Trial By Jury

Not that I have much of an opinion on the matter, but I do have to ask, in how many cases has emotion clearly been the deciding factor in jury decisions? It's hard for me to accept that as 100% true when the Casey Anthony trial ended as it did...

I'm pretty sure the concept of Law having limits was a translation error. -Wanderlustwarrior

That depends on what you mean by "emotion". Jury and trial research isn't very helpful- most of it examines the jury decision making process from an information-processing perspective. The possible effect of such things as "persuasion tactics" by the lawyers isn't well understood. Obviously, everyone assumes that if the two sets of attorneys are equally competent then the actual evidence will tip the decision in the direction of truth. We can assume that in cases where the evidence isn't very clear or ambiguous, "emotions" will play a greater role.

There is some tendency for the scholars and experts to consider juries as more sympathetic to the defendant than judges tend to be.

Well I take a lot of issue with how inconsistent trials tend to be whether jury or judge. My primary issue is that people focus too much on these esoteric concepts such as emotions or whatever and that is why I don't like jury trials in general.

For instance, if I told you during a murder trial that the defendent has a partial print match to the gun used in the crime, what does this mean? What is the probability of it actually being his print? What is the significance of it? Etc.

What if, like the American in the Italian murder trial, they found her bloody footprint at the scene of the crime, placing her there at the time of the murder. But then, it was argued, her DNA wasn't in the footprint therefore she is acquitted. Does that even make any sense?

Common law attempts to have consistency by referring back to old cases but I think it more important to actually have field specialists perform experiments to actually figure out how accurate the forensic tools are, how important they are in each situation and develop a pool of knowledge like that. But if we want to do that, those can't be done by non-professional jury trials.

Actually this is why they have expert wintnesses that explain that nature of the evidence and what it means. It's the duty of a expert witness to make it so that a lay-man can understand the facts of the case.

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Which as I had previously stated is woefully insufficient to me. It's much like how some fail-boat tech companies think that hiring managers that only know how to manage people actually works. It doesn't. How is a manager like that supposed to know which technical solution is feasible when presented with several options by an engineer or technician? The technician can explain options but the manager hasn't a clue what any of it means.

You can't tell me that a forensic scientist that spent 4+ years in university studying extremely difficult subjects can, in the span of a half hour to an hour, somehow fully explain the significance of certain pieces of evidence.

You might as well put structural stability or critical software up to democratic vote if you think that's such a useful way of determining anything.

"Wheatear of not there is DNA in the bloody footprint is irrelevant to the case at hand. The blood need not have been her's. The blood contains a imprint that matches to the defendants to such a degree that we can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that it was her's."

"The gun in question has a partial print from the defendant." "Can you elaborate?" "Yes, the print on the gun is incomplete, there was only about half of it present but the parts that we do have match up to the defendant’s fingerprint very closely. This makes the probability of it being his print, while not absolute, very high." "Is it highly unlikely that the finger print could be other person’s?" "Yes, the chance of it being some else finger print is [insert proper statistic here]."

Not that hard.

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Only a half hour testifying?... Someone has never been a part of a jury-trial...

The problem with experts isn't that they aren't able to explain pieces of evidence... It's that there are often multiple experts saying the exact opposite things.

And honestly, if an "expert" cannot explain something to a group of laymen, it's the expert's fault. Not the other way around...

Except the American got acquitted. Apparently very hard.

Plus the trial where a man was acquitted after blowing away his ex-wife point blank at a fully housed Denny's. No DNA evidence, acquitted.

L Mage, I feel you are ignoring what is happening real life in real life trials where jurors have completely wrong conceptions about evidence and continue to have these wrong conceptions despite having to listen to experts.

You know why they say opposite things? It's because the lawyers bring in experts that say what they want them to say to confuse the jury. It's a broken system of lobbying. It takes long hours to explain the most basic of concepts in any field to a layman. And just because someone is an expert doesn't mean they have to be able to communicate clearly. When was that ever a requirement? A biologist is not a biologist if they can't fully explain to you some cellular process? That's ridiculous. People don't get those degrees because they can communicate well.

edited 13th Dec '11 11:32:34 AM by breadloaf

Reasonable jury trials must have been so much easier before CSI shows came along...

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

Jury nullification is an aberration, but there is no way to put a stop to it since there's no way to peek inside the jurors' heads and find out exactly why they reached a decision in the first place. The best that can be done is to instruct the jurors to base their decision on the facts and law, and instruct attorneys not to ask for nullification.

Of course juries don't have unlimited power. They are still confined by the law and the evidence before them, and judges have the power (in the US) to order a jury to reach a particular conclusion, or to overturn a jury's decision after the fact IF the judge believes that the jury acted in violation of the law.

I can't really think of an alternative to a judge or jury trial. Either the trier of fact is a full-time professional, or a group of members of the public.

I suppose "professional jurors" is conceivable. I don't see how that would be workable, though.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

It's more of a matter of having not-quite-judges, if you go with the professional juror concept. They get education at a university that teaches them the basics of different forms of science and statistics associated with all the current forms of forensic science. This gives them an ability to appreciate everything such as "If there's no DNA evidence on a gun, that makes sense because people don't jerk off onto their weapon (usually)".

At the same time you want them to get used to trials first to see what kinds of evidence comes up and how it is usually discussed in court.

Next you want them to keep up with any new forms of forensic science.

Next you want to maintain statistics on several things. First is on evidence compared to known wrongful conviction rate, the accuracy of particular types of evidence, the ways you gather evidence (such as quick DNA, or slow DNA testing) and their accuracy and develop more and more in-depth situation based statistics (this type of evidence in this situation is estimated to be so and so accurate in determining guilt). The second is statistics on punishment type/amount to crimes and the recidivism rate.

As for lawyers, both should be crown lawyers (or state lawyers) paid at the same rate assigned randomly to prosecution and defence. It's not fair for people to have different levels of defence according to their wealth.

If we go with professional jurors, I wouldn't change much with judges. If we do away with juries, then we have more judges.

Professional jurors would have their own professional association with an ethics committee and so on. In addition to whatever normal law they face, they also have to face internal discipline if a matter comes up. Even if the normal courts find them not guilty, they can still be barred from practicing as a juror from an internal discipline committee if wrong-doing is found which is not quite illegal but doesn't meet the standards of conduct for a juror.

edited 13th Dec '11 11:42:37 AM by breadloaf

@De Marquis: You said you think that juries should be the ones with all or most control over sentencing. I'm sorry, but I genuinely don't understand how anyone can think that's a good idea. Sentences are a technical point of law. Judges have strict guidelines to follow based on the category and seriousness of the offence. How could twelve random members of the public be expected to understand that?

Furthermore, a lot of the discussion on this thread has pointed out that juries are much more likely than judges to base their decisions on emotional factors. This would apply to sentencing, except a million times more - when there's a high-profile murder/assault/abuse case, the internet goes crazy with anything from 'lock him up for life' to 'cut the bastard's dick off'. Can you imagine what would happen if we picked twelve members of the general public and asked them what the perpetrator of a well-publicised violent crime deserves, and then did it? We could pretty much throw any notion of civil rights for criminals out of the window.

edited 13th Dec '11 12:15:49 PM by cityofmist

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

If judges did the sentencing, I probably wouldn't care much at all about jury nullification, actually.

edited 13th Dec '11 12:26:23 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

Judges do the sentencing, but they are required to stay within the law. If a person is convicted of a crime that carries a sentence of 1 day to 7 years, then the judge can sentence the person to one day in jail. Of course, the judge could overturn a jury's finding of guilt if the jury convicted the person without substantial evidence.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

They do have tariffs, though, of sentences they're supposed to give in 'normal' cases. So it's more like 'one day to seven years, but unless there's something unusual going on give them threeish'.

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

Yep. And it's also like that in certain tort cases. Several states have caps on what damages can be awarded in certain personal injury cases, but you aren't actually allowed to tell the jury what they are. So if a jury orders a million billion dollar judgment where the law only allows $100,000, then the judge will reduce the award down to the maximum allowable amount.

edited 13th Dec '11 12:52:12 PM by Lawyerdude

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

It sounds like in the US juries have a lot more control over sentencing than they do here, then, if not ridiculous amounts. I'm only an aspiring lawyer who's read a couple of intro-to-UK-law-so-you-don't-look-like-an-idiot-in-university-interviews, but I'm pretty sure that in Britain the jury just convicts/acquits and the judge sets the sentence.

What about the possibility of the jurors just happening to already know the caps?

edited 13th Dec '11 1:01:13 PM by cityofmist

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

Juries don't have control over criminal sentencing; the judges do. A jury can recommend a sentence in some cases, but a judge is not bound to the recommendation.

As far as jurors knowing the damage caps, you can't disqualify them based on that fact, but you can instruct jurors not to discuss what the caps are if they know about them. The general rule is, "if you know about them, don't tell anybody".

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

Hey, I learned something new. Thanks.

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

Honestly, I say judges should sentence people because juries seem to be bad about shafting people who didn't really do all that much (like non-violent drug offenders).

That, and the damn three-strikes nonsense should go to hell.

Also, perhaps capital crimes should go to Federal court, I think. Poor old Troy Davis proved the States can't handle that shit in a mature manner; really now, death penalty based on little more than eye-witness testimony? That's fucking absurd.

I am now known as Flyboy.

I don't trust the general public to decide punishments, actually. Look at how the general public reacts to things like gay marriage, for example.

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

It also doesn't make sense to say that guilt or innocence is a matter of technical law, not of fact. It's possible to decide whether or not X did Y without even knowing that it's a crime or that they're on trial - it's just facts, there's no law involved.

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

Yes.

Ideally "mitigating circumstances" would be built into most laws, and stupid laws would be gotten rid of in the first place rather than ever be put in front of a jury. Unfortunately, we don't have an ideal system...

Also, what's the deal with that guy Perry executed? Was his trial rigged or something? Because as I heard it, there was some kind of "hey fucktard, he didn't do it/it's highly possible that he didn't do it" obvious evidence that Perry blatantly ignored, and it seems odd that such a thing would get ignored.

I am now known as Flyboy.

They have to be on sex crimes. I know this for a fact for Colorado. (I served as a juror on an actual case. The sex charges had insufficient evidence and none of us were in favor of a guilty verdict on them. The plain old assault did have enough evidence and that went guilty.)

@Cityof Mist: Sentences are technical only because we make them so. If we wanted to, we could relax to an extent the legal requirements, and allow juries to decide based on their interpretation of the act and intent. As it is now, is it better for them to decide on guilt or innocence based on emotion, or the sentence?

@USAF: Actually, juries are usually more lenient than judges, thats why defense attorneys usually ask for juries if they can get them.

@Hidden Face: What I said to City: Is it better to decide guilt on emotion than the sentence?