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There's a Problem In the Silk Road Trial: the Jury Doesn't Get the Internet
sarahnaomi (3948215) writes "The trial began this week for Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old Texas man accused of being the mastermind behind the dark net drug market, Silk Road. But as the jury began hearing testimony in the case, it was clear the technological knowledge gap would impede the proceedings. Judge Katherine Forrest said right off the bat when the case began that "highly technical" issues must be made clear to the jury. "If I believe things are not understandable to the average juror, we will talk about what might be a reasonable way to proceed at that time," she said. After the first day of proceedings, Forrest told the prosecution to be more clear with explanations of concepts central to the case, noting she was unhappy with its "mumbo-jumbo" explanation of the anonymizing service Tor. She also requested all readings of chat transcripts include emoticons."
If we're to believe that Ross Ulbricht is really a internet and tor mastermind surely a Jury of his peers would require some sort of technical experience. While this might not require someone to be a professional, it should require some level of subject matter experience. It does make me wonder, what other "for cause" jury selection criteria was also avoided?
There is currently a big debate within legal circles in the UK as to what to do about juries in complex fraud cases, where its near to impossible to explain to a lay person actually was, and how it was conducted, because they have no understanding of major international financial markets.
One proposal is to have a board of judges which are well versed in the financial profession sit in such cases without a jury, which understandably makes some people uneasy.
Jury-less cases have been heard in the UK as far back as the 1970s when related to terrorism offences, where the offence was of a complex type (eg, financial in nature - funding and money laundering for terrorist groups in Northern Ireland) or where there has been a history of proven jury tampering.
A proposal gathering speed is to include level of education and area of employment in jury selection, so rather than a completely random jury you do indeed get a jury which has a greater understanding of the specifics involved.
Nobody outside of IT is going to have a clue how tor works.
Plenty of people have hobbies and interests outside of work. Lots of tor knowledge would be hard but you probably don't really need that you just need someone who knows about ip and routing, and tunneling which are common. The litigators should be able to explain the necessary elements of tor to someone with at least that much background. If they can't I'd say they don't understand themselves and therefor haven't got a case.
Should you limit the jury selection to IT professionals?
Limit to IT professionals no but I think a "jury of your peers" really ought to mean people with some knowledge about the tools used in the crime at least as much knowledge as the defendant is supposed to possess. Rather than what most voir dire process seem to do to day which is select for people who know nothing about the issue involved.
If you ran a construction firm and we being prosecuted for fraud or something after a bridge collapse don't you think the jury should have members that know somethings about materials science and masonry? I think that would be fair.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's very hard to explain "this shit" to people when there's someone else equally knowledgeable as you determined to explain why your explanation is wrong.
Asymmetric encryption. Do you explain P vs NP, why NP-Complete is almost certainly not in P but the problems that asymmetric encryption are built on aren't known to be either NP-Complete or P.
NP is a decision problem - but encryption isn't a yes/no problem. How can problems that only have yes/no answers be used to encrypt?
Muddy the water some more - PRIMES is in P. Do you really want to have to explain the difference between constructive and existential proofs while someone is interrupting every time you say anything that isn't 100% accurate.
You've only got to look at the climate change "debate" to see this effect in force. Climate scientists are playing a game of whack-a-mole and the general public cannot tell which side to believe. There are always questions and doubts that can be raised - the mark of a good scientist is asking the questions for which the answer is interesting. The mark of a good defense attorney is raising questions for which cast doubt on the reliability of the witness. The role of the judge is to make sure that the questions that the lawyer asks is relevant to the case - and that's where it gets hard when you've got two experts in their field debating something and one (or both) has an agenda.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.