Flawed is Better?
The jury I was part of was released today after hours of deliberation. We finally came to decide that we could not decide.
Tuesday I attended the city courthouse to serve my mandatory Jury Duty and wouldn't you know it, I was chosen. The case was fairly simple; a man had been accused of being "drunk in public". Why this even went to trial in the first place is beyond me.
The first step before the trial, involving me, was the jury selection. I was amazed to find later that this selection process took considerably longer than the trial did in its entirety. The trial itself consisted of short opening statements by both sides, the police officer testimony (which provided very little evidence, but I'll expand more on that later), and the closing arguments.
When the jury retired to deliberate, it was the first time we sat and really faced each other. This jury was definitely a cross section of different members of our society. In total we spent close to six hours deliberating over the course of two days. Here is what I found...
Some people don't have the ability to separate personal opinion, bias, emotion, etc. from the deliberation process. Even with the stipulations that we may only go by the facts presented by evidence and be completely objective, it was as if those instructions went in one ear and out the other. When this was brought up to these few people, they immediately became defensive and used more irrelevant rationale to back up their claims.
I understand objectivity is an impossibility. Man does not possess the ability to set aside all past life experience, teachings, and beliefs to view things through an objective lens of absolute truth. However, I think I did a damn good job of coming close. In the real world, I would've used life experience, etc to label this defendant guilty so fast his mullet would spin. In our society however, you are innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lays solely upon the prosecution to use facts to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is guilty of the accusations against him. Given the extremely limited number of facts and great number of possibilities leading to non guilt scenarios, I had to vote not guilty. These people who had based their decision of guilt from snap judgments and assumption looked at me like I had two heads when I explained this. Seven people sided with not guilty based from objectivity; while the other five sided with guilt using compelling arguments like, "you guys should watch more cops" and "look at the guy... he's guilty!"
When we were all walking out of the courthouse I felt the system failed. We had been a perfect example of how the most simple things can go terribly wrong using this system. But on my trolley ride home I began to wonder, "What if the seven like minded jurors including myself were not there, but seven more biased people were to take our places?" A man would've been convicted of a crime he was possibly innocent of. I also thought, "What if only one person had the ability to try and convict someone? Who would be able to put them in check?"
With all these questions I came to a conclusion. Giving twelve people equal power to decide someone's fate gives the ability for one person in the right to negate eleven people in the wrong. At least with a mistrial the defendant is safe until (and if) they are tried again.
Tuesday I attended the city courthouse to serve my mandatory Jury Duty and wouldn't you know it, I was chosen. The case was fairly simple; a man had been accused of being "drunk in public". Why this even went to trial in the first place is beyond me.
The first step before the trial, involving me, was the jury selection. I was amazed to find later that this selection process took considerably longer than the trial did in its entirety. The trial itself consisted of short opening statements by both sides, the police officer testimony (which provided very little evidence, but I'll expand more on that later), and the closing arguments.
When the jury retired to deliberate, it was the first time we sat and really faced each other. This jury was definitely a cross section of different members of our society. In total we spent close to six hours deliberating over the course of two days. Here is what I found...
Some people don't have the ability to separate personal opinion, bias, emotion, etc. from the deliberation process. Even with the stipulations that we may only go by the facts presented by evidence and be completely objective, it was as if those instructions went in one ear and out the other. When this was brought up to these few people, they immediately became defensive and used more irrelevant rationale to back up their claims.
I understand objectivity is an impossibility. Man does not possess the ability to set aside all past life experience, teachings, and beliefs to view things through an objective lens of absolute truth. However, I think I did a damn good job of coming close. In the real world, I would've used life experience, etc to label this defendant guilty so fast his mullet would spin. In our society however, you are innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof lays solely upon the prosecution to use facts to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is guilty of the accusations against him. Given the extremely limited number of facts and great number of possibilities leading to non guilt scenarios, I had to vote not guilty. These people who had based their decision of guilt from snap judgments and assumption looked at me like I had two heads when I explained this. Seven people sided with not guilty based from objectivity; while the other five sided with guilt using compelling arguments like, "you guys should watch more cops" and "look at the guy... he's guilty!"
When we were all walking out of the courthouse I felt the system failed. We had been a perfect example of how the most simple things can go terribly wrong using this system. But on my trolley ride home I began to wonder, "What if the seven like minded jurors including myself were not there, but seven more biased people were to take our places?" A man would've been convicted of a crime he was possibly innocent of. I also thought, "What if only one person had the ability to try and convict someone? Who would be able to put them in check?"
With all these questions I came to a conclusion. Giving twelve people equal power to decide someone's fate gives the ability for one person in the right to negate eleven people in the wrong. At least with a mistrial the defendant is safe until (and if) they are tried again.
posted by Garry at 10:14 PM
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