Jury Selection

"fink stinger" (finkstinger) 11/12/2013 at 09:23 • Filed to: None

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Having only lived in America, I kind of believe in our judicial process for the most part. It's possible that there are societies that have processes that have advantages over ours, but I haven't studied them. I have seen evidence in our trustworthy and unbiased media of societies that have systems far worse than ours...

Anyways, I performed my service on a civil case a couple of years ago. Sat through 4+ days of listening to a scumbag lawyer present and attack everyone on the stand. Having quite a bit of domain knowledge about what they were talking about, it was pretty easy for me to see through the bullshit. FWIW, it was a case where a towing company pulled a crashed Pontiac Sunfire (how's that for irony?) into the shop and it caught fire and burned the building down in the middle of the night. Actually a quite interesting story, though not one that seemed to warrant the amount of time and resources required to have this case.

In the end, we (the jury) were tasked with deciding if one of the tenants of the building, who had already been paid by his insurance company and had subsequently gone on to expand his business to like 3x the original size, was entitled to some portion of millions of dollars from this one man show of a towing company and the building owner. I, and about 2/3 of the rest of the jury, went into the deliberation room with the very clear perspective that he did not deserve anything. In fact, it was my opinion that these assholes asking for the money should have had to pay everyone for wasting our time.

Two people were kind of on the fence because they were somewhat confused about what they had seen all week. Understandable, since there was so much misinformation and bullshit about topics they had never heard of before that week. They just needed to talk it through.

Then there was that One Guy. Just like our friend CSPhotography over in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . All week long, seemed like a nice enough guy. We talked a lot since we are both engineering types. If I had to wager on anyone in the room having good perspective, it would have been on this guy. But, for whatever reason, he felt (are engineers even supposed to do that?) that the guy with the brand new huge building and Mercedes deserved more.

In the end, we spent like 3+ hours discussing things that didn't need to be discussed and ultimately walked out of the room with both engineers quite irritated with each other. Up until that point, I had always thought the 12 Angry Men movie was just a portrayal of something that could happen in the most difficult of cases. Now, after my experience in the court with a very simple case and watching the insanity of the discussions surrounding the NYC biker saga, I am convinced that the chances of it happening are quite high.

I am conflicted. I feel that it's important to support the process, but that the same time I value my personal (and company's) time and REALLY don't need the aggravation that is guaranteed to come from arguing with insanity.

Have a double dose of cacklefest for having read this rant.

CalzoneGolem > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 09:26

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So ... much ... billet!

CobraJoe > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 09:31

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Ugh... I just received a jury summons for next month. I'm also an engineer.

Not a very encouraging story for me...

fink stinger > CobraJoe 11/12/2013 at 09:35

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Yeah, but the real question is which kind of engineer? I was relating the story to one of my older engineer friends when he reminded me of the old saying: "Mechanical engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets."

PelicanHazard > CobraJoe 11/12/2013 at 10:07

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Me too. Jury summons for December 6th (a Friday ugh), and I'm also an engineer. Mechanical.

CobraJoe > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 10:08

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I'm a MechE. (And I love that saying).

Am I understanding correctly that you and your nemesis were from Mech and Civil engineering, respectively?

CobraJoe > PelicanHazard 11/12/2013 at 10:10

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Mine is for the 9th, so it's a Monday (which I'm not sure is better or worse).

And I'm also a MechE.

PelicanHazard > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 10:17

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The jury system works perfectly fine in theory, where the assumptions are 1] an informed populace, and 2] a system of honor both defendant and plaintiff respect. Your case broke down for violating both. Not all jurors were well-informed and learned (and no, an engineering degree, or degree of any kind, does not indicate a well-informed person), and the system of honor was broken by the plaintiff demanding money, as evidenced by all the bullshit the lawyer tried to sell you.

They act to balance each other out. An ignorant jury can still make the right decision if the plaintiff and defendant are honest, and a well-informed jury can see through the bullshit of a dishonest court, but when the two fall apart it leads to frustration.

fink stinger > CobraJoe 11/12/2013 at 10:18

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Yep, that was exactly it. We were having very fun discussions about our careers and pet projects all week until the deliberation time came. It's funny, because right up until that point he was the one person there that I could really identify with.

fink stinger > PelicanHazard 11/12/2013 at 10:48

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Believe me, I think you couldn't be more correct. I have to believe that more often that not, the legal council works their hardest to obfuscate facts they don't like and to confuse the jury as much as possible. It's only in their best interest, no? I am pretty sure most people come into jury duty with an inherent mistrust of what they lawyers are saying.

The interesting thing is that I thought the defending lawyers in this case all did a very good job of being honest and not slimying up the process. In fact, I really ended up liking a pair of them when the process was all over and even sat down with them to discuss the outcome. THAT was interesting.

I didn't know it at the time, but have found out since, that the plaintiff lawyer is quite the notorious scumbag that comes from a scumbag family. All of the siblings are into local politics and one of the sisters is facing prison time for mismanagement of her campaign. I didn't trust anything that guy said after about the first day and it only got worse. He is the reason so many people have respect for lawyers. Which is a shame, since it's kind of analogous to to the whole rotten cop situation.

The real problem in my mind is just what you said about the well-informed jurors. I am pretty sure that the two that were undecided at the end of the week would probably have trouble figuring out what they want at a fast food drive-thru window. They were almost completely without opinion at all. I am not even sure it is about being well informed as it is about being able to logically process the information and come to a real opinion. The one had pages and pages of notes, but she could barely comprehend what had happened for the last 4 days of her life.

It looks like to me that during the selection process, the lawyers know exactly who these people are and want as many of them as they can get as long as there is at least one 'smart' person that will take their side. Sheep. Somehow, I feel these are the same people that drone through their commute by just trying the match the speed of the car ahead of them.

Kugelblitz > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 11:27

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"He is the reason so many people have respect for lawyers."

I don't think that means what you think it does.

I have made it all the way through to actual selection three times, and I get zapped right then. Last time it was because I accidentally let fly with a "Holy SHIT" when during the brief, the defendant's blood alcohol content was .33 an hour after he crushed a few stationary objects with his Fiero of death. Ooops. Few of the other listeners were taken aback by this number.

fink stinger > Kugelblitz 11/12/2013 at 11:37

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Whoops, I couldn't have typed that more incorrectly. You are right, I oppo'd what I meant to say. Proofreading FAIL.

Lemonhead > fink stinger 11/12/2013 at 16:11

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One of my best friends is an attorney and he used to piss me off whenever we discussed anything, because he talked "lawyer". After calling him a worthless asshole who isn't worth my time in having a conversation, he apologized and explained himself and here is the idea. In court, you aren't trying to debate the other side, you are throwing punches. Whoever lands the most punches wins. So, when we used to discuss things, he turned lawyer and ignored my comments and only threw punches. I was having a discussion, he was having a trial. So, in court, the attorneys aren't trying to help determine the truth. They are throwing punches and leaving it up to the jury to score the fight and the one with truth on their side will be the one that landed the most punches. At least that's the idea. In practice it only means the best attorney wins. However, I would hate for it to be where the attorneys work to discover the "truth" together. Because then the loser could never be sure their attorney didn't rig it (of course, that can still happen - no system is perfect).