crimes are torts against the body politic as a whole, and right of punishment is reserved to the same. As such the trial by jury is an important method to make sure such punishments are commensurate with the interests and norms of said body. Also, even should criminal proceedings fail, I still may make my own claims against the offender to recover damages that I have suffered.

So-called political representatives are under no obligation whatsoever to keep campaign promises, and the also all tend to be from the same socio-economic background. There is no strong reason to believe they actually are representative in any legal or statistical sense. Having twelve people selected at random all agree that some at is not a crime, is a pretty good statistical indication that most people in the community would agree. Let's examine the edge case. If 51% believe and 49% disagree, then the chance a jury would outright acquit on that basis alone is less than one in five thousand.

Beside you mistake the argument. The theory of democracy in general and nullification is that most people are good and civicly minded, and as such will take due diligence when considering decisions that may effect other people.

Abuse is not an argument against proper use.

Re: jury didn't believe he killed her

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what the failure rate of a bridge that was designed and built by laypeople in contrast with one designed and built by engineers.

Re: jury didn't believe he killed her

[NormalVisual]

It should be about what the jury believes took place, yes, but there should be a process by which a prosecutor or defendant can correct applicable misconceptions.

That would be easier to institute (in the U.S. anyway) if juries were able to ask questions of the participants during the trial, including the attorneys. It's an allowed practice in three states, but it's hardly common across the country.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[shentino]

Just lock them up for contempt of court.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Rich0]

You say that like the judge and lawyers aren't walking around with cell phones, and as if they never lose attention during rambling testimony after lunch.

People are just complicated machines. They're machines that simply aren't designed to sit in a box and stare with razor-sharp attention at somebody else sitting in a box going on and on about something. The design of modern trials is about convenience and efficiency for the court - not effectiveness.

When you use a machine to do something that it isn't designed to do, then sometimes it doesn't do the job the way you want it to. Complaining about that won't change it (much). You'll get further by recognizing the flaws of humans and then working within those constraints.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Rich0]

Well, the only difference today is that it can actually happen while in the box. Jurors used to talk about trials all the time - there is just no way to prove it.

At work when we implement electronic systems we often find ourselves detecting violations of process (sometimes with legal ramifications). Obviously these get addressed, but often the debate comes up over whether the electronic system is causing the problems. Usually the conclusion ends up being that most likely the problem had always existed, but the electronic system made it detectable.

As information becomes more and more available we'll find that almost everybody is a criminal by legal standards, and that almost everybody does stuff that most people would find distasteful. So, we can either punish ourselves collectively, or we can learn to adjust our standards to what has always been reality.

I don't think the important question is whether jurors have preconceptions, or if they talk to others about a case. I think the important question is whether in the end they are willing to look at the totality of the evidence and come to an honest conclusion about it. The problem is that the former tends to be easier to measure than the latter, and so that is what people tend to go after. It might change when it becomes impossible to run a trial to completion without putting half the jury pool in jail.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[DerekLyons]

These days, since I tend to read ebooks on my phone, I would not be impressed if they took it away and made me sit and stare at a wall all day.

So you've lost the ability to read a paper book? Or are you just one of those self centered jerks who believes the universe revolves around them and their methods of doing things?

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

*People are just complicated machines. They're machines that simply aren't designed to sit in a box and stare with razor-sharp attention at somebody else sitting in a box going on and on about something. The design of modern trials is about convenience and efficiency for the court - not effectiveness.*

unless you put a stripper in the box.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[LordLucless]

I've lost the ability to summon a paper book from the ether if my phone is taken off me unexpectedly, and the desire to go purchase a paper book I already have a copy of just to satisfy bureaucratic nonsense.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[DerekLyons]

Having your phone taken away from you when summoned to jury duty is hardly unexpected... And buying a book you already have is stupid.

So yeah, I properly figured you out the first time - self centered jerk. Only after your reply, I'd have to add "and ignorant to boot".

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

Libraries, mother fucker. Do you have them?

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[LordLucless]

Having your phone taken away from you when summoned to jury duty is hardly unexpected

Uh-huh. Because jurors have their phones taken away as a matter of course, and don't make inane posts on twitter that get them featured on slashdot.

And buying a book you already have is stupid.

Yes, thank you for repeating what I said.

I don't know why you're even discussing the subject. As an illiterate, you surely have little use for books.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh-huh. Because jurors have their phones taken away as a matter of course, and don't make inane posts on twitter that get them featured on slashdot.

You have to surrender your phone to even enter the courthouse in my city.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[L4t3r4lu5]

Once you're in the jury "pen", you don't leave until the end of the day. Even smoke breaks are within the confines of the court. There is no "hall pass" to go grab a magazine.