The Decision Was the Right One
Why LeBron made the only choice that made sense.
4 Responses to “The Decision Was the Right One”
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Why LeBron made the only choice that made sense.
4 Responses to “The Decision Was the Right One”
Got something to say?
I had to serve jury duty once. You have to listen intently to both arguements and then the judge tells you what you need to base your decision on. More or less a set of guidlines to follow.
You have to hold true, that no is guilty until it is beyond a reasonable doubt that something is amiss.
Then there is a debate among jurers. Different outlooks are exchanged, as well as what others might have missed.
Then put to a vote, and when there are some left that do not agree with the masses, it is up to the court to determine what the winning vote count is. Sometimes it is 75% or !00% agreeable.
On my particular case, it was 100% agreed upon, in a fraud case.
So there are a lot of different things to consider, and it is a very important task to serve on a jury.
References :
I worked as a legal assistant to pay my way though grad school and seminary. We had only civil cases. My wife has been a senior paralegal for a large firm for almost 20 years. She has only had civil cases. I have served on juries before on civil cases (i.e. disputes over money or property or something involving money – not criminal acts).
The way it works is the judge gives you instructions – "jury instructions" which both sided basically argue about in court and agree that these are fair instructions to guide the jury’s decision.
The judge basically gives you the basic dispute summarized in a sentence. He shows you the requirements of the law. He tells you to summarize what you all think then make a decision yes or no on the various disputes between the litigants in the case.
In the jury room, we talk about who we believe is telling the truth and who is lying. We banter the facts and questions the judge tells us to decide. The testimony of the eye-witnesses or the written documents weighs heavily upon who we thought was lying and who was telling the truth in their testimony on direct and cross examination.
I personally think that a jury trial is okay for civil money matters. They are cut and dried and straightfoward though lawyers try to lead you down their legal rabbit trails to distract you from the real matters that are not favorable to their client. All lawyers are trained to do this by quibbling over procedures, technicalities, and things that have nothing to do with the absolutely crystal clear, verifyable facts of the case.
However, my wife and I personally think that for criminal matters, they should be held before a 5 panel judge. I know the founding fathers built into our system a jury system of your peers. However, are any of the people really my peers? Do they have good, sound judgment based on the clear facts? Do they have an ax to grind or a hidden agenda motivating their opinions? Are they even educated? Do they speak English? Do they understand what is going on in the case as presented to the jury?
I think there really is no more "jurors of your actual peers" available anymore in our country because people have become so subjective, self-centered, and immoral in their personal life that they don’t make clear, rational, factual decisions anymore. They don’t think critically, analyze and weigh carefully the weight of the matters before them. Therefore, I think you would get a better, more fair, more reasonable, more well thought through verdict in a criminal case if it they did away with the jury system and had a panel of 5 to 9 judges sit on these cases; and they cannot be lifetime appointments. They should serve like 5 to 7 years then can never serve again; otherwise they would become corrupt and the power they hold over life and death and prison would go to their heads and they would open up to bribes and influence peddling sleazy lawyers and the rich who can pay them off. (I know the majority of lawyers are not sleazy but the sleazy ones are extra sleazy politician wanta-bes that is why they stand out so clearly and make the other attorneys look bad).
Good luck in figuring all your questions out.
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The jury can only listen to the testimony and the evidence provided for that case and then debate the outcome. The jury has the right in the jury room to ask additional questions, and to look at evidence again, and the Judge will allow or disallow that. It also helps if people on the jury know the law, and ironically some jury members have a talent of skill that can add additional information to the case. Sometimes the information is not enough, you are right. You can have jury members who get on a case just to throw the case. I had jury duty on a capital case and there was a jury member who was catholic on the case. He should have never been allowed to be on the jury as his religion prevents him from voting the death penalty. Luckily the laws then allowed the judge to vote the death penalty if the jury couldn’t agree on it and since we voted 11 to 1, the judge sided with us and voted the death penalty. I think when you are on the jury you can tell which people you think are lying and telling the truth. In one case I had a cop did a bad thing, but he admitted he did the bad thing, and explained why he did it, and not one member of the jury ever brought up the thing the cop did, I guess because he told the truth. There is a book out I think it is called "The CSI Effect" and it is about how there are things on tv shows that have not been invented yet. So tv shows like CSI and Bones and shows like that are claiming computer programs can do this or that, but in reality, technology is not that far advanced yet. They are claiming they have machines that do this or that, and again, there is no technology that can do the things they claim. Whereas these are just tv shows and they are fake, real people expect the cops to come up with some of this kind of evidence. There are many states overturning convictions because of DNA evidence that was not available at the time of the trial. There is more and more proof that eye witness testimony is often wrong. You can also sway jury members to vote your way if they don’t know they have the right to ask for a smoke break. They will change their vote just so they can go smoke a cigarette. I guess a jury has to make the best possible decission on the evidence and information provided, and hope they did the right thing. I had a jury duty case where a man murdered 2 women, and we found out after the case was over that there were 3 other dead women this man had also killed, and probably more the police don’t know about, so that helped us know we made the right decission.
References :
How can the Jury make the right decision?
How does information given in the court helps the jury to get to the truth, and is this information often enought?
How important is it to be able to dessern the truth when you are dealing with different people in the court, and how can the jury dessern this truth?
What factorts paly an important role for the jury to make the right decision?