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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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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On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:23:43 -0700, 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. :-)

Yeah, it's not a lot.  Enough to pay for lunch and parking.

Well, here, the parking at the courthouse is at no cost.

Jim

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On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:53:02 +0100, 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?

It depends on the jury.  If it's a bunch of people who "couldn't get out 
of jury duty", then it probably won't happen.

But if there's one person on the jury who makes a point of something 
that's not right, then it can happen.

The drug case I sat in on (which I mentioned earlier), there was 
documentation stating that possession of drug paraphernalia required a 
demonstration of intent to use it.  That wasn't something that was 
addressed at all by the prosecution in the case.

In our initial vote, everyone but me voted that he was guilty of the 
charges.  I didn't vote that way because of that one stipulation.  That 
sparked discussion, and ultimately I agreed that the case history was 
more of an exception than a precedent, so I also voted him guilty.

But that point is what prompted my discussion with the judge after the 
case was over, too.

The thing that stuck with me the most was how much respect the court 
showed the jury - including both the prosecution and defense attorneys.

Jim

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On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:33:12 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> 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.

Just to clarify, I think what you're saying here is that the judge can 
"set aside" a guilty verdict, but not a verdict of "not guilty".

IOW, the judge can't unilaterally decide that the jury erred and set a 
guilty perp free, only that the jury might have convicted someone in 
spite of the prosecution not actually proving their case.

Jim

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On 25-3-2009 22:48, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:26:37 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
> 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.

That seems to imply that it is important information that either side 
rejected someone who might be an expert. So I assume this is information 
that is not passed on to the final jury.

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> The thing that stuck with me the most was how much respect the court 
> showed the jury - including both the prosecution and defense attorneys.

*Nobody* wants to piss off the jury. :-)

And yeah, I was mostly speaking theory, in terms of juries throwing things out.

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

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