The thing about jury’s is that people use their morals. If they don’t think a the crime should be a crime they may not want to comvict them even tho they know the person broke the law.
If I’m sitting on a Jury for someone arrested for feeding the homeless I will never vote to convict even if the evidence is as clear as day.
I’m not comparing shooting people to feeding the homeless buy just showing an example of why people don’t vote to convict when the evidence is clear.
Jury nullification (US/UK), jury equity[1][2] (UK), or a perverse verdict (UK)[3][4] occurs when the jury in a criminal trial gives a not guilty verdict regardless of whether they believe a defendant has broken the law. The jury’s reasons may include the belief that the law itself is unjust,[5][6] that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant’s case,[7] that the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system. Some juries have also refused to convict due to their own prejudices in favor of the defendant.[8] Such verdicts are possible because a jury has an absolute right to return any verdict it chooses.[9]
I was on a jury in a civil case where the entire case was built on sympathy for the plaintiff. She’d been rear-ended at very low speed by a company owned truck and was suing the insurance company for >3 million dollars even though there were no injuries.
The plaintiff was a very elderly woman and she was brought in in a wheelchair, the accident was almost two years prior. They submitted volumes of medical records that couldn’t possibly be related to the accident but claimed somehow the accident had caused ‘suffering’ that manifested as medical issues that most 80 year olds face. I pointed out to the jury that one of the receipts was for the wheelchair she was sitting in and was dated only a week ago.
Myself and one other juror thought the 50K the company was offering was more than appropriate, but the rest of the jurors wanted to award the full 3 million. I was arguing with one of the other jurors about the amount and she said “If it was your grandmother, wouldn’t you just want to give her more money?”. I briefly tried to explain that wasn’t our role as jurors, but I kind of gave up after that- you can’t talk sense to sentiment. And since a civil case didn’t require unanimous jury she got the 3 million or whatever that was after her scummy legal team took their cut.
I will say the lawyer for the insurance company was a bumbling fool that didn’t seem to care one way or the other so that didn’t help, but it was clear to me this was just lawyers using an old lady and the legal system to pull money from a tap.
I’ve only been called once, and it was quite clear to me that the evidence they expected to present was shaky and circumstantial at best.
I took great pains to get myself excused, because I did not believe I could be impartial - ‘Not guilty’ means exactly that, the absence of proof of guilt. The state just didn’t have the goods, IMHO, and I’d have been forced to vote not guilty as a result - even if I thought the person did the thing they were accused of, the state wasn’t going to be able to prove it.
Wasn’t feeling being the ‘debating people who don’t understand the threshold for guilty’ part.
After the experience I had the one time, I’ll try to get kicked out of any and all jury trials. Also, my politics have moved quite far left and I couldn’t in good conscience contribute to someone being locked up without a hell of a lot of evidence of truly terrible harm.
I served on a jury where someone was obviously guilty and having to debate with people who didn’t see it permanently lowered my IQ.
The thing about jury’s is that people use their morals. If they don’t think a the crime should be a crime they may not want to comvict them even tho they know the person broke the law.
If I’m sitting on a Jury for someone arrested for feeding the homeless I will never vote to convict even if the evidence is as clear as day.
I’m not comparing shooting people to feeding the homeless buy just showing an example of why people don’t vote to convict when the evidence is clear.
Jury Nullification is a power tool that people don’t use enough.
Shut the fuck up delete this! If you say things like that second paragraph publicly, it can get you kicked out in voir dire.
Lol I don’t give a fuck, fuck off.
Then what’s the point of writing “if I’m sitting on a Jury…” when the rest of the sentence torpedoes your ability to ever be on one?
If lawyers are scrubbing Lemmy posts for jury selection I’m sure they will find more reasons than “this dude might pull jury nullification.”
You are vastly overestimating the government’s effort when it comes to juror vetting.
I was on a jury in a civil case where the entire case was built on sympathy for the plaintiff. She’d been rear-ended at very low speed by a company owned truck and was suing the insurance company for >3 million dollars even though there were no injuries.
The plaintiff was a very elderly woman and she was brought in in a wheelchair, the accident was almost two years prior. They submitted volumes of medical records that couldn’t possibly be related to the accident but claimed somehow the accident had caused ‘suffering’ that manifested as medical issues that most 80 year olds face. I pointed out to the jury that one of the receipts was for the wheelchair she was sitting in and was dated only a week ago.
Myself and one other juror thought the 50K the company was offering was more than appropriate, but the rest of the jurors wanted to award the full 3 million. I was arguing with one of the other jurors about the amount and she said “If it was your grandmother, wouldn’t you just want to give her more money?”. I briefly tried to explain that wasn’t our role as jurors, but I kind of gave up after that- you can’t talk sense to sentiment. And since a civil case didn’t require unanimous jury she got the 3 million or whatever that was after her scummy legal team took their cut.
I will say the lawyer for the insurance company was a bumbling fool that didn’t seem to care one way or the other so that didn’t help, but it was clear to me this was just lawyers using an old lady and the legal system to pull money from a tap.
I’ve only been called once, and it was quite clear to me that the evidence they expected to present was shaky and circumstantial at best.
I took great pains to get myself excused, because I did not believe I could be impartial - ‘Not guilty’ means exactly that, the absence of proof of guilt. The state just didn’t have the goods, IMHO, and I’d have been forced to vote not guilty as a result - even if I thought the person did the thing they were accused of, the state wasn’t going to be able to prove it.
Wasn’t feeling being the ‘debating people who don’t understand the threshold for guilty’ part.
After the experience I had the one time, I’ll try to get kicked out of any and all jury trials. Also, my politics have moved quite far left and I couldn’t in good conscience contribute to someone being locked up without a hell of a lot of evidence of truly terrible harm.