Jury Service

[Bamspeedy]

Only called once, but not selected in the end.

Rape case. Black suspect, white victim. Assault occured in an alley behind a bar and the victim's boyfriend interrupted it so it was a case where the victim says rape, while the suspect says she initiated it or it was consensual until her boyfriend saw them.

I was one of about 20 people who were called into the room and get the questioning from the lawyers. One potential juror said he owned his own business, so therefore thought he should not be required for jury duty (there was no one else to run the business while he was away). Judge didn't agree and made him stay.

Then they mentioned some of the names of the people who were involved in the case (they didn't identify how they were involved in the case, but I learned later it was the witnesses, victim, victim's boyfriend, suspect, etc.) and asked if we recognized any of those names. I recognized one of the names because it was the same name as someone I worked with at the time (I'll call him D.L.). So they asked several questions about the D.L. that I knew, how long I worked with him, how well I knew him outside of work, etc. Eventually we figured out that the D.L. I knew was not the same D.L. involved in the case. The D.L. I knew was 20 some years old, but this other D.L. was 40 some years old.

But I was excused anyways (found out later that the victim's boyfriend, who was the D.L. in the case, was the father of the D.L. that I worked with)

 

[oagersnap]

Do you get money for being a juror in America?

 

[illram]

"The English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people. The jury box is where the people come into the court: the judge watches them and the jury watches back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. A jury attends in judgement not only upon the accused but also upon the justice and humanity of the Law"

Replace 'English Common law' with whatever you want and you have the essence of jury trial. I find it amazing in the light of Democracy that is America that Voir Dire is preserved, what could be more undemocratic than who actually sits and serves on a jury? It is essentially the same as choosing who gets to vote based on what they believe, the race has been essentially run before it has even started.

It's part of the adversarial system. I'd suspect that in England Judges have the power to sit or replace jurors, here we just let the lawyers do some of that leg work. Also keep in mind it's as much about getting to know the audience as it is selecting jurors. You can occasionally get some pretty good insight into people during voire dire and if they stay in the box you could use that to your advantage.

And some judges are more or less giving for time to lawyers. Some judges keep voire dire very short and limited to strict sets of questions, and reserve the "are you fair" line of questioning for themselves. Problem is, when a judge asks a person if they can be fair, they are usually scared and say yes, or they just say what they think the judge wants to hear. The Judge doesn't follow up on interesting comments the juror might make. Jurors are by and large very intimidated by judges. (Who wouldn't be?) When a lawyer asks them the question though, they lighten up a little bit and are more truthful. In the trials where I saw a judge perform the voire dire, it was way more efficient but I did not feel we were getting a fair idea of the jurors because their answers were always BS.

Essentially, the Judge that wants to severely limit voire dire just wants to get on with it. Obviously not the motivation shared by the attorneys. Since our system is based on two sides butting heads rather than one neutral inquisitor, I think this system works best for our us. (Although your system is almost the same as ours, so this might be one of those differences in opinion.)

 

[BCLG100]

It's part of the adversarial system. I'd suspect that in England Judges have the power to sit or replace jurors, here we just let the lawyers do some of that leg work. Also keep in mind it's as much about getting to know the audience as it is selecting jurors. You can occasionally get some pretty good insight into people during voire dire and if they stay in the box you could use that to your advantage.

And some judges are more or less giving for time to lawyers. Some judges keep voire dire very short and limited to strict sets of questions, and reserve the "are you fair" line of questioning for themselves. Problem is, when a judge asks a person if they can be fair, they are usually scared and say yes, or they just say what they think the judge wants to hear. Jurors are by and large very intimidated by judges. (Who wouldn't be?) When a lawyer asks them the question though, they lighten up a little bit and are more truthful. In the trials where I saw a judge perform the voire dire, it was way more efficient but I did not feel we were getting a fair idea of the jurors because their answers were always BS.

Nope, Voir Dire has been completely eliminated. The only sort of equivalent is the prosecutions right of 'stand by' but even then this is not used for anything less than Terrorism cases. We also have to have challenge for cause but you are not allowed to question a juror, so the cause generally has to be that the defendant/victim knows the juror. A court case is not however, theoretically, about 'gaining an advantage' it is about establishing the facts and ensuring justice is done, by choosing a jury you are effectively getting rid of people whose views don't match your own which in my opinion is the wrong way to do things. A jury is, in essence, the representation of the citizenship of one country in the jury box and thus should be truly representative.

 

[illram]

Nope, Voir Dire has been completely eliminated. The only sort of equivalent is the prosecutions right of 'stand by' but even then this is not used for anything less than Terrorism cases. We also have to have challenge for cause but you are not allowed to question a juror, so the cause generally has to be that the defendant/victim knows the juror. A court case is not however, theoretically, about 'gaining an advantage' it is about establishing the facts and ensuring justice is done, by choosing a jury you are effectively getting rid of people whose views don't match your own which in my opinion is the wrong way to do things. A jury is, in essence, the representation of the citizenship of one country in the jury box and thus should be truly representative.

Each side gets equal face time and equal challenges, so each side gets a fair shake at it. Under your system I'd be worried about sitting clearly biased people. There are always people with some sort of grudge or some sort of clear bias. Our system seems more democratic if you ask me--the people whose liberty or money is at stake get a say in who decides their fate. It's a jury of their peers, after all.

Anyways trials are about manipulating jurors into thinking what you want, not about "justice" or any of that stuff. I'm sure its the same over there. It just sounds a little more slanted towards your prosecution though, to be honest. Anything that gives a defendant less say in who sits in the box is going to wind up benefiting the government in the end IMHO.

 

[BCLG100]

Each side gets equal face time and equal challenges, so each side gets a fair shake at it. Under your system I'd be worried about sitting clearly biased people. There are always people with some sort of grudge or some sort of clear bias. Our system seems more democratic if you ask me--the people whose liberty or money is at stake get a say in who decides their fate. It's a jury of their peers, after all.

Anyways trials are about manipulating jurors into thinking what you want, not about "justice" or any of that stuff. I'm sure its the same over there. It just sounds a little more slanted towards your prosecution though, to be honest. Anything that gives a defendant less say in who sits in the box is going to wind up benefiting the government in the end IMHO.

So then you're just sitting people who you already know what their answer will be, what is the point in the trial? You may as well get 12 of your mates to sit round whilst the judge just comes up with the answer.

If the population votes for the government and the government makes the rules, presumably the population then have a right to see/ensure that these rules are implemented and one way of doing this is through jury service. Therefore, as anyone gets to vote (with minor exceptions) why should they be constrained from sitting on a jury because, for instance an old theory over here when we had voir dire, that they had the telegraph under one arm? How can you have an impartial jury if you have spent the past few days/weeks/months ensuring that they are partial?

Also, you are automatically assuming that everyone has a bias and then that this bias extends towards the prosecution rather than the defence, there are 12 people to ensure that the jury is unbiased as a whole.

Finally, has the justice system in the states gone so far south that the point of a trial is no longer to ensure justice? It is not the same over here one immediate reason that comes to mind is that the prosecution is not 'the other side', the job of the prosecution is to present the evidence and pursuade people that the evidence is enough to convict but there is no 'manipulating' to ensure a verdict and, in many regards, you have to ask why would there be? the prosecution get paid regardless so they have no interest in achieving a 'win bonus' so to speak.

 

[Mark1031]

"The English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people. The jury box is where the people come into the court: the judge watches them and the jury watches back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. A jury attends in judgement not only upon the accused but also upon the justice and humanity of the Law"

You are quite right and we have seriously gotten away from this over here. Why do you think when DNA evidence became available in a very large number of cases where it could be tested convictions were overturned. It is because there is a huge drive to clear cases and cut corners and manipulate the system. Direct evidence (eye witness testimony) is notoriously unreliable relative to circumstantial (eg. DNA, fingerprints), yet is the strongest in convincing a jury. And by the time the person is in the witness box they can be much more sure of their testimony than they were in an initial identification and this can be very convincing to the weeded out jury box yokles.

It is also why we have some ridiculous prosecutions esp. related to sex- eg. 17 yr old getting 10 yrs for consensual sex with 15 yr old gf. Or guy prosecuted for being seen naked in his own home by some passerby. The system is designed to tell you not to use your judgment relating to justice. You aren’t told what the potential draconian penalties are and you are instructed to follow the technical “letter” of the law, even in stupid cases where it is the prosecutor who should be in the dock.

 

[GoodGame]

Is it legal to blog about an on-going jury duty? Just wondering.

 

[illram]

So then you're just sitting people who you already know what their answer will be, what is the point in the trial? You may as well get 12 of your mates to sit round whilst the judge just comes up with the answer.

No, you're sitting people who you think will be more likely persuaded by your story. You can't select a panel clearly biased to your side unless the other side is stupid or the Judge just doesn't care. It's still a crap shoot though, even though we get to ask them more questions.

If the population votes for the government and the government makes the rules, presumably the population then have a right to see/ensure that these rules are implemented and one way of doing this is through jury service. Therefore, as anyone gets to vote (with minor exceptions) why should they be constrained from sitting on a jury because, for instance an old theory over here when we had voir dire, that they had the telegraph under one arm? How can you have an impartial jury if you have spent the past few days/weeks/months ensuring that they are partial?

The trial is about the parties to the trial first, everything else is secondary barring some sort of extraordinary issue. It's their interests we are concerned with. Not the jurors. Getting to pick the jurors gives the parties to the trial more power over their fate. The only government interest is in insuring the pool is a representative sample and that neither side is unconstitutionally gaming the system to the disadvantage of the other, such as selecting an all white panel.

If there are guys in the box who are clearly biased it's because they either lied, one side screwed up, or the Judge just didn't care. In both systems the goal is getting an impartial jury. You are more likely to get an impartial jury if you can actually question them about whether they are impartial, yes?

Finally, has the justice system in the states gone so far south that the point of a trial is no longer to ensure justice? It is not the same over here one immediate reason that comes to mind is that the prosecution is not 'the other side', the job of the prosecution is to present the evidence and pursuade people that the evidence is enough to convict but there is no 'manipulating' to ensure a verdict and, in many regards, you have to ask why would there be? the prosecution get paid regardless so they have no interest in achieving a 'win bonus' so to speak.

1) Trials do a poor job of dispensing "justice." The law is not really just anyway. Never has been. I don't think it's much different over there. The law is about maintaining an orderly society by ensuring the government has a lock over everything, including disputes amongst people. Disputes are only ensured to be fair enough so that people don't decide to grab their pitchforks and revolt against the folks in charge, really. There are some nice things that the law has done to reverse past wrongs but the only reason that had to happen was because the law was enforcing those wrongs in the first place.

2) The prosecution is most definitely the "other side." They are one adversary in an adversarial system pitting two sides against one another. Same thing in England. Prosecutors over here definitely want to win, because head prosecutors are elected and like to cite conviction rates and other meaningless nonsense to claim they're "cleaning up the streets" and so on. If you're a junior DA and you are losing cases left and right you will get fired. It is most definitely an issue of job performance if you don't get convictions.

And over here it is definitely biased to the prosecution. They have the cops, they have the resources, they have lower case loads, they have the Judges letting them screw everything up and get away with it, they have the system behind them, they often have public support, and they have the "prestige" factor. DAs and Public Defenders come from the exact same place, have the same experience when they get hired, and almost do the same job, yet you have a public perception of PDs as being incompetent while DAs have TV shows and movies glorifying what they do...it's not the same thing.

 

[illram]

Is it legal to blog about an on-going jury duty? Just wondering.

Technically you can't talk about the case at all to anyone, or even research the case yourself. You can say "I'm on a jury" but that's about it.

 

[Bill3000]

And over here it is definitely biased to the prosecution. They have the cops, they have the resources, they have lower case loads, they have the Judges letting them screw everything up and get away with it, they have the system behind them, they often have public support, and they have the "prestige" factor. DAs and Public Defenders come from the exact same place, have the same experience when they get hired, and almost do the same job, yet you have a public perception of PDs as being incompetent while DAs have TV shows and movies glorifying what they do...it's not the same thing.

*cough*

 

[Furiey]

I've been called on jury service twice. The first time I did a couple of small trials which lasted only 1-2 days each, so what with the sitting around and having to go in only to be told to come back tomorrow it took in all about 6 days. The second time I had a 4.5 day trial and another 2 day trial, in the UK jury service is expected to be for 2 weeks so I escaped the next trial as it was expected to go beyond that time (and eventually lasted over 5 weeks).

I too find it strange that the jury gets picked as it does in the US. Only way to get excused here is too be too ill or too old - my grandmother was called at 92, they did let her off.

I must admit I enjoyed it and would be happy to do it again.

 

[illram]

*cough*

Ha! That's pretty cool. Too bad he's a private defense attorney and not a PD.

 

[BCLG100]

You are quite right and we have seriously gotten away from this over here. Why do you think when DNA evidence became available in a very large number of cases where it could be tested convictions were overturned. It is because there is a huge drive to clear cases and cut corners and manipulate the system. Direct evidence (eye witness testimony) is notoriously unreliable relative to circumstantial (eg. DNA, fingerprints), yet is the strongest in convincing a jury. And by the time the person is in the witness box they can be much more sure of their testimony than they were in an initial identification and this can be very convincing to the weeded out jury box yokles.

It is also why we have some ridiculous prosecutions esp. related to sex- eg. 17 yr old getting 10 yrs for consensual sex with 15 yr old gf. Or guy prosecuted for being seen naked in his own home by some passerby. The system is designed to tell you not to use your judgment relating to justice. You aren’t told what the potential draconian penalties are and you are instructed to follow the technical “letter” of the law, even in stupid cases where it is the prosecutor who should be in the dock.

The quote was by E.P. Thompson so I can't claim credit for it just incase you guys thought it was me

For the second part of your post we have a growing tendancy over here from juries to sometimes acquit people where they don't agree with the law called jury equity. In many ways it is an interesting development.

No, you're sitting people who you think will be more likely persuaded by your story. You can't select a panel clearly biased to your side unless the other side is stupid or the Judge just doesn't care. It's still a crap shoot though, even though we get to ask them more questions.

Well that is the essence of Voir dire, that a jury can be biased.

The trial is about the parties to the trial first, everything else is secondary barring some sort of extraordinary issue. It's their interests we are concerned with. Not the jurors. Getting to pick the jurors gives the parties to the trial more power over their fate. The only government interest is in insuring the pool is a representative sample and that neither side is unconstitutionally gaming the system to the disadvantage of the other, such as selecting an all white panel.

If there are guys in the box who are clearly biased it's because they either lied, one side screwed up, or the Judge just didn't care. In both systems the goal is getting an impartial jury. You are more likely to get an impartial jury if you can actually question them about whether they are impartial, yes?

I think part of the difficulty here is that the US still uses Juries heavily in civil litigation whereas that is all but defunct in the UK these days and generally, juries only appear in criminal trials and therefore the main issue is justice, quite obviously so. However, even in the US for criminal trials the state has an interest in the outcome of the trial, far more than merely ensuring a random pool.

But you are not just questioning them to find out if they're impartial. You are questioning them to ascertain what kind of verdict they will end up giving, America particularly allows great amounts of questioning going in to this process which means jury members can have a lot asked of them. So you are effectively asking them just which way their vote is going to go, how are you going to get a reflective view of the population if you just whittle it down to the same 12 faces every time a trial comes around, as your post says 'representative' how is the jury 'representative' if it is picked?

1) Trials do a poor job of dispensing "justice." The law is not really just anyway. Never has been. I don't think it's much different over there. The law is about maintaining an orderly society by ensuring the government has a lock over everything, including disputes amongst people. Disputes are only ensured to be fair enough so that people don't decide to grab their pitchforks and revolt against the folks in charge, really. There are some nice things that the law has done to reverse past wrongs but the only reason that had to happen was because the law was enforcing those wrongs in the first place.

2) The prosecution is most definitely the "other side." They are one adversary in an adversarial system pitting two sides against one another. Same thing in England. Prosecutors over here definitely want to win, because head prosecutors are elected and like to cite conviction rates and other meaningless nonsense to claim they're "cleaning up the streets" and so on. If you're a junior DA and you are losing cases left and right you will get fired. It is most definitely an issue of job performance if you don't get convictions.

Well (1) is entirely wrong in my opinion, the law developed to protect the rights of the individual and to ensure those rights were protected the law had to have some form of punishment so that if someone did violate a right then they would be punished. Nearly every article in the ECHR can be seen in English common law, habeas corpus for instance. Trials do an excellent job of not only dispensing justice but ensuring that justice is known to be done to the general public. How else would someone know that a murderer was a murderer/being punished for instance.

2) I think you are most definitely misunderstanding what happens in an English courtroom, perhaps it is different in the States and I get the feeling some of the differences are due to this. Prosecutors are not elected here, they are just paid and have no direct interest in the case being over. Normally they are given the bundle very shortly before the trial and once the trial is completed never hear about it again. I don't think in the states for instance you get people who are both Defence and Prosecution whereas over here, to earn a living, nearly everyone is both.

And over here it is definitely biased to the prosecution. They have the cops, they have the resources, they have lower case loads, they have the Judges letting them screw everything up and get away with it, they have the system behind them, they often have public support, and they have the "prestige" factor. DAs and Public Defenders come from the exact same place, have the same experience when they get hired, and almost do the same job, yet you have a public perception of PDs as being incompetent while DAs have TV shows and movies glorifying what they do...it's not the same thing.

They have the resources over here to but i do believe it is the same over there in that the prosecution has to explain their case to the defendants pre-trial, give them every piece of documentation and inform them of who will be called to stand. The defendants in turn have to tell the prosecution nothing, indeed the defence don't even have to call the defendant to the stand if they don't wish to.

 

[BSmith1068]

Or guy prosecuted for being seen naked in his own home by some passerby.

Thankfully this guy got acquitted (on appeal, but still):

Spoiler :

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - A man charged with indecent exposure after two women said they saw him naked inside his own home was acquitted Wednesday by a Virginia jury.

Erick Williamson, 29, has argued since his October arrest that he should not be punished for being naked in the privacy of his own home.

Police and prosecutors, as well as the two women who testified against him, said he intended to expose himself and made no attempt to conceal himself in a residential neighborhood filled with children.

"It's really a weight off my shoulders after these last six months," Williamson said after his acquittal. "I think (the verdict) kind of sets the record straight. It was an innocent action."

In December, a judge in Fairfax County's General District Court convicted Williamson of misdemeanor indecent exposure, but imposed neither jail time nor a fine. Still, Williamson appealed his case to the county's circuit court, risking a maximum punishment of a year in jail to clear his name.

"When you know you've done nothing wrong, it's hard to take these kind of accusations and not stand up to it," said Williamson, an out-of-work commercial diver who racked up thousands of dollars in legal fees.

At the time of his arrest, Williamson was sharing a home in Springfield with other commercial divers. He testified Wednesday that his roommates had gone to work and left him alone in the house for the first time in months. He was moving out, and decided to pack his belongings and make breakfast in the nude.

Two women testified that they saw him naked that morning. The first, a school librarian, said she heard a loud moan and drunken singing. Then, as she drove by Williamson's house at about 6:40 a.m., she saw him in the buff and called 911.

A police officer came by the house, saw nothing unusual and left.

Then, two hours later, Yvette Dean testified that she was walking her 7-year-old son to school when she saw a naked Williamson standing in an exterior doorway on the side of his home with the screen door wide open.

Dean testified that she made eye contact, angrily gave him the finger and hustled her son away. As she turned the corner, she looked back and saw Williamson from a front window, again completely naked.

Williamson did not dispute that the women may have seen him, but said he did not see them and did not make eye contact with Dean. He testified that if he had known he'd been seen, he would have put his pants on and gone outside and apologized.

Under Virginia law, indecent exposure occurs when a person intentionally makes an obscene display of his or her private parts. The law does not necessarily require the exposure to be in a public place _ it allows for prosecution when the exposure occurs in a "place where others are present."

Prosecutor Marc Birnbaum said the circumstances of the case, from the librarian's testimony about loud moaning and drunken singing to Dean's testimony about eye contact, showed that Williamson intended to expose himself.

"This isn't a case about being naked in your house. This is a case about intentional exposure," Birnbaum said.

http://wtop.com/?sid=1928965&nid=104

Is it legal to blog about an on-going jury duty? Just wondering.

Nope. You’ll notice how careful Forma is being with not telling us any details.

 

[BCLG100]

Technically you can't talk about the case at all to anyone, or even research the case yourself. You can say "I'm on a jury" but that's about it.

And yet oddly anyone sitting in the public gallery can talk about whatever they want unless the judge has passed an order stopping this. This includes the times where the jury gets sent out for instance to discuss whether the jury needs to know that the defendant has a criminal record.

 

[Aegis]

1) Trials do a poor job of dispensing "justice." The law is not really just anyway. Never has been.

That's kind of the point of having a jury trial, which is to use citizens as a check-and-balance for a potentially abusive government.

Jurors in the US have the power to vote their conscience if they disagree with a particular law. The easiest way possible to get out of jury duty is to wear a F.I.J.A pin on your lapel.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Do you get money for being a juror in America?

Yes. But I think every state is different in how much is paid, and there may be some restrictions on it (more than one day, or have to have actually been selected so the people who spend half the day there and aren't selected might not get paid).

And what it does pay is typically not very much (unless you are unemployed I suppose). I remember hearing something like $25/day but that was many years ago and I don't know if that was the old federal guidelines or it was for state/local cases or what it was. I do know that it is up to $40-50/day for federal cases, unless you are a government employee:

Government employees are in a paid status of leave (in accordance with 5USC6322 [1]) for the time they spend serving as a juror (also known as Court Duty or Court Leave by some organizations). Many organizations are Quasi-Governmental and have adopted this provision into their contract manuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_duty

Federal jurors are paid $40 a day. While the majority of jury trials last less than a week, jurors can receive up to $50 a day after serving 30 days on a trial. (Employees of the federal government are paid their regular salary in lieu of this fee.)

http://www.uscourts.gov/jury/jurypay.html

 

[illram]

I think part of the difficulty here is that the US still uses Juries heavily in civil litigation whereas that is all but defunct in the UK these days and generally, juries only appear in criminal trials and therefore the main issue is justice, quite obviously so. However, even in the US for criminal trials the state has an interest in the outcome of the trial, far more than merely ensuring a random pool.

But you are not just questioning them to find out if they're impartial. You are questioning them to ascertain what kind of verdict they will end up giving, America particularly allows great amounts of questioning going in to this process which means jury members can have a lot asked of them. So you are effectively asking them just which way their vote is going to go, how are you going to get a reflective view of the population if you just whittle it down to the same 12 faces every time a trial comes around, as your post says 'representative' how is the jury 'representative' if it is picked?

The pool and the panel only needs to be relfective of society in so far as no one is unconstitutionally denying the defendant to a fair trial by a jury "of his peers." Again, it's not about fairness to the jurors, its about fairness to the parties to the case. Ensuring randomness is not really part of it either, other than who gets chosen to be in the pool from which the panel is to be made.

We are ascertaining if they are biased one way or the other, and yes, also trying to get an idea of who they are based on very very general questions. But in all honesty rarely do we get some sort of amazing insight into a juror that lets us know exactly what we should say to them. It's still a huge guessing game. Every time the panel is still a bunch of unknowns and we are just trying to find those clear outliers or sometimes expose something interesting in our case and see how jurors react to it, almost like a pre-trial focus group. It's a great benefit to a litigator who knows how to do that. I do agree with you that this tactic might not befit a system where we are just interested in knowing the facts and arriving at some sort of objective, coldly rational decision, but that is just not how our trial system is set up. That sounds more like an inquisition-based system like they have in France or something. In an adversarial system with a right to a jury trial, this works better than just seating the first 12 people that walk in the door, in my opinion.

Well (1) is entirely wrong in my opinion, the law developed to protect the rights of the individual and to ensure those rights were protected the law had to have some form of punishment so that if someone did violate a right then they would be punished. Nearly every article in the ECHR can be seen in English common law, habeas corpus for instance. Trials do an excellent job of not only dispensing justice but ensuring that justice is known to be done to the general public. How else would someone know that a murderer was a murderer/being punished for instance.

I just don't see it that way in practice. Again, maybe I am just being cynical but I don't see our criminal justice system dispensing "justice." It is built to try and process people through the system like cattle. And civil trials, man don't get me started. Cases always settle because everyone knows that the outcome of a civil trial is often completely impossible to predict and a total crap-shoot. You also have the issue of the system being built for those with the money to play with it. Criminal trials and especially civil trials to me are not about justice, at all. That might be written on the masonry outside but once you walk through those doors and start seeing what is going on, it's a different world.

2) I think you are most definitely misunderstanding what happens in an English courtroom, perhaps it is different in the States and I get the feeling some of the differences are due to this. Prosecutors are not elected here, they are just paid and have no direct interest in the case being over. Normally they are given the bundle very shortly before the trial and once the trial is completed never hear about it again. I don't think in the states for instance you get people who are both Defence and Prosecution whereas over here, to earn a living, nearly everyone is both. They have the resources over here to but i do believe it is the same over there in that the prosecution has to explain their case to the defendants pre-trial, give them every piece of documentation and inform them of who will be called to stand. The defendants in turn have to tell the prosecution nothing, indeed the defence don't even have to call the defendant to the stand if they don't wish to.

Yeah that's really different, I am probably not understanding your system. I guess I assumed it was more similar to ours... that's interesting though. Here you basically have two sides who are very, very motivated to "win the case." It's very competitive. Prosecutors have "ethics" about being fair and having a duty to respect the rights of the defendant, blah blah blah, but they rarely if ever do that and are usually all about getting a conviction.

Prosecutors here also have to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense and all that jazz, but even when they screw that up, they usually get away with it. Defendants here do not have to take the stand either. Problem is juries will often hold that against the defendant, even though the Judge tells them not to. Jurors have a hard time understanding the concept of innocent til proven guilty and the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt no matter how many jury instructions we give them.

Which goes back to my original point... voire dire can pick those people out sometimes. That's usually something a Judge will ask if he or she doesn't let the lawyers ask it. Don't you think that's an important question to ask potential jurors?

 

[illram]

That's kind of the point of having a jury trial, which is to use citizens as a check-and-balance for a potentially abusive government.

Jurors in the US have the power to vote their conscience if they disagree with a particular law. The easiest way possible to get out of jury duty is to wear a F.I.J.A pin on your lapel.

Sure. It's just to me, the best way to ensure that the defendant and/or the parties to the case are getting their best use of the jury system is to let them ask jurors questions. Not just sit the first 12 people that walk through the courthouse doors.