Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Fixing Juries - My Ideas
Based on my truly depressing experience with jury duty this last working week, I have some ideas on how to make it work better.
The system has evolved into its present form through hundreds of years and great legal reasoning, but it is broken. I think it is time to think outside the box a little. Much as the GWOT has forced us to reconsider our civil liberties to some extent, I think we have to rethink how these things work, at least until we can get things working again. Here's a few of my ideas.
REDUCE BUREACRACY -- INCREASE TECHNOLOGY
Post OJ, it is much harder to avoid jury duty than it used to be, unless you are willing to tell a "little white lie." I watched that lie get told over and over. People knew they had to come for at least that one day, but as soon as they ended up in a courtroom anyone with any sense (which I guess leaves me out) told the judge "they couldn't be fair" got themselves excused for cause and went back to work.
To get good, smart jurors, the overburden of jury duty has got to be reduced. Technology can reduce that overburden tremendously. The money must be found, the job must be done.
KILL TELEVISION
I cannot tell you how many television shows I heard quoted during the course of my service, most of it quite wrongly. Every television show depicting law enforcement and trial should come back from EVERY break with a disclaimer -- "This show does not accurately depict our legal system -- it is fiction."
Even the showing of actual trials should have a disclaimer -- "Unless you watch every minute of this trial, which is impossible since we have to show commericals, you do not know how courts work."
THE RETURN OF CIVICS
I polled the excuse for a jury I was on. I was the only one there that had ever had a "Civics" class. Jury instructions simply cannot cover important governmental and legal basics, and as I witnessed, they are paid little attention to anyway.
My suggestion is that when one reports for jury duty, if one can demonstrate having taken a civics course, one may sit for a short exam to demonstrate profeciency. If one cannot make such a demonstration, they would be required to take one day intensive class provided by the court and then sit for the exam to begin their duty. Failure of the exam would result in a repeat, not dimissal, unless there is evidence of diminished capacity.
Among other things, I hope such training would restore the presumption that law enforcement is benign. On my jury, for some it was not just a matter of "innocent until proven guilty" -- it was a question of proving the cops weren't victimizing the defendant for the heck of it.
JURY CONTROL
There must be effective methods to keep the jury discussion within reasonable and legal bounds. It is simply too cumbersome and risky for most jurors to go to the baliff to go to the judge in the event of juror misconduct. Such action, even if correct only increases hostility towards the "snitch" even from decent jurors because it takes a great deal of already precious, and much of it bureacratically wasted, time.
My idea, introduce a "law instructor" to the jury room. This would be someone with some training, who would be in the court room for voir dire and jury instruction, but not for the evidence. They would sit in on deliberations and admonish and/or punish jurors who lied in voir dire and left the boundaries of the evidence, jury instructions and law in the deliberations.
I realize there are solid legal reason to reject all of these options, but as I said, the system is seriously broken. It is time to think way outside the box to fix it.
The system has evolved into its present form through hundreds of years and great legal reasoning, but it is broken. I think it is time to think outside the box a little. Much as the GWOT has forced us to reconsider our civil liberties to some extent, I think we have to rethink how these things work, at least until we can get things working again. Here's a few of my ideas.
REDUCE BUREACRACY -- INCREASE TECHNOLOGY
Post OJ, it is much harder to avoid jury duty than it used to be, unless you are willing to tell a "little white lie." I watched that lie get told over and over. People knew they had to come for at least that one day, but as soon as they ended up in a courtroom anyone with any sense (which I guess leaves me out) told the judge "they couldn't be fair" got themselves excused for cause and went back to work.
To get good, smart jurors, the overburden of jury duty has got to be reduced. Technology can reduce that overburden tremendously. The money must be found, the job must be done.
KILL TELEVISION
I cannot tell you how many television shows I heard quoted during the course of my service, most of it quite wrongly. Every television show depicting law enforcement and trial should come back from EVERY break with a disclaimer -- "This show does not accurately depict our legal system -- it is fiction."
Even the showing of actual trials should have a disclaimer -- "Unless you watch every minute of this trial, which is impossible since we have to show commericals, you do not know how courts work."
THE RETURN OF CIVICS
I polled the excuse for a jury I was on. I was the only one there that had ever had a "Civics" class. Jury instructions simply cannot cover important governmental and legal basics, and as I witnessed, they are paid little attention to anyway.
My suggestion is that when one reports for jury duty, if one can demonstrate having taken a civics course, one may sit for a short exam to demonstrate profeciency. If one cannot make such a demonstration, they would be required to take one day intensive class provided by the court and then sit for the exam to begin their duty. Failure of the exam would result in a repeat, not dimissal, unless there is evidence of diminished capacity.
Among other things, I hope such training would restore the presumption that law enforcement is benign. On my jury, for some it was not just a matter of "innocent until proven guilty" -- it was a question of proving the cops weren't victimizing the defendant for the heck of it.
JURY CONTROL
There must be effective methods to keep the jury discussion within reasonable and legal bounds. It is simply too cumbersome and risky for most jurors to go to the baliff to go to the judge in the event of juror misconduct. Such action, even if correct only increases hostility towards the "snitch" even from decent jurors because it takes a great deal of already precious, and much of it bureacratically wasted, time.
My idea, introduce a "law instructor" to the jury room. This would be someone with some training, who would be in the court room for voir dire and jury instruction, but not for the evidence. They would sit in on deliberations and admonish and/or punish jurors who lied in voir dire and left the boundaries of the evidence, jury instructions and law in the deliberations.
I realize there are solid legal reason to reject all of these options, but as I said, the system is seriously broken. It is time to think way outside the box to fix it.
