Posted on 04/25/2013 2:04:39 PM PDT by rey
California, lol.
You’re right. I’m multitasking right now and misread your post. My apologies.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend. I hope he/she recovers. If the attacker managed to get a jury to acquit with that kind of evidence and a public defender, I might suggest that the problems in your community run way deeper than the jury system. Maybe even big enough to consider moving. I’m getting my house ready to sell now over disagreements far less dire than that.
http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_1401&sess=CUR&house=B
It’s interesting that this bill was amended only last week — anyone objecting to it would have no problem with the original bill introduced last month.
Also the above link is the committee vote only.
The defendant is supposed to have the right to be tried by an impartial jury...but if the potential juror lies, how can the defendant know he is being judged by people who are really impartial? Scooter Libby's jury was a bunch of Democrats who wanted to send Cheney to prison but had to settle for finding Libby guilty...hardly an impartial jury. We'll see what happens in the Zimmerman trial but I don't have a lot of confidence that that jury will be impartial, not given the apparent bias of the judge.
I was called for possible jury duty yesterday. I went and watched the process unfold. Half the prospective jurors being considered could barely speak English. They had difficulty understanding the judges questions (he spoke very clearly) and could barely formulate a response in English. One of them made it clear he didn’t even understand our role as jurors to decide guilt or innocence.
Really, it was a nightmare and I kept thinking I would not want my fate to be in the hands of people who are barely educated, can barely understand the discussion in the courtroom, and have little in common with my American frame of reference. One prospective juror had lived here 30 years and still spoke very broken English with a very heavy accent.
Welcome to California.
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