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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 9:30 pm Post subject: The Flawed Jury System Strikes Again |
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Article here.
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Spurned in his effort to get out of jury duty, salesman Tony Prados turned his attention to the case that could cost him three weeks' pay: A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was suing his former sergeant, alleging severe emotional distress inflicted by lewd and false innuendo that he was gay.
Prados, an ex-Marine, leaned forward in the jury box and asked in a let-me-get-this-straight tone of voice: "He's brave enough to go out and get shot at by anyone but he couldn't handle this?" he said of the locker-room taunting.
Fellow jury candidate Robert Avanesian, who had also unsuccessfully sought dismissal on financial hardship grounds, chimed in: "I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don't think you could have such severe emotional distress from that," he said of the allegations in the deputy's case.
The spontaneous outbursts of the reluctant jurors just as Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James R. Dunn was about to swear them in emboldened others in the jury pool to express disdain for the case and concerns about their ability to be fair, and to ratchet up the pathos in their claims of facing economic ruin if forced to sit for the three-week trial.
In this time of double-digit unemployment and shrinking benefits for those who do have jobs, courts are finding it more difficult to seat juries for trials running more than a day or two. And in extreme cases, reluctance has escalated into rebellion, experts say.
After three days of mounting insurrection, lawyers for both the deputy and the sergeant waived their right to a jury trial and left the verdict up to Dunn.
"We can't have a disgruntled jury," said attorney Gregory W. Smith, who represents Deputy Robert Lyznick in the lawsuit against his former supervisor. He called the panel "scary" and too volatile for either side to trust.
Money woes inflicted by the recession have spurred more hardship claims, especially by those called for long cases, say jury consultants and courtroom administrators. More than a quarter of all qualified jurors were released on hardship grounds last year, according to court statistics. And judges say they have seen more people request such dismissals in the last year.
"There's a lot of tension, a lot more stress people are dealing with these days," said Gloria Gomez, director of juror services for the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
In Lyznick's suit against the county, Dunn granted hardship dismissals for more than half of the 65 people sent to his courtroom. In a neighboring courtroom, where Judge Robert H. O'Brien was about to try an asbestos case, 66 of 107 prospective jurors were excused for financial difficulties before the individual questioning, or voir dire, got started.
"The economic situation has really put attorneys and judges in an awkward position of having to say to someone who is the sole wage earner in a family or someone who is self-employed and doesn't get paid when they don't work that they have to serve, and we have more and more of those," said Jaine E. Fraser, a psychologist and jury consultant who sat in for the asbestos jury selection before the parties settled.
People on the margins of society tend to be more sympathetic with victims bringing suit, and excluding them on hardship grounds can disadvantage plaintiffs, Fraser said. But it's also risky, she noted, to force people into jury service that will cut deeply into their paychecks.
With shrinking budgets, courts are under pressure to do more with less. Los Angeles County courthouses were summoning 55,000 people a week, at $15 a day each, until the economic crisis imposed more belt-tightening. The county is now making do with 45,000 summonses a week -- only about half are even answered -- compelling stricter scrutiny of those claiming financial, medical and child-care problems, Gomez said. The county has also tightened sanctions for repeat no-shows, imposing fines of as much as $1,500.
Fraser, who is based in Dallas, said jurors there have been more willing to serve since the city raised daily jury compensation from $6 to $40. California courts have been trying for years to get the daily stipend raised to $40, without success, Gomez said.
As he struggled with the mounting pleas for dismissal, Dunn alluded to pressures on the court "to be very diligent in reviewing excuses."
High school teacher Sharon Friedman told the judge she had no savings and would lose 60% of her February pay. Substitute teacher Martine Tomczyk argued that she needed to be free to take work days when they surfaced. Freelance producer Robert Thatcher said he could lose contracts to competitors if he missed deadlines while on the jury.
As excuses were flying and Dunn struggled to maintain order, one of the few jurors who hadn't sought dismissal interrupted the questioning to offer his take on the unusually passionate resistance.
"I think with what is going on in the country, there are a lot of angry people," said retired Broadway actor Sammy Williams. "Money is such an issue and to give money to someone for results of a case, it's really important that they're getting it for a real reason, an important reason." |
Jurors outright sabotaged this fellow's trial for reasons of personal inconvenience. Justice is simply not compatible with this kind of attitude, understandable as it is. Expecting people to give up large chunks of productive time at the pleasure of our criminal justice system is simply unreasonable, and said people cannot be trusted to come to fair conclusions.
Professional jurors are the answer. Trained with a basic understanding of the law and their duties, a professional juror can come to legally correct conclusions. A professional juror can be sequestered with no problem; he knew what he was signing up for. A professional juror can be immunized to corruption by never directly coming into contact with the people in the trial and not having their identities revealed until after the case is concluded. The pattern of behavior professional jurors engage it can be tracked to deal with potential discriminatory voting patterns.
The downside, of course, is that it will cost more than $6 -- or even $40 -- a day to keep such individuals on staff. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| They must be able to do this on computers by now. |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:38 am Post subject: Re: The Flawed Jury System Strikes Again |
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| Fox wrote: |
Article here.
| Quote: |
Spurned in his effort to get out of jury duty, salesman Tony Prados turned his attention to the case that could cost him three weeks' pay: A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was suing his former sergeant, alleging severe emotional distress inflicted by lewd and false innuendo that he was gay.
Prados, an ex-Marine, leaned forward in the jury box and asked in a let-me-get-this-straight tone of voice: "He's brave enough to go out and get shot at by anyone but he couldn't handle this?" he said of the locker-room taunting.
Fellow jury candidate Robert Avanesian, who had also unsuccessfully sought dismissal on financial hardship grounds, chimed in: "I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don't think you could have such severe emotional distress from that," he said of the allegations in the deputy's case.
The spontaneous outbursts of the reluctant jurors just as Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James R. Dunn was about to swear them in emboldened others in the jury pool to express disdain for the case and concerns about their ability to be fair, and to ratchet up the pathos in their claims of facing economic ruin if forced to sit for the three-week trial.
In this time of double-digit unemployment and shrinking benefits for those who do have jobs, courts are finding it more difficult to seat juries for trials running more than a day or two. And in extreme cases, reluctance has escalated into rebellion, experts say.
After three days of mounting insurrection, lawyers for both the deputy and the sergeant waived their right to a jury trial and left the verdict up to Dunn.
"We can't have a disgruntled jury," said attorney Gregory W. Smith, who represents Deputy Robert Lyznick in the lawsuit against his former supervisor. He called the panel "scary" and too volatile for either side to trust.
Money woes inflicted by the recession have spurred more hardship claims, especially by those called for long cases, say jury consultants and courtroom administrators. More than a quarter of all qualified jurors were released on hardship grounds last year, according to court statistics. And judges say they have seen more people request such dismissals in the last year.
"There's a lot of tension, a lot more stress people are dealing with these days," said Gloria Gomez, director of juror services for the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
In Lyznick's suit against the county, Dunn granted hardship dismissals for more than half of the 65 people sent to his courtroom. In a neighboring courtroom, where Judge Robert H. O'Brien was about to try an asbestos case, 66 of 107 prospective jurors were excused for financial difficulties before the individual questioning, or voir dire, got started.
"The economic situation has really put attorneys and judges in an awkward position of having to say to someone who is the sole wage earner in a family or someone who is self-employed and doesn't get paid when they don't work that they have to serve, and we have more and more of those," said Jaine E. Fraser, a psychologist and jury consultant who sat in for the asbestos jury selection before the parties settled.
People on the margins of society tend to be more sympathetic with victims bringing suit, and excluding them on hardship grounds can disadvantage plaintiffs, Fraser said. But it's also risky, she noted, to force people into jury service that will cut deeply into their paychecks.
With shrinking budgets, courts are under pressure to do more with less. Los Angeles County courthouses were summoning 55,000 people a week, at $15 a day each, until the economic crisis imposed more belt-tightening. The county is now making do with 45,000 summonses a week -- only about half are even answered -- compelling stricter scrutiny of those claiming financial, medical and child-care problems, Gomez said. The county has also tightened sanctions for repeat no-shows, imposing fines of as much as $1,500.
Fraser, who is based in Dallas, said jurors there have been more willing to serve since the city raised daily jury compensation from $6 to $40. California courts have been trying for years to get the daily stipend raised to $40, without success, Gomez said.
As he struggled with the mounting pleas for dismissal, Dunn alluded to pressures on the court "to be very diligent in reviewing excuses."
High school teacher Sharon Friedman told the judge she had no savings and would lose 60% of her February pay. Substitute teacher Martine Tomczyk argued that she needed to be free to take work days when they surfaced. Freelance producer Robert Thatcher said he could lose contracts to competitors if he missed deadlines while on the jury.
As excuses were flying and Dunn struggled to maintain order, one of the few jurors who hadn't sought dismissal interrupted the questioning to offer his take on the unusually passionate resistance.
"I think with what is going on in the country, there are a lot of angry people," said retired Broadway actor Sammy Williams. "Money is such an issue and to give money to someone for results of a case, it's really important that they're getting it for a real reason, an important reason." |
Jurors outright sabotaged this fellow's trial for reasons of personal inconvenience. Justice is simply not compatible with this kind of attitude, understandable as it is. Expecting people to give up large chunks of productive time at the pleasure of our criminal justice system is simply unreasonable, and said people cannot be trusted to come to fair conclusions.
Professional jurors are the answer. Trained with a basic understanding of the law and their duties, a professional juror can come to legally correct conclusions. A professional juror can be sequestered with no problem; he knew what he was signing up for. A professional juror can be immunized to corruption by never directly coming into contact with the people in the trial and not having their identities revealed until after the case is concluded. The pattern of behavior professional jurors engage it can be tracked to deal with potential discriminatory voting patterns.
The downside, of course, is that it will cost more than $6 -- or even $40 -- a day to keep such individuals on staff. |
Nah, you could create them from stem cells and raise them in an isolated environment. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 2:07 am Post subject: |
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| I agree that professional jurors are an option to be considered. So much of modern criminal justice has to do with highly technical evidence (DNA etc.) that it would help to have jurors educated in the basics. As one of the 'basics', professional jurors could be educated in the tricks of shyster lawyers so as to minimize the influence of the professional ambulance chasers. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:00 am Post subject: |
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Fox, you are convincing me that your system just may be worth a try, especially since professional jurors would be schooled in jury nullification, their prerogative of which the jury is often deliberately kept ignorant:
Legal Dictionary
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Main Entry: jury nullification
Function: noun
: acquittal of a defendant by a jury in disregard of the judge's instructions and contrary to the jury's findings of fact
NOTE: Jury nullification is most likely to occur when a jury is sympathetic toward a defendant or regards the law under which the defendant is charged with disfavor. Except for a statutory requirement to the contrary, a jury does not have to be instructed on the possibility of jury nullification. |
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kabrams
Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Location: your Dad's house
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:29 am Post subject: |
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No.
The point of a being a juror is so that you're not "trained" to be a juror--your experience as a human being and as a citizen is more important.
Furthermore, where would these professional jurors be from? How would they be employed? Would their names be on a list? A lawyer who knows the professional jurors could simply pick who he wants to be on the jury, and a judge could recommend.
And what's to stop professional jurors from saying "Oh, I've seen this case before" because of their experience in being a juror? What's to stop them looking at each case with fresh eyes? That's what happens with police. That's why we have racial and sex profiling.
The point of a jury is to have doctors, lawyers, office workers, baristas, unemployed, farmers, cops, students, Presidents, even.
Instead of making "professional jurors" maybe we could actually invest in the school system and make sure our kids actually have adequate classes and experience in social studies and government. Or we could properly compensate people who are called for jury duty. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 9:34 am Post subject: |
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| With shrinking budgets, courts are under pressure to do more with less. Los Angeles County courthouses were summoning 55,000 people a week, at $15 a day each, until the economic crisis imposed more belt-tightening. The county is now making do with 45,000 summonses a week -- only about half are even answered -- compelling stricter scrutiny of those claiming financial, medical and child-care problems, Gomez said. The county has also tightened sanctions for repeat no-shows, imposing fines of as much as $1,500. |
Los Angeles County courthouses were summoning 55,000 people a week!
This is the real problem.
55,000 or 45,000 jurors per week - for one county - admittedly one very large county - but ...
There are just too many laws and too many trials. That is where the problem lies. We need to repeal 99% of the nation's laws: Federal, State and Local. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| kabrams wrote: |
No.
The point of a being a juror is so that you're not "trained" to be a juror--your experience as a human being and as a citizen is more important. |
Professional jurors would also have experience as human beings and citizens, Kabrams. They would just also have a proper understanding of the law and what was expected of them.
| kabrams wrote: |
| Furthermore, where would these professional jurors be from? |
The state where the trial is being held, just like present jurors.
| kabrams wrote: |
| How would they be employed? |
I'm not sure what you're asking here.
| kabrams wrote: |
| Would their names be on a list? |
Yes, somewhere. That list would never be made availible to anyone involved in the trial until after the trial ended, and no one involved in the trial could recommend particular jurors. The entire idea of the system, after all, is ensuring every juror is acceptable
| kabrams wrote: |
| And what's to stop professional jurors from saying "Oh, I've seen this case before" because of their experience in being a juror? |
The fact that, unlike the random juror, they are professionals. This is their job. Indeed, it's random jurors that are more likely to jump to unsound conclusions based on preconceptions, because they have no real legal training; their intuitions are their guide. Professional jurors, on the other hand, will have a firm understanding of what is required of them.
| kabrams wrote: |
| What's to stop them looking at each case with fresh eyes? That's what happens with police. That's why we have racial and sex profiling. |
No, we have racial and sex profiling because of how the human mind works; if more people of group x commit a certain type of crime than people of group y, the human mind begins trying to draw patterns. People who have never worked with the police still have a tendency to profile in this fashion, simply because statistical patterns exist which they can begin to draw such conclusions from. Again, professional training is something that can mitigate this tendency; it does not exacerbate it.
| kabrams wrote: |
| The point of a jury is to have doctors, lawyers, office workers, baristas, unemployed, farmers, cops, students, Presidents, even. |
I don't see how that benefits anyone in any way.
| kabrams wrote: |
| Instead of making "professional jurors" maybe we could actually invest in the school system and make sure our kids actually have adequate classes and experience in social studies and government. Or we could properly compensate people who are called for jury duty. |
Yeah, and instead of doctors maybe we could just train everyone in medicine. And instead of police maybe we could just brain wash everyone into perfectly obeying the laws. And insted of farmers maybe we could just raise our own food.
Or, maybe we could do exactly what we do in every other facet of civilization, and utilize specialized training to our benefit. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| kabrams wrote: |
No.
The point of a being a juror is so that you're not "trained" to be a juror--your experience as a human being and as a citizen is more important. |
Professional jurors would also have experience as human beings and citizens, Kabrams. They would just also have a proper understanding of the law and what was expected of them. |
When jurors need a proper understanding of the law, the judges (and counsel) are there to provide it to them. Jurors decide on matters of fact, judges on matters of law. The defendant may request the judge act as a trier in fact in addition to trier in law (bench trial).
Kabrams has hit the nail on the head.
The jury is a beautiful, beautiful thing and I would not give it up for anything. The United States is the last bastion of this protector of liberty (Canada still holds onto it in some instances). A professional jury would be worse than no jury at all, i.e., a bench trial: it stacks the deck against the lower classes.
| Kabrams wrote: |
| Instead of making "professional jurors" maybe we could actually invest in the school system and make sure our kids actually have adequate classes and experience in social studies and government. Or we could properly compensate people who are called for jury duty. |
These and more. We could alter the jury selection process, which tends to disqualify the most professional of the jurors anyway. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| When jurors need a proper understanding of the law, the judges (and counsel) are there to provide it to them. |
Insufficient.
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| Jurors decide on matters of fact, judges on matters of law. |
The facts the jurors are deciding upon are, ultimately, dependent upon the law. You can't draw a neat distinction in this fashion.
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| The jury is a beautiful, beautiful thing and I would not give it up for anything. |
Then you're supporting the miscarriage of justice. I guess that's your perrogative. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| Jurors decide on matters of fact, judges on matters of law. |
The facts the jurors are deciding upon are, ultimately, dependent upon the law. You can't draw a neat distinction in this fashion. |
Usually, its easy to tell the difference.
Did the suspect telephone another suspect and discuss killing the victim at 9:04am? Question of fact. Its a matter of whether it happened that way or not.
If the suspect telephoned another suspect and discussed killing the victim at 9:04, does this provide grounds for conspiracy? Question of law. Its a matter of the application of legal principles. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| Jurors decide on matters of fact, judges on matters of law. |
The facts the jurors are deciding upon are, ultimately, dependent upon the law. You can't draw a neat distinction in this fashion. |
Usually, its easy to tell the difference.
Did the suspect telephone another suspect and discuss killing the victim at 9:04am? Question of fact. Its a matter of whether it happened that way or not.
If the suspect telephoned another suspect and discussed killing the victim at 9:04, does this provide grounds for conspiracy? Question of law. Its a matter of the application of legal principles. |
Except, the jury is going to be responsible for deciding the answer to that second question. It's the jury that will vote on whether or not the individual is guilty of conspiracy; a judge or legal counsel can advise them with regards to it, but it's the jury that will deliberate. As such, the jury needs to understand the law sufficiently to be able to make that decision. This is especially true when they are faced with two opposing legal counsellors who will each try to spin the law in their favor where possible. Other factors further complicate this, such as the jury nullification bacasper mentioned.
So as I said, there isn't some neat distinction here. It's best for everyone if jurors understand the law and understand it well. Trying to make a virtue out of ignorance is madness. |
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