An "impartial" jury doesn't mean one where every member is ignorant or has no prior opinions relevant to the case.
It's one where the members are willing to set aside their previous knowledge and opinions, and evaluate the evidence that's presented to them.
How does the court system evaluate that? That seems like a super hard thing to check.
Jury selection usually involves asking the prospective jurors various questions, with the lawyers on each side being allowed to dismiss jurors they think will be biased.
jury selection is a very tedious process where every juror is interviewed by the judge and possibly both sides. They get whittled down by the court before being fully assigned, and then the prosecution and defense get to boot a certain number of jurors.
advising on jury selection is actually very lucrative business with both sides dishing out massive amounts of cash to make those checks.
in any case, in this situation, it's not that they're looking for unbiased jurors, it's that they're looking to balance out the biases of the individual jurors with jurors of apposing bias. I mean, you'd have to be living under a rock at this point to not have a bias as far as trump is concerned.
But what if the person balancing the biases is biased?
It's not balanced by a single person. The lawyers from both the prosecution and the defense do it adversarialy.
Oh, clever
They are. One is the prosecutor and the other is the defense.
Judges normally follow a very strict procedure on who to kick, like people that may have worked for trump or family, etc, so it’s at least supposed to be objective. The lawyers are the ones sorting subjectively
What if you die stepping out of the shower? All choices have consequences and nothing is perfect, at some point you have to accept that certain things are not and cope anyway.
You can't just balance out the bias though.
If one juror just plain will not return a guilty or not guilty verdict, then the whole trial is for naught.
Pretty sure it’s a hung jury and they do it again (or bring in an alternate that’s been in the trial watching every thing as well.)
You’re right it’s a problem. Would you prefer trial by combat?
For Trump? Yes!
I’d prefer trial by ordeal. Hog tie him and toss him in a pond. Sinking? Innocent. Floating guilty.
The problem is this system would almost certainly opress more people.
Our current system is quite flawed. But it’s not nearly as flawed as it could be
Voir dire is the process, if you lie you go to jail
The problem with Trump is that he's a known quantity to anyone who has lived on Earth for the last 50 years. He's a compulsive liar, literally about everything and a vile, disgusting person, as well.
Knowing that, I would find it impossible to "just consider the facts" and believe that maybe . . . just maybe, this is the one time he's telling the truth.
Thankfully we put career criminals, well-known in their communities, who people have heard of, on trial all the time. Could you imagine if "I'm too famous as a dirtbag to be tried by a jury of my peers" was a defense?
Absolutely right. "Impartial" doesn't mean you've never heard of the person, or never seen them on the news, or don't live near them, or have no opinion of them, or haven't heard or believe things about what they've done. It means just what you said, that whoever is picked will be able to listen to the evidence presented by both sides and make a decision based on that evidence. Apparently a huge number of people believe this is functionally impossible for humans to do, which is pretty sad if you've let your politics overwhelm your reason to such a degree that you think no one else can be objective either.
It's a classic shithead defense to try and tell a judge "the paper did a piece on my crimes and everyone read it, so I can't get a fair trial!!" Well guess what, that never works, for anyone, ever. There is no such thing as "too famous" for justice, there is no such thing as "too infamous" for justice. And there is no such thing as "the vast majority of people in NY and DC and GA hate me so badly because of who I am and what I've done that no one in those states can be allowed to judge me for my acts."
That's a bit cynical, isn't it?
I can still support a party or individual, but admit they have done something wrong. Likewise, I can oppose a party or individual, and find they have done no wrong in a particular instance.
It's exactly this blind following and absence of critical thinking or pragmatism that is causing the world to become so dangerously polarised.
I can still support a party or individual, but admit they have done something wrong. Likewise, I can oppose a party or individual, and find they have done no wrong in a particular instance.
While this is true that people can do this, the likelihood of it happening is very incredibly small. If something involves politics, the large, supermajority of people will reflect their bias regardless of if they agree to be impartial or not.
Its already difficult enough for people to be impartial when talking about various issues. But give them the ability to destroy a life of a person who thinks the way they hate? Not going to find anyone willing to be in that position that will not follow their own bias.
It’s exactly this blind following and absence of critical thinking or pragmatism that is causing the world to become so dangerously polarised.
it's also why nobody is likely to change their minds about the out come. It's also very likely that even if some of the republican jurors are convinced, that there's at least one that won't be, without regard to facts or rule of law, or... you know evidence. (They'll probably scream something like it's their god-given-duty to stand for trump. Because you know he's the second coming of christ or something.)
I hate the shithead, but I could still sit on the jury and base a verdict opinion on the facts as presented in court.
It wouldn't be easy for either side to figure that out during jury selection, but that's something big law firms have specialists for. Folks that do nothing but sift through juries and pick the best options they can get.
Weeding out the assholes that would make their decision on their preconceived alliances is a high dollar, and high stress thing. And then you have to hope that you don't have anyone faking it so that they can sway the verdict based on that, and deal with people desperate to avoid sitting on the jury at all.
Ngl, my crippled ass would be trying to avoid it despite believing very strongly in the importance of jury duty. Weeks or months of sitting there in pain, applying self discipline to separate my beliefs and emotions from the facts as presented? Fuck no, that's a fucking nightmare.
I was fucking miserable during my last jury duty, and that was only three days on a very simple attempted murder case. No fucking way am I not trying to get out of something like this trial lol.
But I'm not unique in my willingness and ability to minimize my own bias for specific and limited situations. There's plenty of people that will at least try.
And, believe it or not, there are people that don't have strong beliefs about the shitty cheeto.
But, yeah, jury selection is going to be a nightmare on this one
I also don't see how the jury isn't sequestered either. I'd imagine there are significant safety concerns and thereby additionally concerns about process integrity.
I say it should be composed of undocumented immigrants. I mean, if they weren't in the country at the time, they must be impartial, yeah? ;)
Ever done jury duty? doesn't really work like that
Given that DC is like 90% democrat... Might be more likely that we'd get a conviction.
It only takes 1 to hang. And the more re-trials it takes, the more the legitimacy of the trial will be questioned. I can already see the headlines in far-right media "DEMOCRAT WITCHHUNT TRIAL RESULT IN MISTRIAL FOR THE THIRD TIME IN A ROW." Yes they'll probably spew BS like that regardless, but in this hypothetical scenario, they'll get to say that shit in multiple waves, further solidifying the false belief that this is an illegitimate trial, whereas if he gets convicted by the first pool of jurors, it'd likely sway trump voters who are on the edge to either vote for a third party or not voting. The results of the trial will affect the 2024 election results.
It's going to be a battle between the narratives of: "Corrupt Politician Gets Rightfully Convicted" vs "Innocent Public Servant Becomes Victim of Witchhunt" depending on how the trial goes.
Well its a good thing no famous or political person has ever been on trial then because obviously no jury on earth could handle that fairly if it ever were to happen. I think voir dire exists mainly to make sure that folks who think like that never make it on to juries. Just because some people couldn't render an impartial verdict on a politician they had an opinion of doesn't make it impossible for lawyers and judges to find a jury capable of doing so. People like that exist, and lawyers find them for trials all the time, I promise you.
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