Jim Henderson wrote:
> In the appeals process, bench trials are standard operating 
> procedure, again as I understand it - because the judge is responsible 
> for deciding if the lower court made a reversible error.

Right. In the appeals case, there's no jury, because the jury already saw 
all the facts. The appeal is checking that the legal system did the right 
thing, not arguing that it came to the wrong conclusion.

In other words, if you're guilty and everyone followed the rules, you won't 
correctly go free by appealing the case.

Appeals aren't "I didn't do it."  Appeals are "the judge allowed the wrong 
evidence" or "the judge miscalculated how much I owe" or even "the judge 
shouldn't have been allowed to take the case in the first place."

If the jury believed the prosecution witness and not the defense witness, 
you're not going to get out of that with an appeal.

> But in normal circumstances in the US, the judge interprets the law for 
> the jury, the jury determines the facts, and decides if the facts support 
> the charge based on the law or laws that the defendant is accused of 
> breaking were in fact broken.

And the judge tries to convince the jury to obey the law, and to convict 
even if they think it's a bad law, but there's no actual requirement to do 
so, and indeed the founders of the country explicitly put into their 
writings that the jury was there to keep the new rulers from passing bad laws.

Not that *that* worked out too well... :-)

> The prosecution and the defense put together a packet for the jury, 
> though, that outlines different perspectives on the law.  The packets 
> from both sides are given to the jury to read and often you can't tell 
> which comes from who (they're not identified in my experience).

I didn't get one of those. But then, it was just breaking into a car. A 
pretty straightforward crime.

> I think it's a shame people try to get out of jury duty; it's actually 
> quite fascinating, at least I think so.

It can be annoying for busy people to take three to five days off work 
without pay in order to listen to some low-life who broke into a car trying 
to get out of the punishment. :-)

It might have been more interesting in cases where there was more to it, 
like the one where the father was accused of mishandling the baby, or where 
the sailor was accused of rape (along with "breaking and entering with grave 
bodily harm") six months after the fact because he followed the two ladies 
into their house and was invited to sleep with both of them at once.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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