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It doesn't look like it played that way. If 10 or 11 of 12 are willing to convict then they aren't going to decide to acquit because of 1 or 2 people, especially not so quickly after the higher charge is dropped. If the jury is mostly willing to convict the guy of manslaughter after days of deliberation, I don't see 2 people turning around the other 10 in a couple of hours. This looks more like most of the jury wanted to acquit but one or two holdouts wanted a conviction. Dropping the manslaughter charges may have signaled to the jury that the prosecution didn't really believe in their case, which may be enough to flip these people.
I'm generally curious; what makes you think you could hide your power level during jury selection? How do you think you could accomplish this?
I was selected on a murder trial a couple years back and it was easy as hell. Nobody wanted to be there. Over half the jury pool was rejected on spurious reasons.
Getting on a jury was relatively easy in my recent experience.
If over half the jury pool was rejected for spurious reasons then it doesn't sound like it was that easy to get on. I'm assuming you answered the voir dire questions honestly.
No most of the jurors obviously wanted to get out of jury duty. They cited things like missing work, obviously lying about strong political opinions, etc.
As someone who has strong political opinions about criminal justice, I have no idea what I’d do if I were picked for jury duty. Either I’m honest about my very strong views and I look like a crazy liar, or I lie about them and perjure myself. It’s a tough break.
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Watching that dude do it in the Derek Chauvin trial. He got away with wearing a 'get your knee off our necks' shirt to a protest by claiming to not know the details, it looks pretty easy to do. I'm not black though.
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My plan would be use low-key Golden Retriever mode, channel humility, vacuous attentiveness, and moderate excitement to be involved in this novel experience: a wide-eyed, gawking tourist enjoying their guided walkthrough of the famous American Justice system. I'd be interested in hearing how or why this would fail.
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Good point. Many smart people think they can outsmart cops and lawyers but fail spectacularly because they are playing a game for the first time against people who play it for a living.
And I'm not willing to perjure myself either.
So... all I can say is that I would do my best to try to get on the jury and, once there, acquit. Would our genius lawyers be able to ferret this out? Maybe, maybe not. They're probably not quite as smart as they like to believe either.
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By not being too gung-ho in either direction (so neither side vetoes you) and possibly playing down your IQ somewhat?
The one time I was in a jury pool, the lawyers were going through the pool trying to find people biased in their direction.
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The one time I was in a jury pool, it did seem like the lawyers from both sides were trying to get people to self-identify as independent thinkers and then veto them. Probably both lawyers thought that they were in total control and wanted to have a jury of relative simpletons that they could guide. Of course, not both can be right.
I'll admit, I know almost nothing about jury selection except for what I've read in John Grisham novels, lol. I think it would be fascinating to hear about how trial lawyers approach selection in a big case like this one.
It's not so much that we don't want smart people or independent thinkers as it is that we don't want overly opinionated people who will fuck up the deliberation process. A jury full of relative simpletons isn't a good thing because they won't want to pay attention, won't be able to understand the testimony or jury instructions and will instead just rely on whatever biases they have. The Chauvin jury was composed almost entirely of people with professional or managerial backgrounds. What we're trying to avoid is the kind of person who is overly opinionated and is unwilling to work with the other jurors. We need people who can deliberate, not just voice their opinions. If 1 juror gives the other 11 the impression that he isn't fully invested in deliberating and has already made an unchangeable decision, all it's going to do is piss of the other jurors and increase the chances of a hung jury.
That brings me to another aspect of your plan that was faulty: The presumption that you would be able to hang the jury on your own. Hung juries are almost always fairly evenly split. If you find yourself in a room with 11 people who are voting to convict after several days of deliberation, then it's unlikely that they're doing so purely for political reasons. If you haven't turned at least a few members around in that time, then you're probably wrong, and unless you're a total moron, you'll probably come around yourself. In a high-profile case such as this, there is going to be a lot of pressure for a verdict, and the judge isn't going to send everyone home just because you say you're deadlocked; the system is willing to keep you there a lot longer than you think they will.
I can't speak for big cases, and there are differing theories, but a few general truisms hold. Basically, I aim to have a discussion with prospective jurors, not an examination. In big trials they might interview the jurors individually, but most of the time they bring them in 10 or 20 at a time. I'll start by making a general statement that I expect most people to agree on, just to get people comfortable with raising their hands. There will inevitably be someone who doesn't raise their hand, so I'll pick on that person first to see why they don't agree with everyone else (it's usually because the person is incredibly shy). From there, I try to focus on open-ended questions that don't suggest an answer and give the prospective juror a chance to elaborate on their views. I try to avoid anything that can be answered with a simple yes or no.
For example, in this case I might ask "In the past several years there has been a lot of discussion about how people are increasingly feeling unsafe on public transit. What do you think about that?" And this is where @ArjinFerman's comment ties in. Most people will speak freely about controversial subjects during voir dire. Most people will offer opinions that have the potential to get them booted. You don't know what my trial strategy is or what evidence is going to be presented. You haven't read all of the other jury questionnaires. You don't know where I'm going with my questions. If you think that straddling the line between both sides is going to work, you'd better be sure that you know what the sides actually are. If I'm the prosecutor on this case, I'm not trying to get a bunch of woke-ass do-gooders on the jury, because that isn't going to happen. I've probably accepted the fact that the jury pool is frustrated about erratic behavior on the subway and is sick of having to deal with it. Yeah, some people are more liberal, but they're going to be outspoken and probably get the boot from the defense. I'm trying to craft an argument at trial that acknowledges Mr. Penny's right to intervene but that the problem was in the execution. The only question is whether I think you're willing to accept my argument, and you don't know my criteria for that.
How democratic!
You can make any choice as a juror, so long as you make the one everyone else is making. And if you don’t make the decision everyone else wants you to, the state will use force to intimidate you into changing your mind.
We might as well just use Nazi ballots, if the whole point of juries is to use social and economic pressure to force people to vote the same way, and using confinement and isolation to overcome conscientious disagreement. These are totalitarian tactics, incompatible with freedom.
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Well, give me some credit here, surely arguing with the Motte's finest all these years counts for something that would help me turn people to my side?
So I get that I might have shit to do, and might be worried about losing my job or something, but when we're talking about something like the Penny case, I don't know if I could sleep at night if I had the power to let him off the hook, but caved in because I really had to run some chores.
Would some bland answer like "If people feel this way, maybe the city could hire more cops or something, but I dunno, I'm not an expert" immediately flag me in a case like this? I guess I'd be a bit more careful expressing pro-cop sentiment in something like the Chauvin trial.
None of this is relevant. The game I'm playing is "hide my power level" not "ensure I will be selected for the jury". I'm mostly trying to look normal, not read your mind. The latter sounds like an easy way to play myself like in that Princess Bride "only a great fool would reach for what he was given" skit.
Exactly, which is why I said won't go gung-ho in either direction.
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Thanks for sharing. Your post is very interesting, as always.
For the record, in my one jury selection I did get booted for raising my hand when it was pretty clear that the lawyer asking the question didn't want me to. It was a long time ago, but IIRC, he said something and then asked if anyone disagreed. The jurors seemed pretty intimidated. I'm probably not the only one who disagreed, but I'm the only one who raised my hand. The other jurors seemed pretty intimidated. When I raised my hand, the lawyer then immediately pounced on me in a fairly harsh way and forced me to defend my statement. It was then I realized that the trial was already under way. (Note: My uninformed belief is that it's probably against the rules to prejudice the jury during this stage, but that everyone does it in an oblique way anyway).
In the end, I was the only one dismissed by that lawyer and the defendant ended up settling.
When it comes to where I could pull a Henry Fonda, I do understand your skepticism. I can't confidently say that I'd succeed because I've never been in that position before. But I think I am pretty high on verbal intelligence, charisma, and disagreeableness. I like my odds.
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"IDK, maybe -- I haven't really noticed anything, myself"
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The goal is often just to reduce variance. If whether lawyer thought they were going to lose, they wouldn't be there, they'd have settled/plead/dropped the case.
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