- juror no. 70: I can be fair to one side but not the other.
Can't nobody in their right mind be an impartial juror for a man who disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.
This is one of those "the way people think it works" versus "the way it actually works" things. We were disabused of the idea that juries were fair or impartial during our first semester of law school.Nevertheless, I’m disappointed that such a low fraction of the population was able to (even claim to) discharge their civic duty here.
Their civic duty should really just be to stay the fuck away from things they know nothing about. Only kinda kidding. In Canada juries are used very rarely. In my ten years of corp/comm litigation the use of a jury never came up once. I can't think of any colleague that ever had one. They are often used in personal injury cases where there is enormous incentive for the plaintiff to have a bunch of people involved that do not understand the biggest fact involved: the entire suit is being funded and directed by insurance companies (which can not be disclosed to the jury) and it is just a numbers game.
Yep. In the U.S., as you probably know, it's a right for criminal cases and some civil ones. I'm not really convinced this is the way to go, especially on really complicated things. Or with a black defendant.
rends shirt, tears hair Look - Voir dire is a community process. A full jury and a full alternate jury sit during voir dire and they get to hear what's excused and what isn't. Which means if you're standing next to someone who says "I think Martin Shkreli is a douchebag" and then hear "you're excused" you hear - if I say Martin Shkreli is a douchebag i don't have to sit through a lengthy media trial where I'm not allowed to surf the internet or read the papers or talk about this with my husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/priest/fantasy football league for weeks and weeks and weeks. Jury duty is a pain in the ass. Jury duty for a week is a royal pain in the ass. Jury duty for six fuckin' weeks? That is a life hardship. OJ's jury was sequestered for 8 months. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there were four complimentary desires here: - the defense, that wanted a change of venue - the prosecution, that wanted the defense to waive a jury trial - the judge, who wasn't about to grant a change of venue - the jurors, who were staring down the barrel of a lengthy and public jury trial that wouldn't even garner them enough fame for a book deal So what we're left with are the 200 lazy excuses of everyone who had a life who got out of the way for the eighteen who didn't.