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See also: the UK trying to eliminate juries ("in cases where a convicted defendant would be imprisoned for up to three years").
I'm generally in favor of the jury. It's "the worst system except for all others that have been tried": other than a few high-profile cases (like OJ Simpson), it seems most juries reach reasonable conclusions. A jury is harder to corrupt than a judge, since it's 12 people who are supposed to be ordinary citizens. They tend more lenient (and if the defendant is clearly innocent and the jury convicts them anyways, the judge can and will vacate their ruling), but I'm generally against convicting someone unless they're clearly guilty. Less efficiency isn't a big issue, because most trials are avoided via plea bargain or dropped prosecution.
I also think civil cases against corporations should only need a certain ratio of jurors, because a wrongful conviction is less severe. Criminal cases should be nearly or totally unanimous.
My understanding is that the judge is very powerful in the courtroom: if jurors are bickering or not acting serious, the judge can sanction or replace them, or order a retrial with an entirely new jury. For example, here the judge should've ordered "no costumes".
EDIT after actually reading the article:
In summary, the focused (costume incident) case is about hospitals suing opioid pharmacies. Two jurors wanted to acquit the pharmacies based on the law, the remaining six wanted to convict presumably based on morals. The verdict needed to be unanimous, but apparently the case can be retried (because the parties plan to do so).
Personally, I really wouldn't care either way how this case resolved. In a criminal case that requires unanimity, if jurors are deadlocked between law and feelings, the defendant can only be acquitted, which I generally support whether law or feeling are on their side. A civil case sometimes (in some jurisdictions) doesn't require unanimity.
I think the main issues here are jurors harassing others, violating court rules (using AI), and complaining about other jurors making them feel unsafe. The judge can and should handle these; it seems like they mostly did, and some jurors are just upset that the case didn't end how they wanted.
It's also not just the juries either that decide your fate. If you're clearly innocent you have the prosecutors who probably aren't going to charge you to begin with (most don't want to risk ruining their record and triage stronger cases), the grand jury (which while normally considered easy to get past, we've seen that success rates fall dramatically with explicit weaponization), then the jury and judge, and then the whole appeals process.
And even if that all goes wrong, you can appeal to the president/governor. And even if that goes wrong, you might still be able to appeal to public opinion and put enough pressure on the rest of the system that they drop your case.
If you can't win despite all that, it's probably because you're either truly guilty or because you got insanely unlucky and are practically indistinguishable from truly guilty.
I somewhat agree. But do governors routinely pardon normal cases that fail to get into the news cycle usually because there is a scissor statement involved?
Political cases which I would consider Chauvin the gold standard literally have different results depending on what state it occurs in. In Texas I would say with 80% probability he would not have been charged. Likely another 80% if he was charged he would win at trial. And probably a 100% chance the go vet or would pardon him. Obviously different results in Minnesota.
I believe I have much different views on the system of guilt/innocent 20 years ago than I would today. It very much depends on where you are charged.
OK- Texas, while politically conservative, is on the moderate or centrist end on race issues. Chauvin would have been charged here, would have been convicted, and the governor would not have overturned the conviction. Abbott wants to keep the black political machine as demobilized as possible and crucifying a single cop is more than worth it to him(this is probably why the Texas GOP changed the primary voting rules to suppress turnout in Jasmine Crockett's strongest county even though it meant Talarico would win).
There's this 'Russia effect' where because we're big and take vocal conservative stances on a few issues people tend to point to us as based ethnonationalist cryptofascist radical ideologues. We aren't. The Texas government is not going to protect a cop with that many previous use of force complaints in the face of the niggers rioting, even if the elites put it that way in private.
A GOP governor who didn’t pardon him IMO would likely get primaried. It would be worth it to me. Abbott pardoned a far more guilty guy in Daniel Perry. History seems to strongly point towards a pardon.
…You think Chauvin is popular among the GOP base?
Anything that is a scissor statement between parties becomes popular with the other party.
I love Chauvin. He’s the innocent guy the left hung because of their cultish ideology.
Chauvin is mostly seen as a bad cop who killed a person by normie republicans. This isn’t a scissor statement; approval of Derek chauvin is at columbine fanclub level lows.
Polling shows 80% of Republicans believe he’s innocent. I don’t love public polling for accuracy but it’s easy to find surveys like that from 2021. I think you’re not in touch with this market.
And there is sort of a problem that he’s actually INNOCENT. Negligence could be debatable that he mistreated an OD.
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