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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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 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".

That is my understanding, yes. Not being a lawyer, ....

> 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.

Those are saying the same thing?  The judge can certainly say "the accused 
goes free in spite of the evidence."  But that's the sort of thing that the 
appeal (by the prosecution) addresses - the judge's misbehavior.

If the jury says "there wasn't enough evidence" even if there was, then the 
appeals court can't reverse that, because the appeals court is looking at 
the behavior of the judge and lawyers, not the behavior of the jury.

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

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andrel wrote:
> 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.

IME, all the potential jurors are sitting in the room while this goes on. 
It's usually not surprising. Most of the questions are "do you know anyone 
in the room?"   "Has something like this happened to you?"   And so on.

If it's a medical malpractice case involving (say) someone's eyes, and 
prosecution says "Are you a opthamologist?" I don't think it's prejudicial 
to dismiss that guy by either side. Usually the judge will dismiss him 
before it gets to the lawyers.

I.e., the judge asks some questions, and if the judge accepts, the lawyers 
get to ask. Usually the judge will kick out anyone like that first.

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

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 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. :-)

True. I'm not sure how it works in that case.

> 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.

I've often seen it even for things like "the lady who got burned by hot 
coffee shouldn't get that much compensation", or "you took interest into 
account when you shouldn't have in calculating the fine" or whatever.

Rare that it goes all the way back to reversing the decision.

> 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. 

Here, it used to be you sat around for a week waiting to get seated. Now, if 
you don't get a case on the first day, you're done for the year. If you get 
a case, you're done for three years. I think that soothed a lot of annoyed 
people.

> 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).

I would think it depends on the state, really.

-- 
   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 23:19:11 +0100, andrel wrote:

> 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.

Rejected someone as an expert *on the jury*.  Expert witnesses are an 
entirely different matter.

Jim

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