Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

hn_throwaway_99

I've noticed that how people feel about this changes depending on how it is asked. If you take, for example, "better to let 5 guilty men go free than convict 1 innocent man", I think the "average" person is somewhat on the fence about that. And while this is just 1 example, this isn't total conjecture on my part. I was actually asked that exact question, with that exact ratio, by a defense attorney during jury selection. The majority of other potential jurors (honestly a bit to my horror) disagreed with that statement - they didn't think it was OK to let the 5 guilty go free even if it meant wrongly convicting an innocent person.

But if you instead ask people, "do you think it would be OK of nearly 17% of people in jail were actually innocent", the vast majority of people (or, at least all of the few people I asked that question to after my jury selection experience) think "no, that would mean there is a big problem with the criminal justice system".

People are bad at statistics.

> People are bad at statistics.

While I don't disagree with this as a general statement, it's not what your example shows. The two ratios you describe are different things. A 5 to 1 ratio of guilty people in jail to innocent people in jail (which is what your second question asks about) is not the same thing as a 5 to 1 ratio of guilty people going free to innocent people in jail (which is what your first question asks about).

True. I guess I'm the one that's bad at statistics :/

Positive feelings about the justice system don't seem to survive jury duty. A friend of mine got selected for a jury in an armed robbery case when he was 18, the summer street graduating. He was one of two votes to acquit, there were six votes to convict, and the remaining 4 people were just trying to find the quickest way to go back to work.

> Positive feelings about the justice system don't seem to survive jury duty

That's one anecdote, but I've often heard the opposite: even in charged cases where jurors were obviously interpreting the evidence differently, people took the job seriously and were respectful to one another. Not saying normal cognitive biases don't occur, but even though my only experience was with jury selection (and I wasn't selected), and even though we didn't really want to be there, from the conversations I felt that everyone took the duty seriously.

I served on a jury and you described it perfectly: imperfect people took the job seriously, interpreted our understanding of the law and the facts of the case, and listened to each other, both lawyers, and the judge.

You get all sides. For me, with a lot of experience in this area, I find juries almost borderline random. Completely unpredictable. One jury to the next will have a completely different attitude.

I've seen juries several times acquit people who, based on the presented evidence, were so totally and completely guilty it defies rational sense. I would love to have been in the jury room for those ones.

Our legal structures are due for an update to account for our improved understanding of the impact of cognitive biases. They are easily, and thus frequently, exploited. Irrationality is in our chemistry. I don’t want the human element taken out of the legal system, but better accounted for.

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