How difficult is it to understand the rules and what does it say about the jury if they don't?
Edit: I really don't understand HN's obsession with downmodding legitimate questions. Either provide an answer or move on.
Edit: I really don't understand HN's obsession with downmodding legitimate questions. Either provide an answer or move on.
"What does it say about the jury?" is not a legitimate question; it's a patently loaded rhetorical question. Or really, an insinuation disguised as a question. "What does it say that X?" is code for "X is a red flag."
If you want to make an accusation, come out and make one.
Do you start with the presupposition that juries are infallible? Surely their actions must leak information about their constitution?
If a jury cannot follow (what is assumed to be) basic rules, then how can one be assured that they capably analyzed the facts and case issued to them and then appropriately applied matters of the law (written rules) to them?
Edit: Since you edited after my response: I am not making any accusations. Strange that you assume so. I just don't know enough information about the specifics to make any judgments. That's why I asked the question(s) in the first place.
However, after studying millennia of history, we as a people have decided that this is still the least bad model yet invented.
Also, I didn't decide anything (and I doubt you did either). This is the system I was born into and it as been operating without my input.
P.S. Note that I'm not asserting that the current system is perfect. Just that we (again, as a society; not me and you specifically) decided long ago that the drawbacks of letting 12 schlubs decide a person's fate were exceeded by the drawbacks of letting only the well-educated do so.
How about the 4-5 I already posted in the direct ancestors of this thread (e.g. the the one you originally responded to [but did not answer]).
No; I answered that immediately in my first reply.
> Surely their actions must leak information about their constitution?
That's not actually a question, but even if the answer is yes, that's what I mean about juries being only the least-bad solution we've invented so far.
> If a jury cannot follow (what is assumed to be) basic rules, then how can one be assured that they capably analyzed the facts and case issued to them and then appropriately applied matters of the law (written rules) to them?
One can't. See previous answer.
The concept originates in another (European, to boot) country -- it comes from the Magna Carta.
It is, at a minimum, common among the coutnries whose legal system descends from that of England, which are somewhat numerous.
That's why you got down voted: you assumed something, without knowing, and you were completely wrong. Read a jury's instructions just once, and then let us know how basic it sounds then.
I haven't seen the rules posted anywhere, or any real discussion on the rules or how hard they are to follow. Have you?
Also, I'm not sure what is wrong with the assumption that jury rules should be "basic", as in, understandable to a jury member. Do you assume that jury instruction should be complex, complicated, and not understandable to a jury member?
14 pages of fairly dense legalese. How difficult can it be to understand them all?
Much the same criticism can be applied to representative democracy in general. It sucks but it beats, e.g., the plutocratic cult-of-personality that Russia currently has. And what about Somalia? Rule by warlord?
FWIW my jury experience differs from yours. I have been on a number of juries in my life and I wound up with a relatively good opinion of most of my fellow jurors. There was only one juror (out of IIRC about six juries) that, it was immediately obvious, was very close minded and basically unclear as to her civic responsibility. But most of my experience is 15 or 30 years old. Perhaps jurors have gotten dumber since then?
Such clerical errors are a part of any sort of human process. It's not the end of the world as long as there are processes in place to correct the errors.
Can we look at the rules in this case? Or do we just have to go off NYT reporting and uninformed HN spectator speculation?
You'd assume a centuries old institution (jury trial) would have worked through what seems like a very basic problem: how do you communicate to the jury (which is the ultimate object of the trial) what exactly they are supposed to do?
How can you judge whether a jury is incompetent (or the judge and/or the lawyer(s))?
There was the statute, which then referred to other places for definitions of 4 or 5 terms, which also had to be read. Keeping a statute and the definitions in your head is not simple. Lawyers don't make their arguments in the absence of being able to reread the written law. Appeals courts can read the law when making judgments. But for some reason, as a jury, we were expected to keep it all in our head.