George Floyd Riots

Odds are high that the jury is more than half filled with dumber than average people. Most smart people have an excuse or reason to be excluded from a jury pool that would take them away from their jobs and responsibilities for months at a time.

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That was #2. He was the one careful to answer everything in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize his chances of being on the jury. He’s ready to extract some SJW justice!

That’s true, most of the time
this time, I think some people wanted to be on the jury more than they wanted to continue to lives their lives. I believe #2 would convict even if George Floyd walked into the courtroom and declared the whole thing a hoax.

That would go entirely against what someone in the sciences stands for. Id bet he just has a morbid fascination with the case and wants to be on the jury as only someone with his brainpower could make the right decision haha. I know someone quite well that clerked for a judge during multiple murder and high profile cases. Apparently scientists and engineers are nightmares to have on the jury because they think they are smarter than everyone (we are) and also because their bar for reasonable doubt is so much lower than the law provides for (meaning any little shred of doubt is reasonable to them and they create hung jurys). Time will tell though.

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Nah. He’s never even seen the video, actually(he really swore that). Hell, he probably thinks this is just a trespassing case involving some nobody named George Floyd./s

IDK. He seemed more like a holdout juror. Hard to convince to convict. That was just what I got out of listening.

I’ll give you that it is a bit suspect that he hadn’t seen the video.

That doesn’t help Chauvin. If anything, it makes it worse as he was pinning down someone who was already in distress. “What kind of heartless monster is the defendant?”

Well, it is supposed to be a jury of your peers.

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More than a little. I ignored everything else he said because I knew he was only trying to ensure his spot. Here’s video of #2 after leaving:

What bar does the law provide for reasonable doubt?

Wouldn’t they only be nightmares if the goal is to convict? I would think if the goal was a fair trial, that you would want skeptical people on the jury.

We’ll see. I have no doubt there’ll be plenty of idiots on the jury.

The way it was explained to me (if i recall correctly) is that jurys should judge whether there is reasonable doubt independent of the possible consequences. Meaning that the standard of reasonable doubt is the same for a shoplifting charge as it is for murder. As an engineer the amount of doubt i am comfortable with is DIRECTLY related to the consequences of being wrong
 which is the wrong way to look at it. Folks whose livlihoods deal with small tolerances and big consequences for little fuckups have a tough time coming to grips with the above.

Also, they are apparently just very difficult high maintenance jurrors in general. I think one of her complaints was coming up with arguments for/against during deliberation that were never actually made in court. She would know as the clerk is the one who plays middleman between the judge and jury, helps instruct them and guide them, etc. Then again, maybe she just wanted to talk some backhanded smack at me? haha

There are thousands upon thousands of pages dedicated (unsuccessfully) to answering that question.

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As an engineer, I don’t know how I could treat a murder case as not a situation in which there was “small tolerances with big consequences” if I was a juror. We are talking about potentially putting someone away for life.

I guess my theory is one should be 100% convinced of guilt to vote to convict.

There is a tradeoff if the standard isn’t to be 100% convinced. More guilty will be imprisoned, but some innocent will be as well. I am not sure I would make that trade.

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According to the U.K. court of appeals‘ most recent guidance, the jury “must be sure that the defendant is guilty”.

Which does raise further questions which I am sure will result in a myriad of appeals per each word of that test.

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You want “beyond doubt”
 which is MUUUUCH different than “beyond a reasonable doubt”

It all hinges on how you understand reasonable, which is the most frequently used and difficult to define word in law.

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Which then begs the question should your definition of reasonable doubt change based upon of the consequences of a quilty verdict? Or should your definition of reasonable doubt stay constant regardless of the consequences?

My understanding is the definition should stay constant. Hence the shoplifting vs murder comparison. Of course, you can tell a jury all of this and they can blatantly ignore it and find guilt as they wish according to their own code.

It should stay constant. There’s little doubt that consequences change people’s perspective on it. Rare are the Javert jurors.

When the death penalty required a unanimous verdict, they were more sparingly handed out (in the U.K. at least)

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Reasonable doubt, to me, means doubt that can be rationally articulated. Cell phone video of a guy shooting his wife after saying, “I have planned to shoot and kill you for years and now am going to do it,” before firing the gun, watching the bullet enter her body, watching her fall, watching her take her last breath? Death and body confirmed by medical examiner. It’s possible the video was edited to make all of those things appear and that the medical examiner is a paid actor, but it’s not reasonable to believe so.

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In this instance, I think we’d all convict. Alas, it’s always akin to the old judicial test for pornography, ‘you’ll know it when you see it.’

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