A puzzler
So the question becomes how do you then find jurors who are mentally competent?
Jury selection resumed Thursday in a trial over allegations that Trump falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign. Ultimately, 12 jurors will determine the verdict, with six alternates on standby.
Nearly 200 potential jurors have been brought in. All potential jurors will be asked whether they can serve and be fair and impartial. Those who have said “no” have been sent home.
Lawyers on both sides then comb through answers prospective jurors provide orally in court to a set of 42 questions that probe whether they have been part of various extremist groups, have attended pro- or anti-Trump rallies, or have been involved with Trump’s political campaigns, among other things.
The judge can dismiss people who don’t seem likely to be impartial. Under state law, each side also gets to strike up to 10 potential jurors they don’t like, plus some additional strikes for potential alternate jurors.
That’s how it works, of course. I’ve been through voir dire twice so I’ve watched it doing its thing. But the question is, how can anyone with two brain cells to rub together be impartial about Trump?
I don’t think there’s an answer to that question. I don’t think anyone conscious can be impartial about Trump.
Well…the idea is to render a verdict based on the evidence and testimony, regardless of anything else, including your own knowledge, feelings, or opinions.
Here’s an example. I had a co-worker who was on jury duty. It was a drunk-driving case. The only evidence was a brethalyzer test, which the defendant passed. So they acquitted.
He said they all thought the defendant was probably drunk: he drove his car into a telephone pole in broad daylight. But that’s not what the evidence showed, and they went with the evidence.
FWIW, there are low-information people out there. You ask them what they think of Trump, and they’re like, uhhh…Trump…uhhh…he was president, right? Whether you want those people on a jury is a further question.
Easy: Person, woman, man, camera, TV.
Trump can’t very well reject anyone who passes the same test he did.
Unlike politicians, jurors are not self-selected. But like politicians, they are important decision-makers. So, politicians (including candidates for POTUS) could be selected in the manner of jurors, ie by a lottery, but with names so selected whittled down by right of objection on the part of counsel, OR jurors could be appointed by selection from a list of self-nominated candidates. I don’t know much about current US politicians, but neither Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell strike me as the full bottle. I would not fancy my chances if up on trial on some charge, great or small, and I glanced around the jury box to see the likes of those two sitting there, plus 10 more of their clones. (21 US states retain the death penalty, 23 have no death penalty, and 6 are ‘undecided;’ having pressed the pause button on it.)
On the other hand, if I was given to hanging around court houses, buttonholing all and sundry and campaigning to be made a juror, I would probably be arrested as a public nuisance. Which leads me to the conclusion that self-nomination by would-be politicians should be banned.
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https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-landing
Hanging around outside courthouses waiting to be selected for a jury used to be a thing in ye old merry England. You made sure you had straw hanging out of your boot to indicate that (for a consideration) you’d deliver the desired verdict. they were called men of straw – presumably leading to the modern use of a person of no fixed view. Different from a straw man. Some discussion on that here…
https://iancpilarczyk.com/what-is-a-straw-man-and-what-is-the-connection-to-the-rise-of-the-jury-trial/
Steven, #1, has it correct. “Impartial” in this context means that you haven’t made any decisions about the case in advance of hearing the evidence. The pledge of the jurors is to not make any decisions about the case until all the evidence is in, the court has instructed the jury on the applicable law, and the jury has been sworn and directed to retire for deliberations. The jury must consider only such evidence as has been admitted at trial, and also disregard any evidence that the court tells them not to consider. They have to apply only those legal principles that the court tells them to apply. The jury usually has a hard copy of the jury instructions to take into the jury room, so they can refer to them again if they have questions. The jury can also ask questions of the court, and receive any additional instructions, if they become confused or stuck. All that being said, jurors are not required to leave their brains at the courthouse doors. General knowledge, “common sense,” logic, and the ability to reason are things the jurors may draw upon in evaluating the quality of the evidence, the credibility of witnesses, the reasonableness of inferences, and so on.
So, yeah, not required to be impartial about Trump. Merely that, however you feel about Trump himself, can you consider the charges and render a fair and impartial verdict on the evidence and the law. Even an odious person might not be guilty of a specific charged crime.
It is a bit of a paradox that those who are self-aware and honest about their possible biases are summarily told to go home, while those who are either unaware or dishonest about them stand a chance of serving. Not that I have any idea how one’d avoid that paradox, but it’s there all the same.
And sometimes you get jury nullification.
Voir dire is really quite interesting. Epistemology in real life.
@Enzyme
I was thinking the same thing, a true catch 22
FWIW, Mill talks somewhere about the practice of expecting witnesses in court to swear oaths on the Bible, and the assumption that that is the way to ensure that they are truthful. But, he points out, that means that atheists must perjure themselves from the get-go, or else be unable to discharge their right (and, one might add, duty) to provide testimony for having been honest.