| By the way, here's an interesting blog
post on Simple Justice, which is by a criminal defense lawyer, meaning he
deals with juries all the time, about a small town where a policeman
shot and
killed a woman who was allegedly parked
where she wasn't supposed to
be. There
was an element of intimidation
in the air in that town afterward. When
townsfolk saw not enough coverage, they started to post comments on the
newspaper's online page. The newspaper deleted
all the comments in support of
the
woman, a housewife, unarmed, a churchgoer,
54 years old, without so much as
a
traffic ticket on her record.
Then the paper, so the story goes, set it up
where you had to
log into Facebook to comment, so you
had to reveal your real
identity instead of being able to be anonymous and
all the comments stopped.
People were afraid. Can you blame them? More proof that Zuckerberg is too young
and inexperienced in life to realize how truly dangerous banning anonymity can
be.
One brave man in town, however, set up
a page on Facebook and other
venues and started to talk
about what was going on, asking the town to really
think about what happened, and he refused
to stop.
The result was that
the local prosecutor
brought criminal charges, and the ex-policeman
was found
guilty.
Never, ever underestimate a jury's
willingness to do what is
right. They had to have some fear, after all, but they found him guilty anyway.
They don't
always do the right thing, but they usually try. Judges can
get
so wrapped up in the arcania of the law
that they can't sometimes see the big
picture, but juries do. They can't see the
forest, for one thing. Just the
person
before them and what happened and the two
sides of the story.
It
takes courage sometimes to be a
juror and do what is right, but the whole
point
of the jury system is to take deciding facts
away from the "professionals", the
highbrow
elite, representing the full power of the
state, and give the task to
the man on the street. There is a safety
valve, in that the judge can overrule
in
certain fact patterns if the jury gets it
totally upside down and egregiously
wrong.
And I hope that if you are ever on a jury, you'll
remember how truly
vital juries are, how important
it is to do the right thing, no matter what
the
pressures might be.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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All systems have flaws. This is one of the rules, what is required is a suitable
system of checks and balances.
A suitable system!
In the USA congress, the executive and the judiciary are supposed to provide
checks and balances for each other, that they do not is a consequence of another
flawed system!
Juries should be the best system, they should be unbribable, they should listen
to the judge and do as he tells them is in the law, but they should balance that
with a desire to do the right. Sadly too often jurymen do not care about the law
or the right, they may have their own agendas, or may be too easily led by one
amongst them who does.
Judges are single, readily identified people and thus corruptable, either by
bribery or because they believe need to appeal to "the public", the
same applies to prosecutors. Further these people do not fear prosecution, we
all know that some judges and prosecutors overstep the mark but when was one
last penalised for doing so?
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There is nothing in life that doesn't look better after a good cup of tea.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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