Jim Henderson wrote:
> Um, actually (at least here in Utah), they do.  It's something like $20/
> day, but the government does pay the jury.

Well, yes, and something like $6 here. For a day. That's not pay, that's 
parking reimbursement. :-)

-- 
   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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Jim Henderson wrote:
> His medical expertise could also be a liability to the 
> prosecution, so add to that that he's been involved in malpractice suits 
> and he would be seen as undesirable in some instances.

Also, neither side wants an expert on the jury, as the others might give his 
opinion more weight than their own. If you have a case about someone's 
injuries, you're not going to have a doctor on the jury, because the rest of 
the jury would just defer to the doctor on the opinion of whether (say) the 
defendant was strong enough to cause that kind of injury.

They want you looking at the evidence presented, not the evidence someone 
else learned in school. :-)

-- 
   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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Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Um, actually (at least here in Utah), they do.  It's something like $20/
>> day, but the government does pay the jury.
> 
> Well, yes, and something like $6 here. For a day. That's not pay, that's 
> parking reimbursement. :-)

More specifically, you get paid whether you follow the government's laws or 
not, and you can't get fired from the position for deciding "wrongly".

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no
   CD I knoooow!

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On 25-3-2009 17:07, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:

> If the judge or lawyers don't follow the laws set down by the 
> legislature, they get fired. If the jury doesn't follow the laws, the 
> accused goes free and the jury isn't in any trouble. That's the primary 
> reason for having a jury. They, in theory, get to overthrow bad laws by 
> simply refusing to convict anyone.

Is that anything more than a theory? Is something being a bad law 
discussed as such within the jury? How many juries refuse to convict 
someone who smoked or sold small quantities of marijuana because that 
would actually increase future crimes in a neighbourhood or some similar 
line of though?
BTW overthrowing bad laws is very difficult here. Judges are not allowed 
to test laws against the constitution. In the end they often find a more 
subtle way.

>> It is probably a good way to get a judge angry when you meet him in 
>> private to suggest that because they are paid by the government that 
>> they will do what the government wants.
> 
> So, if you accused the judge of upholding the law because that's what 
> he's paid for, he'd be upset? 

I was more thinking of convicting based on weak evidence or sentencing 
harder because the politicians demand a firmer stand.

> Do you have judges that refuse to enforce 
> certain laws because they don't think the laws are good laws?

No, they can't. At least not individually. It should not matter if you 
get judge A or judge B. If two judges or groups of judges in different 
parts of the country differ to much, that is a reason for an investigation.

> Incidentally, you *do* understand that every[1] court case gets to be 
> heard by a judge only, if the accused wants it that way?  It's a right 
> to have a jury,not a requirement.

yes.

> [1] AFAIK. Maybe stuff like death penalty cases, you *have* to have a 
> jury or something, but it's going to be a rare situation.
> 
>> Most likely you will get a speech on how the politics is failing to 
>> make decisions and leaves the difficult problems to the judges.
> 
> Of course they do. We do that here too. The judges don't have to justify 
> their decisions to keep their jobs.

I though that also judges were elected or am I mistaken?

>> Well, it makes it very hard to get rid of a group of youths that 
>> continuously make noise in front of your house.
> 
> I'd rather have to solve that in a neighborly way than to have the abuse 
> going on in the USA right now. :-)  And yes, I have some rather loud 
> neighbors.

They were not from this neighbourhood, just hanging around here. We 
tried the neighbourly way. Which did not work and only resulted in some 
mild vandalism on properties of those complaining. So we asked the 
police to have a chat with them. Which they didn't for some months and 
then did it in a friendly way. At first refusing to talk to the 
neighbours that were complaining and then by e.g asking our 90+yo 
neighbour if she had problems with this group when a couple of them were 
standing by and listening. So the police could safely report back that 
there was actually no problem.

> The funniest one was when the brother and sister were out on the street 
> arguing. Apparently Dad took away Sister's car for getting a ticket, and 
> Sister was complaining and Brother was saying it makes sense. The funny 
> thing was that I never before realized you could actually composes 
> sentences with more than 50% of the words being variations on the word 
> "fuck". It was rather amusing to listen to.
> 
> A month later, I hear someone walking past in the evening chatting 
> pleasantly about the fucking bitch who mouthed off at that cocksucker at 
> work who... you get the idea. I look out the window, and it's the 
> parents taking their dog for a walk.

At least you now knew where they learned to talk like that.

>> 'we know it is illegal, but as long as the council has not appointed a 
>> place for him to park we won't do anything about it. 
> 
> I'd think you'd need some civil way (as in, not involving the police) to 
> enforce that sort of thing, then.

Our police is very civil. It is the normal next step to prevent 
something like this to escalate.

>>> And again, that's the police and not the courts. 
>> It was only a (partly unrelated, I knew) story, that is all.
> 
> Understood. :-) The police have been known to be pretty awful here, too.
> 
> I'm not sure why they don't just videotape everything that happens. 
> Well, I know, I mean, I'm not sure it's a bad idea to require that. :-)

And you get a number of funny programs of everything that went wrong as 
a bonus. It might even make a small profit for the police departments if 
they sell it at the right prize.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> If the judge or lawyers don't follow the laws set down by the legislature, 
> they get fired. If the jury doesn't follow the laws, the accused goes free 
> and the jury isn't in any trouble.

  Isn't that a case of mistrial? Is the procedure in case of mistrial
really letting the accused go free, rather than setting up a new trial?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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andrel wrote:
> Is that anything more than a theory? Is something being a bad law 
> discussed as such within the jury?

Yes. Not often, mind. Mostly drug stuff, or things like interracial marriage 
being illegal. There was probably more of it back in the early days, or 
during times of great upheaval and unpopular laws.

> BTW overthrowing bad laws is very difficult here. Judges are not allowed 
> to test laws against the constitution. In the end they often find a more 
> subtle way.

Yeah. There's nothing in our constitution that says the judges can declare 
something unconstitutional either. On the other hand, it's those judges 
making the decision, too. :-)

>>> It is probably a good way to get a judge angry when you meet him in 
>>> private to suggest that because they are paid by the government that 
>>> they will do what the government wants.
>>
>> So, if you accused the judge of upholding the law because that's what 
>> he's paid for, he'd be upset? 
> 
> I was more thinking of convicting based on weak evidence or sentencing 
> harder because the politicians demand a firmer stand.

Yeah. That's something you don't have to worry about with a jury.

>> Do you have judges that refuse to enforce certain laws because they 
>> don't think the laws are good laws?
> 
> No, they can't. At least not individually.

That's one of the reasons we have juries here. Not that it always works, but 
if you look at the writings of the people writing the constitution, they put 
juries on the list as a balance against the government's power to convict 
people based on bad laws.

> It should not matter if you 
> get judge A or judge B. If two judges or groups of judges in different 
> parts of the country differ to much, that is a reason for an investigation.

Same here.  If two peer judges disagree about how a law should be enforced, 
it gets bumped up to the next level. That's where you see things about "the 
ninth federal circuit passing cases to the supreme court" kind of thing.

>> Of course they do. We do that here too. The judges don't have to 
>> justify their decisions to keep their jobs.
> 
> I though that also judges were elected or am I mistaken?

Some are, some aren't. The federal supreme court judges are appointed for 
life by the president of the USA. State judges are all over. Usually trial 
judges are just hired by the appropriate part of the government, I think. 
It's only the judges that make binding precidents that get elected, if at 
all.  (For example, I voted for one judge in the last election here, so some 
get elected, but clearly not all.)

Note that laws don't change meaning here unless an appeal is filed.  If you 
get off for crime X in the first trial, it means nothing for me going into a 
trial for the same crime. But if you appeal something, and the appeal judge 
makes a decision, every trial judge that appeals to the same judge is 
supposed to follow that same decisions. That's the precident. Which I'm 
spelling wrong. :-)

> So the police could safely report back that 
> there was actually no problem.

I'd *still* rather have that than having the chief of police say "Oh, we 
stop and question all black teenagers we see, because we want them to be 
afraid of us." :-)

> At least you now knew where they learned to talk like that.

Exactly. It was the whole casualness of the stream of cusswords that was 
amusing. Not that it bothers me in the least, but it was amusing.

>>> 'we know it is illegal, but as long as the council has not appointed 
>>> a place for him to park we won't do anything about it. 
>>
>> I'd think you'd need some civil way (as in, not involving the police) 
>> to enforce that sort of thing, then.
> 
> Our police is very civil. It is the normal next step to prevent 
> something like this to escalate.

Sorry. The word "civil" in legal situations here doesn't mean "nice", it 
means "person to person."  So if the police arrest you, it's "criminal." If 
you sue someone for slander, it's "civil".

> And you get a number of funny programs of everything that went wrong as 
> a bonus. It might even make a small profit for the police departments if 
> they sell it at the right prize.

Heh!

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no
   CD I knoooow!

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> If the judge or lawyers don't follow the laws set down by the legislature, 
>> they get fired. If the jury doesn't follow the laws, the accused goes free 
>> and the jury isn't in any trouble.
> 
>   Isn't that a case of mistrial? Is the procedure in case of mistrial
> really letting the accused go free, rather than setting up a new trial?

You mean if the jury doesn't follow the laws? Well, there's two.

If you mean "the jury talks to someone they shouldn't" or "the jury is 
bribed to vote one way or the other", yes, that's a mistrial.

What I was talking about is if the jury refuses to enforce certain laws that 
are valid laws, because the jury disagrees.  Like, in the days when the USA 
still had slavery, the law was that a slave who escaped and went to an area 
where there wasn't slavery still had to be sent back if he got caught. Many 
juries refused to enforce this law, since they saw slavery as immoral even 
if legal.

I could also see if (say) abortion were made unconditionally illegal and the 
punishment was 20 years in jail for the mother, I could easily see juries 
simply saying "Nope, the mother is innocent" even if every piece of evidence 
including videotapes and confessions by the doctors was presented, yes?

For that, you can't punish the jury. I meant by "the jury not following the 
laws", I meant the laws that say "you should convict someone if the evidence 
is overwhelming."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no
   CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> What I was talking about is if the jury refuses to enforce certain laws that 
> are valid laws, because the jury disagrees.

  Can't the judge overrule the jury's veredict in some cases? Or is this
just Hollywood mythology?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> What I was talking about is if the jury refuses to enforce certain laws that 
>> are valid laws, because the jury disagrees.
> 
>   Can't the judge overrule the jury's veredict in some cases? Or is this
> just Hollywood mythology?

Only for innocence, not for guilt.

I.e., the jury can come back and say "he's guilty", and the judge can say 
"since no evidence was supplied at all, *I* say he's innocent."

But if the jury says "innocent", that's it, you're done. *And* they don't 
get to try again.  (Appeals by prosecution notwithstanding.)

In theory, once the first witness is called and asked a question, the trial 
has begun and if that jury says you're innocent, you're finished.

In practice, there are multiple jurisdictions with the same laws (so you 
might get tried for both state drug laws and federal drug laws for the same 
bag of drugs), and an appeal can drag out the process, and a mistrial can 
start it over. Stuff like mistrials are rare enough to make the news, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no
   CD I knoooow!

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On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:26:37 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> His medical expertise could also be a liability to the prosecution, so
>> add to that that he's been involved in malpractice suits and he would
>> be seen as undesirable in some instances.
> 
> Also, neither side wants an expert on the jury, as the others might give
> his opinion more weight than their own. If you have a case about
> someone's injuries, you're not going to have a doctor on the jury,
> because the rest of the jury would just defer to the doctor on the
> opinion of whether (say) the defendant was strong enough to cause that
> kind of injury.
> 
> They want you looking at the evidence presented, not the evidence
> someone else learned in school. :-)

Yep, that's certainly true, too.

It can be risky to play the odds if the jury has an expert on it; if you 
(as the prosecution or the defense) can convince the expert, then that 
can work to your side's favour.

In order to get through the vetting process, both sides would have to 
think they had strong enough evidence to convince the expert they were 
correct.  That's going to be a pretty rare occurrence - and you can't 
really get to know someone's full depth of experience during voir dire, 
either - it's not a long process.

Jim

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