On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:18:51 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> 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.

Well, the jury in the case of  a jury trial.  Obviously a jury didn't see 
the facts if the defense opted for a bench trial in the lower court. :-)

> 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."

Yep - that's what's meant by "reversible error" - it's something the 
court did wrong procedurally.  That can come down to a dispute over facts 
of the case, but usually this happens because of a question as to whether 
evidence should have been admitted or not.

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

Yep.

>> 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.

Yep, that's true as well.  Activist juries are everywhere! ;-)

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

LOL, too true...too true.

>> 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.

Yeah, I suppose it might vary from locale to locale or depend on the case.

>> 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. :-)

Yeah, but the thing that gets me is the people who seem to wear it as a 
badge of pride that they got out of it.  I've been fortunate, I guess - 
the companies I've worked for paid me for absence because I've been 
called up for jury duty.

> 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.

Yeah.  Now my wife was called up about a year ago for the federal court 
here in Salt Lake City.  She actually wanted to sit it, but couldn't 
because the circumstances of the case closely resembled her ex's family 
situation and the subject matter was personally distressing for her as a 
result.

Something like that I can completely understand.  It's a shame, though, 
because if it had been something else, she probably would've enjoyed 
participating.

Federal jury duty gets you out of all jury duty for something like 5 
years, too (longer than the county courts, but I forget the actual 
amounts of time).

Jim

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