heard about this case. <\/span><\/a>\u00a0It\u2019s a bad decision.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>A jury of one\u2019s peers that deliberates in secret is fundamental to the American system of justice.\u00a0 Every other system is subject to corruption and undue influence that deprives the defendant of a fair chance at an impartial verdict.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>The defendant has an opportunity to investigate jury members before they are seated, to question them through voir dire, <\/i>and to strike for cause any potential juror who reveals prejudice.\u00a0 If the strike-for-cause motion is denied, the defense still gets to strike jurors without cause, using preemptory strikes.<\/span><\/p>\nInvading the sanctity of the jury room to second-guess the jury\u2019s motivations after the fact is a terrible precedent.\u00a0 It opens the door to second-guess everything that happens in the jury room and throw out verdicts that result from the \u201cwrong\u201d deliberations.\u00a0 That precedent strikes directly at the heart of secret deliberations.\u00a0 They\u2019re no longer secret anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>There could be a host of reasons the jury didn\u2019t acquit the defendant: they ignored the judge\u2019s instructions, they misapplied the law, they hated the defense attorney\u2019s tie, they resented the defendant forcing them to burn up their personal leave days listening to his pathetic lies . . . and none of those are grounds to overturn the jury verdict.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>But if we allow the defense to second-guess the jury as to racial animus, then you know the next thing will be defendants wanting to second-guess jurors who may have been influenced by sex, religion, disability, veteran\u2019s status, receipt of public assistance, gender orientation . . . and why stop there?\u00a0 What if a jury member voted for Trump, clear evidence of raging hatred and mental illness?\u00a0 Now we need thought police stationed in the jury room to make sure the secret deliberations come out right, the way right-thinking persons want them to come out, which is exactly what a jury is supposed to prevent.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>Here\u2019s another illustration of that new Berg\u2019s Law:\u00a0 Liberal Policies Destroy Liberal Values.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIt may actually be one of the better candidates for a Berg’s Law we’ve seen in a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I hadn\u2019t heard about this case. \u00a0It\u2019s a bad decision. \u00a0A jury of one\u2019s peers that deliberates in secret is fundamental to the American system of justice.\u00a0 Every other system is subject to corruption and undue influence that deprives the defendant of a fair chance at an impartial verdict. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebony-and-ivory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62500,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62499\/revisions\/62500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}