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Re:Uber and Waymo Reach Settlement by cicero on Friday February 09, 2018 @02:06PM (#16342965)
As someone who has been on two juries, I object! Jury selection is complicated, and there are limitations to how many potential jurors can be struck. There are also multiple strategies that legal teams may adopt. In my last trial, the plaintiff made a very emotional case, but the defense presented a very logical case. There were two jurors who I would say were logically minded, and we were able to influence the rest of the jury, who were tending to stick on what I thought were irrelevant points. A lawyer friend of mine said that she has seen that one or two logically minded jurors can often steer the jury, and if she is able to put together a logical case, she wants to get some logical people on the jury. (However, being a public defender, she is not always able to put together a nice logical case. She has to do the best she can with what she has to work with.)
Re:Uber and Waymo Reach Settlement by pc86 on Friday February 09, 2018 @02:49PM (#16343292)
Aren't you proving cbhl's point? When she can't put together a logical case and has to rely on "this person has kids please don't send them to prison for this crime they obviously committed," she's going to be trying to keep off the most logical and articulate people at any costs.
Re:Uber and Waymo Reach Settlement by dragonwriter on Friday February 09, 2018 @03:52PM (#16343733)
> When she can't put together a logical case and has to rely on "this person has kids please don't send them to prison for this crime they obviously committed," she's going to be trying to keep off the most logical and articulate people at any costs.

Nah, people who support nullification based on perception of the specific case and offender circumstances are not generally less logical and articulate than others.

You obviously want to eliminate people who either see the law as inherently just or see it as important to uphold the law even when the result would be unjust, as well as people inclined to see punishing your client as just despite the circumstances. But there's no reason, in general, to think that logical thinking or articulateness are, in general, going to be good correlated for those moral inclinations.

Re:Uber and Waymo Reach Settlement by rexaliquid on Friday February 09, 2018 @03:35PM (#16343622)
chbl wrote: "Ten strangers that are almost certainly not technical, since lawyers always try to dismiss smart people from juries"

The point is that smart people are not always dismissed. Different legal strategies work better with different jury selections.