@accidentalaccountant - I’ve not sat on a jury but I took law at gcse and a-level (thought at the time I wanted to got into law as a career) and so sat in the public gallery for a few cases and so heard all the same evidence as the jury and at least half the time the jury’s decision made no sense whatsoever - it very much comes down to:
Their own prejudices
How attractive the lawyers are
How charismatic the lawyers are
How attractive the defendant is
How charismatic - or offensive - the defendant is
How attractive the victim/s are
How charismatic/offensive the victim/s are
How visible the support of defendant/victim is...
It’s a presentation game!
But sometimes “good” presentation can backfire...
A too posh/good looking/too well dressed defence lawyer/team can put the jury off.
A too “together” victim - especially in dv or sexual assault cases can make the jury think they aren’t distressed enough to have been a victim - even though the trial may well be taking place many months or even years after the event.
What we do to address these issues I don’t know.
Weirdly the archaic dress in criminal courts in England (wigs and gowns) at least make them all look equally daft! Goes some way to balancing the scales of justice.
Personally I think we need to do something to ensure a mixed jury, currently the supposedly random selection just results in most mainly consisting of white mc men still!
Then there’s the argument that anyone too stupid to be able to get OUT of jury duty has no business serving on one!
There are certainly some jurors that relish the duty a little too much! Amateur detectives at best, amateur judges and executioners at worst!
The race factor also needs to be addressed, I gather worse in the states but even in the uk it’s been proven many times that a young black man is more likely to be:
Stopped by police
Suspected of crimes
Investigated as a suspect
Prosecuted
Convicted
Than any other demographic.
And I have been witness to this too.
Being stopped for just “driving while black” is definitely a thing. Especially in London.
“The benefit of a jury in my eyes is that they are normal people who have never judged a case before” jurors are JUST as guilty of bringing their own prejudices, their own agendas and bigotry to assessing a trial.
I wonder if one option is for jurors not to see the defendant or the victim so they can’t prejudge at least on a looks basis. Perhaps go even further and have their voices disguised/replaced too especially if they have a strong accent or speech impediment.
“The 19 year old British woman convicted of public mischief in Cyprus is innocent and the victim of rape. I haven't met one person who thinks she made it up.” Absolutely.
“didn't see eventually admit to lightly shaking the baby? Was no one charged at all then with the babies death?” Under GREAT duress which I feel nullifies any “confession” plus even then she said that was only after finding the baby already unconscious possibly already dead.
The thing I find MOST dubious was the “lost” forensic evidence - literally lost whole parts of the babies body, lost cultures, lost blood tests... yet the judge didn’t even pull the prosecution up on this or insist it be searched for!
Less “serious” than the cases being discussed here but my aunt is a forensic accountant, her job is to explain what a perpetrator has done “in layman’s terms” but when it comes to tax dodging and other financial crimes that can be incredibly hard to do because most lay people haven’t the first clue about what the laws are! Even the lawyers she’s working with don’t always understand. So she’s told me a conviction/acquittal can happen simply because the jury didn’t understand the evidence. Or even because they thought the law broken was unfair in the first place (they’re not necessarily wrong but that’s a whole other dept deals with that)
@alloftheboys - yes it’s happened several times. I’m a total tv geek I like to learn about the crew, the background to the stories etc when an episode or show especially interests me. In researching this one I discovered it had happened a number of times - which goes to show why the “csi effect” (ironically) is so dangerous - as I said no one “type” of evidence should be enough to convict a person.
Every piece of evidence is vulnerable to corruption, fallibility...compromise!
My brothers a police officer mainly working in the area of drugs building cases against the big dealers. He’s told of his frustration when particularly new officers/forensic scientists have cocked up and wrecked a case they’ve been working on for months or (much more rarely to be fair) a corrupt officer or tech has compromised or “disappeared” evidence.
The people he’s going after are very careful actually anyway (another aspect of their portrayal on tv/film he gets annoyed with) they limit their direct contact with both the drugs and the money as much as possible hoping to create plausible deniability if anyone is caught/arrested. So the evidence they do get is all the more precious.
Weirdly (or maybe not?) it’s often the evidence of people like my aunt (although they don’t work together - different jurisdictions) in compiling evidence of the money laundering that tends to be the clearest and most damning. It’s rare they’re caught red handed with millions £ worth of the actual drugs - they leave that risk to underlings!
I really appreciate the input on thread from those “in the know”.
It’s so hard to know what to do for the best. Convict someone “just in case” and risk punishing the innocent or acquit “just in case” and leave a guilty person to hurt more people?
At least with not having the death sentence there’s a modicum of “reversal” possible in the case of wrongful conviction. No such luck with more victims being created though.