Jury Duty

kw: jurisprudence, jury duty

In the county where I now live, the courts are trying to make jury duty as unobtrusive as possible. A couple of weeks ago, I received a summons to report, with the instruction to phone in the prior evening to find out if I actually needed to appear. At work I told my supervisor that I might have jury duty April 4.

I was in Group 3. When I called, I found that Groups 1 through 4 were to appear, while Groups 5 and above were excused. So I called my boss and left a message confirming that I had to spend a day at the court house. While I have received such a summons six times since moving here, I was excused without appearing on three occasions, and on three I went in.

I arrived just as people were being let into the court house through metal detectors, and a couple of minutes later, I was in the Jury Assembly Room, where I spent several hours. In contrast to the other two occasions, the room only filled about a third of the way. Jury Instructions made it clear why. There were no Superior Court cases scheduled today, only cases for the Court of Common Pleas. Thus, none of us would serve on a jury for a felony case, only misdemeanors and traffic violations at the most. That was good news, because a typical felony case is two days or longer, but the minor cases seldom last more than a half day or full day.

We were also told that, in this county, service is considered complete after one day or one trial. In some nearby counties, the instructor said, service is required for a full two-week period, or one trial, so if you keep getting excused from juries (more later), you could spend two weeks sitting in rather uncomfortable chairs, "so think twice before moving to one of those counties!"

There was time for a break after that, and then we sat and sat, waiting for the lunch break, or to be called to a court room for empaneling of any jury. Lunch was expected at 12:30 or 1:00. Just before Noon, a different instructor came in and announced that all the cases for the day had been either settled or excused, and we were free to leave, as soon as we picked up our certificate of service, which is the proof needed to get out of Jury Duty if we are summoned during the coming two years. This time around, that was it!

On the prior occasion that I served, three years ago, I got as far as one court room. About forty of us were taken up, and twelve were chosen at random to sit in the jury box for the attorneys to look over. They use up their peremptory challenges first. They might ask a question, but usually they just decide they don't like someone's looks, and pass a note to the judge, who reads the name and excuses that person. I got excused rather early on, and returned to the Jury Assembly Room. Somebody there kidded me that defense attorneys try to get rid of all the "old, white guys", because they tend to convict at high rates. That day we were all sent home at 3:00.

By contrast to this experience, when I lived in California I had Jury Duty just once. It was to be a two-week stint. On the third day I was empaneled on a jury (I wasn't an old, white guy then; I was 24). We convicted a guy of drunk driving. It was a pretty open and shut case, and deliberations took only an hour. One of the men I sat with today told of a case that was sent to the jury after four hours, but deliberations took three days because a couple of the jurors need a lot of convincing to agree with the other ten.

That's one thing about Jury Duty. You need plenty of negotiating skills. It is amazing how differently people view things, when all twelve see and hear the same evidence and arguments. So the process can be a bit messy, but if you are a criminal or civil defendant, it beats having your fate decided only by a judge, who may not be as impartial as you'd like.

I appreciate the way this county makes it much less of an annoyance, compared to some others. Annoyance or not, I don't mind serving as a juror. If I am ever a defendant, I'll sure be glad a dozen people (more if there are alternates) were willing to hear the case and argue it out, not leaving it to someone's dyspepsia to decide.

Hang 'em high?

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, jurisprudence, death penalty, capital punishment, polemics

Spoiler alert: this review contains an outline of the authors' arguments. Let's just dive in. The title and subtitle make it clear the object is contra-capital punishment:
The Top Ten Death Penalty Myths: The Politics of Crime Control, by Rudolph J. Gerber and John M. Johnson. The book is a well-reasoned series of arguments. Each is the subject of a chapter:

1. Death Penalty History and the Myth of Community Bonding

   • Since colonial times, the venue of a judicial death has moved from the public square to a private, in-prison setting, and the means of death has become less and less painful and degrading.
   • Over the same period, the "community bonding" aspect has given way to a more divisive reality



2. The Myth of the Rule of Law in Capital Cases

   • Modern forensics, particularly DNA testing, has shown the high rate of erroneous convictions
   • This is driven largely by the prosecutors' drive to 'win at all costs', with which much of society is in general agreement.
   • Both prosecutorial and police misconduct are the natural result



3. The Myth of Equal Justice

   • The major point, and 90% of the chapter's material, is racial discrimination: sad but true.
   • Social class and gender are more minor biasing effects



4. The Myth of Deterrence

   • This equals a myth of Rational Perpetrators. In my view, no murderer can be in his or her right mind
   • Required for deterrence: speed plus certainty plus proportionality plus publicity
   • All four requirements are violated



5. The Myth of Fidelity to the Constitution

   • Two amendments specifically limit the right of the government to "remove life"
   • A long disquisition amounts to saying 'times have changed'



6. The Myth of Human Execution

   • Methods of execution in the U.S. have shifted from the sword or axe, to the Guillotine, to hanging, to the electric chair, to the gas chamber, to the nearly universal (in 38 States) use of lethal injection.
   • Each method was considered 'humane', and perhaps it is, by comparison with its predecessor
   • All of these methods can be botched, leading to increased suffering by the condemned



7. The myth of Closure

   • This firstly assumes the victim's family wants revenge or would be comforted by the judicial death
   • The second assumption is that society at large will be similarly comforted



8. The Myth of Retribution

   • Retribution is not revenge, it is punishment intended to be felt by the perpetrator, so the question is raised, is death without suffering any punishment at all?
   • It is based in lex talionis: 'an eye for an eye' and so forth



9. The Myth of Effective Crime Control

   • The argument is entirely based on the relative economic costs of prosecuting, appealing and carrying out a judicial death, versus alternatives
   • To the authors, "effective" means "cost-effective"



10. The Myth of the Dedicated Public Servant

    • The governors and judges who get elected often ride to power upon a 'devotion to death'
    • The public is more and more risk-averse, as shown by these voting records

Why is such great argumentation needed? I am tempted to say, "Methinks thou protesteth too much," but such a stance would ignore the fact that this is the second-most divisive issue in American politics, the most divisive being abortion.

If you boil down the authors' arguments to a sound bite, you get, "Judicial killing is still too cruel, its application is too arbitrary, it is too costly, and it doesn't fulfill its stated goals." My own stance is this: Nine of the arguments are beside the point. One is plain wrong: Death is a deterrent, in two ways. Firstly, the chance that a killer may himself (or rarely, herself) be killed does make at least some people adhere to the proverb, "Don't do something you can't undo." Secondly, the death of a killer completely deters the killer from killing again. This and this alone I consider a justification for a continued right to take a perpetrator's life.