Posted on 03/28/2005 12:36:05 PM PST by Sola Veritas
This kind of ad-hominen attack would generally sway only the vegetables that the trial lawyers on both sides prefer to cultivate in their jury selection...
What are you talking about? All I did was post the 1st Amendment and pointed out that " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" and that courts prohibiting a juror, during a time of making a life or death decision, to practice their religion and seek comfort and sustenance in the Holy Book are in the wrong.
What I wrote has nothing to do with "unregulated speech". "barge into the courtroom" or "discuss ongoing case with friends etc" that you rave about.
You have the right to your opinions and the right to disagree but at least stick to the relevant point instead of going off half cocked.
Sure. We don't expect jurors to be blank slates.
Should a juror be prevented from studying the Bible during the course of a trial?
Of course not.
Jurors are most certainly not supposed to rely solely on the testimony and the judge's instructions. They are also supposed to rely on their own sensibilities and moral values.
Of course, but they're not allowed to bring outside material into the jury room.
He was not set free, he just did not receive the death penalty. The sentence was changed because some jurors brought outside materials into the jury room.
A person can seek all the sustenance they want from religion and the Bible, but they can't take a Bible - or any other document - including People Magazine, into the deliberation room. Why can't you folks get it into your heads that THIS ISN'T ABOUT THE BIBLE?
People on Capitol Hill, from Senators down to lowly staffers, work remarkably hard.
AND you get to boink all the best-looking babes in the country...
Not really. DC girls, in general, are no better than in most large cities. This isn't Miami, LA or New York.
I've been on jury duty, and I recall there's usually an outer lounge for the jurors, where they can read anything they want; but the deliberation room is separate, and you can't take anything in there - the Bible or anything else.
How was anyone's free exercise of their religion harmed here?
Nobody is required to swear on a Bible anymore. Requiring people to do so would violate their 1st Amendment rights.
So that is why Terri must die! Because her supporters read the Bible.
What is the reason for them jurists not being allowed to bring outside material into the jury room?
Is the intent of this rule thwarted by having a jurist bring in a hand-copied Bible passage?
I brought a whole wallet full of hand written notes into the Jury Room last time I was a jurist - shopping lists, telephone numbers, and the like. Why are these materials permissable and a hand-copied Bible passage not permissable?
Why does the hand-copied Bible passage cause such a fault in the Jury's findings that they must be thrown out and the Judge's opinion substituted in their place?
When it comes to physical evidence, the jury is required to decide the case based only on what was presented at trial. If the jury brings in a Bible or a legal treatise or a newspaper article on the case, the defendant's attorney has not had a chance to deal with that evidence in court.
Put another way, a defendant has the right to know all the evidence used to sentence/convict him and to have his attorney challenge that evidence in court. When jurors bring in outside evidence, they deny the defendant this right.
I brought a whole wallet full of hand written notes into the Jury Room last time I was a jurist - shopping lists, telephone numbers, and the like. Why are these materials permissable and a hand-copied Bible passage not permissable?
Did you use those items to help you make your determination in the case? If not, no problem.
I'll take your personal insults as a sign that you cannot debate this issue on the merits and instead can only rely on name-calling.
Why do you lump a hand-copied Bible passage, which cannot possible have any current relevance to the facts of the case, being written thousands of years ago, with a legal treatise or newspaper article, which can have current relevance? The hand-copied Bible passage is as irrelevant to the facts of the case as my example of a shopping list, so why should it be barred?
In this case, according to the article, some jurors used the copied passages of the Bible during their deliberations. If you had used your shopping list as part of your deliberations, that would have led to problems, too.
We need a bright-line rule for this. Any outside material needs to be kept out of jury deliberations.
Bright line rules are fine for court officers who are frisking jurors at the door, but a judge should use his intelligence when throwing out the determination of a jury and substituting his own opinion.
Some jurors are going to rely on the Bible when deliberating. This is not a bad thing. Why is it important to the deliberative process that they be required to recite it from memory?
HUGE ad the Repubs can use well in the '06 elections.
Yes.
Signed, Emperor AmishDude
"There's a world of people here in Washington who enjoy taking other people's money and making a lot of money off of it. People in public service come to Washington making less than $100,000 a year and walk out of town making $3 million." - Brain Lamb (C-Span CEO)
Brian Lamb is no conservative, and he's as much as calling many of our "public servants" grifters.
Not really. DC girls, in general, are no better than in most large cities. This isn't Miami, LA or New York.
A Freeper who is in a position to know claimed that the most stunning women he had ever seen worked in the offices that serve Capitol Hill. I can't imagine the reason...
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