I have been on a jury. I made an informed judgment based on all of the evidence in the case.
James, I'm just going to get in the middle of this long enough to remind that you're not an American.
I have jury duty coming up next month. I don't expect to be seated.
See, in the U.S., in my county, they bring us into the courtroom in groups, ask us some general questions, and from shows of hands ask prospective jurors particular questions. Attorneys then have two kinds of objections by which they remove jury members. The first kind is called a
peremptory challenge; the attorneys can dismissa anyone from the jury pool for any reason they need not state to the court. They have a limited number of these objections. There are also substantive objections that the court must decide on. Sit through the right session, and you'll see it. For instance, one guy literally stood up and told the judge he absolutely refused to give this defendant a fair trial; the judge would not allow him to walk out, and would not accept a substantive objection, forcing the defense to burn a peremptory objection. Meanwhile, the prosecution asked a question about the constitution, and one about civil rights, and used peremptory objection to strike everyone who answered affirmatively. In the U.S., prosecutors generally want juries that vote their feelings; get people mad enough at a defendant, they'll convict.
One of the things about American juries is the question of priorities; the way to make a jury pay attention is to make the case feel more important than just everyday business of the court. In the legendary gang and drug wars of my lifetime, Black juries in Black communities were among a prosecutor's best friends, because the jury box was one of the only tools Black people had to effect leverage in a bad situation. They did their jobs for their communities. One thing to remember is that for all the shit people gave Hillary Clinton about "superpredators" and the crime bill that even Bernie supported, Black juries did not take the opportunity to protest by simply acquitting Black defendants, but, rather, did their damn jobs because the jury box was one of the only tools they had.
Now, white supremacists judging Black people? Yes, that would count as an example of a jury attending its feelings. Or think of it this way: If a jury can acquit a sex offense because a woman was so reckless as to wear a swimsuit in Florida during the summer, they're not voting on the facts but, rather, their feelings about women. Consider that in Weld County, Colorado, a prosecutor refused to prosecute a
confessed rape, and while the victim's recording of Congressman Buck (R-CO4) does really sound like he's telling her it's her fault, his public excuse was that he did not believe the good people of Weld County would convict this confessed rape. That is, he didn't think a
jury would convict for the evidentiary fact of a confession, which says something about Weld County. He might have been right; as his present title suggests, they promoted that prosecutor to Congress. Vociferous is not necessarily wrong that many jurors vote their feelings regardless of the facts, but, no, the
Chauvin trial is not that example. If this jury voted according to their feelings, the prevailing emotional current was,
¡Don't screw this up!
Now, think of my county, where a white judge can look at the Black defendant sitting in front of him, and hear a white juror announce that because his adult son died of a drug overdose he refuses to give the defendant in this bail case a fair hearing, and not see a substantive reason to dismiss this particular juror for cause. As far as feelings are concerned, I cannot imagine the same scene playing out so casually if the whole world happened to be watching.
And, besides, in most occasions when juries are voting on their feelings, the jurors still actually think they're making an informed judgment based on the evidence. And cases like the Florida rape acquittal feel obscure, in part because, as Ken Buck demonstrated, it's just an inefficient way to achieve the same result. There are much more efficient pathways to particular outcomes. It's how, in my state, you can be shot to death for following police instructions, and it's nobody's fault but your own because police work is inherently scary.
As to our neighbor's point, he tells us more about himself than anything else. The reason I'm getting in the middle at the moment is to remind you about his habit of confidently asserting things that don't actually make any sense. This is one of those occasions.
A very interesting hair to split about American jurisprudence is the idea that prosecutors don't bring cases if they aren't certain they can win a conviction. The hair to split comes with observing that winning a conviction is a separate question from the truth of whether someone is really and actually guilty. Vociferous is not wrong that prosecutors are good at exploiting fear and ignorance among jurors. It's why, for instance, the prosecutor in my jury pool peremptorily dismissed everyone who answered two questions about the constitution and civil rights affirmatively.
But given the conduct of the police department, as well as the other officers involved, the state could have gone with murder one and racketeering. And while there might be a technical case for that, establishing those requires prosecutors overcoming enough of their own prejudice in favor of law enforcement. As it is, the charges they went with were charges they knew they could win.
Consider the emotional value of Chauvin's defense: The people reminding police of their duty and pleading for George Floyd's life are to blame. They made things worse, according to Chauvin's attorney. It's not Chauvin's fault, but the people who said the police were out of line. What is the emotional value of a
defense attorney telling the jury his client isn't fit to be a police officer, that Chauvin buckles and reactsbadly under pressure and this is the result, and it's not his fault but everybody else's for expecting him to not kill the guy accidentally so he killed him on purpose because it was the only thing he could figure to do. See, agitating the cop to the point of poor judgment is the real crime. The people begging for Floyd's life are the guilty ones.
There are times, actually, when freezing or buckling under extraordinary circumstance is a mitigating factor, but law enforcement is an extraordinary duty, and telling a jury it's not fair to expect a police officer to be better than what Chauvin did is one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard a defense attorney say. On that stage, with the whole world watching, telling the people of Minnesota they cannot have the one thing they are allowed to expect of extraordinary public trust will bring neither juristic nor emotional mitigation.
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James, think of the idea of a
「behavior, more than a tactic」. I know it sounds strange, but you're aware Americans, and even here at Sciforums, often discuss the effects of
equivocation. While the behavior is not unique to Sciforums, it's true we've long suffered a weird sort of equivocation in which rightists simply mimic certain arguments, as if they apply regardless of their function. I say a behavior, more than a tactic, because it's not exactly a strategically plotted thing; there is a certain degree to which it is reflexive, and nothing about any occasion you might encounter such behavior is supposed to be connected to any other, because that's not the way the behavior works.
At its heart is a rubber-glue component. Once upon a time, a kid shouted, "No, you're the bully!" and when he said the other hit him for no reason, what that meant is that the other finally refused to hand over his lunch money. This actually has a philosophical principle, from von Clausewitz, about how all wars are started by defenders for failing to capitulate to the aggressor's demands.
And it's one of the reasons why
function matters, and viable questions of good faith are important. While the behavior can be organized as some sort of concerted tactical maneuver, it is impossible to ignore the possibility that it is genuine, because it is a very simple, neurotically-driven reaction.
In the American discourse, a conservative pushing the point that "juries vote their feelings" might actually seem kind of funny, but there is also the part that says,
of course he's going to say that when a cop has been caught murdering a Black man. So look at the applicable function of his claim; he is essentially describing a perfect jury that just happened to tack in the right direction at the right moment; when juries voting their feelings is a complaint about how Black people are charged, convicted, and sentenced, the line doesn't get much traction in certain quarters. That suddenly someone from those quarters needs the line? Okay, maybe, but
of course it's for this. Even after Chauvin's attorney tried to blame other people for his client's actions, Vociferous went with this superficial line that he is unable to support. He just sort of says stuff, regardless of whether or not it works. It's not really so different from the
"own the libs" trend, and even has some overlap. But it's also similar to how the empowerment majority is always the real victim, like how men, or white people, or Christians, are the real victims of supremacism.
And it's probably also true that your Australian jury experience hasn't much relative meaning compared to the American judicial system and what Vociferous is pushing.
