It's along the lines of jury nullification. The people have some recourse in overriding court rules and court rulings when the court is not behaving in accordance with justice.
The risk here is that there are people fighting to get out of prison for things they're not guilty of. If you have realistic expectations that police and their representative prosecutors can and do lie, please exercise caution.
If you say "You shouldn't believe anything a cop testifies to" will get you booted pretty quickly.
If you say this you won't be selected. Engineers and Scientists routinely get denied because of the application of logic.
And guess which answer got people dismissed?
Remember the prosecution have a limited number of dismissals and statements like that are desired by the defense.
You'd be surprised. The DAs/lawyers on the other side can see right through this, and don't want it. They want someone that is more likely to show blind trust to the law side.
If the system considers police testimony as ground truth, why bother with judge and jury?
There's no such thing as impartial. Unless you either have no emotions or have omniscient knowledge of everything (robot or God, basically), you'll always view a set of facts through an emotional lens that's been tinged by your past experiences, which are a tiny subset of everyone's past experiences. Part of the reason we put multiple people on a jury is to average out those differences.
Then again, I brought up unconscious bias and implicit association tests last time I was called for jury duty, and was excused by a very impatient and skeptical sounding judge. Questioning the whole premise of the legal system doesn't go over very well with the legal system.
The criminal justice system _does not think_ jury nullification is a legitimate use of the powers of a juror. Rather, the criminal justice system more views it as something of an unfortunate trade-off.
Why not? That's often by far the best case scenario.
I’m not saying our system is perfect but where’s the better alternative?
The bare minimum I'd need would be "yes, so long as they're not contradicted by less inherently unreliable evidence than that which relies on human memory".
In my experience, the defense asked specific questions related to this exact topic and sought out jurors who agreed that police testimony is not guaranteed to be factual. I have to assume this is common. They had no problem filling the juror box with jurors approved by both sides.
That question came up the last time I was called for jury duty. But it was the people who affirmed that they believe police are always truthful who were excluded.
Do they get punished if they say yes to that and somehow it becomes obvious they're not doing that?
Jurors are asked if they will treat the word of law enforcement as always true. Jurors are disqualified if they don't say yes. Jurors are sworn, as you say, to tell the truth. Presumable jurors get punished if they end up acting counter to their previous word?
Thus, jurors that end up on the bench are forced by law to act as if every word by law enforcement is true, even if it contradicts physical reality. No?
If a juror stated that they believed that the word of law enforcement were always true, the defense attorney would almost certainly challenge them for cause, as that is clear bias, and they would not be selected for the jury.
In practice it's a balancing act, where the prosecution wants jurors who trust law enforcement and the defense wants jurors who are skeptical of law enforcement.
It is illegal to punish a juror for the decision they make during a trial. This is often referred to as "jury nullification" (or rather, is an important part of jury nullification).
Realistically, jurors will instead be challenged for cause by the defense if they do say yes to that question.
They might be challenged by the prosecution if they indicate a bias against police testimony (either for cause or as a peremptory challenge, depending on the details and the prosecutor and the judge.)
Both sides look for jurors who have bias where they will come with a pre-shared opinion. The last jury I was on included a former US Attorney, an insurance investigator and a NAACP regional director. We were asked to answer questions honestly and nobody had access to our process.
I’ve been on 3 juries, and in 2/3 we partially or fully acquitted a defendant based on many factors. Frankly, in each case I walked away with an appreciation that the system can work.
No. If that were the case, there would be no need for evidence, a judge, a jury, or a trial. "Just ask the cops" is not how this system works.
My own limited experience on a jury is that, because of the way jurors are selected, they tend to be fairly deferential to authority (especially the judge's authority). Arguing for jury nullification or any similar concept is at a minimum going to freak your fellow jurors out, and I wouldn't be surprised if in practice they might ask the judge to kick you off the jury and use one of the alternates (regardless of whatever the legality of the situation calls for).
That's not my experience, and mere reservations about the credibility of police wouldn't usually justify a challenge for cause, and prosecutors have a finite number of peremptory challenges. (Now if you say cops are all liars and everything they say must be disregarded, sure, that’ll probably get you tossed.)
I have great respect for most parts of our justice system. This is not one of those parts, therefore I choose civil disobedience.