Excellant article on the Jury.....
“The belief is that people of different backgrounds and experience will naturally bring a variety of attitudes to bear, and thus produce a more balanced view of the evidence. What one juror doesn’t get, another one does, and each of them sees different aspects to each witness and piece of evidence.
The idea is for them to share differing views and reach a greater understanding—not to have them shave off their square corners so they can all roll together.
Unfortunately—and psychological studies bear this out—a group that is kept together for any length of time becomes more and more alike, more in sync, as time goes on. (By the way, this phenomenon is also in play with regard to proximity to the defendant.
The longer the jury is in contact with the defendant, the less sinister he or she appears. In this way, familiarity with Casey Anthony turned her from a potential murderer to an abused, perhaps disturbed, but certainly nonthreatening, child.) Add this phenomenon to the natural desire to avoid contentiousness and seek harmony and you can see how individuality begins to erode in a sequestered jury.
Now add to that the psychology of group dynamics—a subject well known to trial lawyers and jury consultants. In every group there will be leaders and followers. Listening to Juror Jennifer Ford, who was very likely a leader, it became abundantly clear that the leaders on the Anthony jury were cheerleaders for the defense.
http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/casey-jury-brainwash-1694371.story
added note...apologies this was from msnbc. Didn’t take note til after I posted. :[
Didn’t know you could get that dumb in 6 weeks. /sarc
This article is good. Thanks for the link. Jennifer Ford could well be a leader. That Casey who speaks on HLN said she watched her in voir dir and Jennifer clearly wanted on that jury. She gave all the right answers and when someone seemed to have an issue with one of her answers she quickly changed it. Ford confided in voir dir that she could relate to Casey because she too had been into the party scene and only recently had started getting her life on track by going back to school. Ford also said she researched the case on the internet in some depth but could keep an open mind. Casey from HLN said, “Apparently not.”
I think one of the big leaders may have been Juror #6, the guy who had a cooking show in San Francisco. That would mean he knows a lot about agents, managers, contracts, the press... Yesterday a report came out that he’d been offered $50,000 for an interview and he turned it down because he is holding our for MORE $$$. Never should have been on that jury. I wonder how much time he spent instructing the others in how to play the press to get the biggest bucks.